In response to escalating tensions with Israel, Iran has begun throttling internet access, with plans to disconnect from the global internet entirely to prevent Israeli cyberattacks. The Iranian government also urges citizens to delete WhatsApp -- one of the country's most popular messaging platforms -- claiming without evidence that the Meta-owned app has been weaponed by Israel to spy on its users. (WhatsApp vehemently denied those claims in a statement to the Associated Press.) Telegram is also said to be blocked as well. The Verge reports: The announcements come amidst the escalating war between Iran and Israel, which broke out after Israel attacked the country on June 12th, and a rise in reported internet outages. Civilians have claimed that they've been unable to access basic but critical telecommunications services, such as messaging apps, maps, and sometimes the internet itself. Cloudflare reported that two major Iranian cellular carriers effectively went offline on Tuesday, and The New York Times reports that even VPNs, which Iranians frequently use to access banned sites like Facebook and Instagram, have become increasingly harder to access. [...]

Israel's role in the cyber outages has not been officially confirmed, but independent analysts at NetBlocks noticed a significant reduction of internet traffic originating from Iran on Tuesday, starting at 5:30 PM local time. According to Tasnim, a news network affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Iranians will still have access to the country's state-operated national internet service, though two Iranian officials told the Times that the internal bandwidth could be reduced by up to 80 percent.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/0059207/iran-is-going-offline-to-prevent-purported-israeli-cyberattacks?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Time Magazine: While AI could offer transformative benefits, without proper safeguards it could facilitate nuclear and biological threats and cause "potentially irreversible harms," a new report commissioned by California Governor Gavin Newsom has warned. "The opportunity to establish effective AI governance frameworks may not remain open indefinitely," says the report, which was published on June 17 (PDF). Citing new evidence that AI can help users source nuclear-grade uranium and is on the cusp of letting novices create biological threats, it notes that the cost for inaction at this current moment could be "extremely high." [...]

"Foundation model capabilities have rapidly advanced since Governor Newsom vetoed SB 1047 last September," the report states. The industry has shifted from large language AI models that merely predict the next word in a stream of text toward systems trained to solve complex problems and that benefit from "inference scaling," which allows them more time to process information. These advances could accelerate scientific research, but also potentially amplify national security risks by making it easier for bad actors to conduct cyberattacks or acquire chemical and biological weapons. The report points to Anthropic's Claude 4 models, released just last month, which the company said might be capable of helping would-be terrorists create bioweapons or engineer a pandemic. Similarly, OpenAI's o3 model reportedly outperformed 94% of virologists on a key evaluation. In recent months, new evidence has emerged showing AI's ability to strategically lie, appearing aligned with its creators' goals during training but displaying other objectives once deployed, and exploit loopholes to achieve its goals, the report says. While "currently benign, these developments represent concrete empirical evidence for behaviors that could present significant challenges to measuring loss of control risks and possibly foreshadow future harm," the report says.

While Republicans have proposed a 10 year ban on all state AI regulation over concerns that a fragmented policy environment could hamper national competitiveness, the report argues that targeted regulation in California could actually "reduce compliance burdens on developers and avoid a patchwork approach" by providing a blueprint for other states, while keeping the public safer. It stops short of advocating for any specific policy, instead outlining the key principles the working group believes California should adopt when crafting future legislation. It "steers clear" of some of the more divisive provisions of SB 1047, like the requirement for a "kill switch" or shutdown mechanism to quickly halt certain AI systems in case of potential harm, says Scott Singer, a visiting scholar in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a lead-writer of the report.

Instead, the approach centers around enhancing transparency, for example through legally protecting whistleblowers and establishing incident reporting systems, so that lawmakers and the public have better visibility into AI's progress. The goal is to "reap the benefits of innovation. Let's not set artificial barriers, but at the same time, as we go, let's think about what we're learning about how it is that the technology is behaving," says Cuellar, who co-led the report. The report emphasizes this visibility is crucial not only for public-facing AI applications, but for understanding how systems are tested and deployed inside AI companies, where concerning behaviors might first emerge. "The underlying approach here is one of 'trust but verify,'" Singer says, a concept borrowed from Cold War-era arms control treaties that would involve designing mechanisms to independently check compliance. That's a departure from existing efforts, which hinge on voluntary cooperation from companies, such as the deal between OpenAI and Center for AI Standards and Innovation (formerly the U.S. AI Safety Institute) to conduct pre-deployment tests. It's an approach that acknowledges the "substantial expertise inside industry," Singer says, but "also underscores the importance of methods of independently verifying safety claims."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/17/214215/california-ai-policy-report-warns-of-irreversible-harms?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Новая версия Plasma уже здесь, и она стала ещё больше похожа на /home, поскольку стала более плавной, дружелюбной и полезной.

Plasma 6.4 улучшена практически по всем направлениям, прогресс достигнут в в спе­ци­аль­ных воз­мож­но­стях, цветопередаче, поддержке планшетов, управлении окнами и многом другом.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/kde/18001644#cut ) )

Команда разработчиков Arch Linux сообщила, что теперь Wine и Wine-Staging по умолчанию собираются в режиме Wow64 (Windows-on-Windows 64-bit). Это решение позволяет запускать 32-битные Windows-приложения в 64-битных Unix-средах без необходимости использовать 32-битные библиотеки. Благодаря переходу на 64-битные версии Wine отпала необходимость в использовании репозитория multilib для пакетов wine и wine-staging.

Основной причиной такого перехода стало стремление к согласованию с актуальными изменениями в основном проекте Wine — для упрощения сборки пакетов и уменьшения числа зависимостей. Вместе с тем, разработчики предупреждают о возможных сложностях: может наблюдаться снижение производительности OpenGL в 32-битных Windows-программах, а также потребуется пересоздать имеющиеся 32-битные префиксы Wine.

Установка steam по прежнему требует использования репозитория multilib.

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18001728

Разработчики свободной системы автоматизированного проектирования печатных плат KiCad рассказали о состоянии реализации поддержки Wayland и обобщили проблемы, мешающие полноценному использованию данного протокола. Пользователям, профессионально проектирующим печатные платы в KiCad или желающим получить стабильное и полнофункциональное окружение, рекомендовано запускать KiCad в средах рабочего стола на базе протокола X11, таких как Xfce, MATE или X11-сеанс KDE Plasma.

Тем кто намерен использовать KiCad в окружениях с Wayland следует быть готовым к возможным зависаниям и аварийным завершениям, невозможности восстановить желаемую раскладку окон и ограничению функциональности интерфейса. Утверждается, что ограничения в функциональности вызваны отсутствием в Wayland возможностей, давно применяемых в приложениях для X11, Windows и macOS, таких как поддержка позиционирования окон и мгновенного перемещения указателя мыши (cursor warp).

Что касается возникающих сбоев, то они связываются с большой фрагментацией композитных серверов для Wayland. GNOME, KDE и обособленные композитные менеджеры по-своему интерпретируют протоколы Wayland, поэтому полагаться при разработке на единую целостную реализацию протоколов Wayland и экспериментальные расширения проблематично. Разработчикам приложений приходится учитывать особенности каждого окружения и применять костыли для обхода проблем, специфичных для разных композитных менеджеров.

Фрагментация композитных серверов существенно увеличивает трудозатраты на реализацию поддержки Wayland. Отмечается, что самое неприятное в том, что разработчики KiCad не имеют возможности исправить возникающие проблемы своими силами, так как проблемы присутствуют не в KiСad, а в протоколах, оконных менеджерах и композитных серверах.

Учитывая, что Linux применяет лишь небольшая часть пользователей KiCad, решено избегать добавления в кодовую базу проекта костылей для обхода проблем, специфичных для оконных менеджеров, но при этом продолжать собирать KiCad для Wayland и тестировать сборки на совместимость. Все выявляемые проблемы и ограничения планируют документировать и доводить до сведения пользователей.

В системе отслеживания ошибок решено не разбирать жалобы от пользователей Wayland, связанные с позиционированием и размером окон, установкой фокуса, а также зависаниями, аварийными завершениями, повышенной нагрузке на CPU, проблемами с устройствами ввода и сбоями при отрисовке, не проявляющимися в сборке для X11.

Среди известных проблем, которые находятся вне зоны влияния разработчиков KiCad и которые не удаётся устранить на стороне KiCad:

• Проблемы с управлением окнами: Невозможность управления позицией окон и панелей (при открытии KiCad нельзя запомнить и восстановить положение окон и панелей инструментов). Проблемы с координацией работы одновременно с несколькими окнами. Ограничение возможности перемещения вкладок и панелей между разными областями.

• Проблемы с устройствами ввода: Возможность мгновенного перемещения курсора (cursor warping) завязана на необязательные экспериментальные расширения протокола, поддерживаемые лишь в отдельных композитных менеджерах. Непредсказуемое поведение при управлении фокусом ввода. Проблемы при использовании специализированных устройств ввода и при обработке горячих клавиш.

• Проблемы со стабильностью и производительностью: Повышенное потребление ресурсов и высокая нагрузка на CPU/GPU по сравнению с использованием X11. Появление графических артефактов при отрисовке и нарушение нормального вывода. Зависания и аварийные завершения, проявляющиеся только при работе в окружениях на базе Wayland. Ненадёжная работа с буфером обмена.

• Ограничения интерфейса пользователя: Проблемы с позиционированием, фокусом и взаимодействием в модальных диалогах. Проблемы с запуском внешних приложений и управления ими.

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18001923

Field Notes, the analog notebook company that began as designer Aaron Draplin's side project 20 years ago, has sold over 10 million notebooks and operates in 2,000 stores worldwide, co-founder Jim Coudal told Fast Company. The Chicago-based company, which Coudal says just completed its best year for sales and revenue with 2025 tracking to exceed those numbers, has grown from selling 13 notebooks on its launch day to producing quarterly edition runs of 30,000 to 60,000 packs. The brand's subscription model, launched in 2009 with 1,500-pack print runs, now encompasses 67 limited editions and provides both predictable cash flow and regular customer engagement opportunities for the company.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/17/2128231/field-notes-went-from-side-project-to-cult-notebook?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания Qualys выявила уязвимость (CVE-2025-6019) в библиотеке libblockdev, позволяющую через манипуляции с фоновым процессом udisks получить права root в системе. Работа прототипа эксплоита продемонстрирована в Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora и openSUSE Leap 15.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63424

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has a long history of being criticized for coming up with clunky product names, and for changing them so often it's hard for customers to keep up. The company's own employees once joked in a viral video that the iPod would have been called the "Microsoft I-pod Pro 2005 XP Human Ear Professional Edition with Subscription" had it been created by Microsoft. The latest gripe among some employees and customers: The company's tendency to slap "Copilot" on everything AI.

"There is a delusion on our marketing side where literally everything has been renamed to have Copilot it in," one employee told Business Insider late last year. "Everything is Copilot. Nothing else matters. They want a Copilot tie-in for everything." Now, an advertising watchdog is weighing in. The Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division reviewed Microsoft's advertising for its Copilot AI tools. NAD called out Microsoft's "universal use of the product description as 'Copilot'" and said "consumers would not necessarily understand the difference," according to a recent report from the watchdog.

"Microsoft is using 'Copilot' across all Microsoft Office applications and Business Chat, despite differences in functionality and the manual steps that are required for Business Chat to produce the same results as Copilot in a specific Microsoft Office app," NAD further explained in an email to BI. NAD did not mention any specific recommendations on product names. But it did say Microsoft should modify claims that Copilot works "seamlessly across all your data" because all of the company's tools with the Copilot moniker don't work together continuously in a way consumers might expect.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/0227224/microsoft-is-calling-too-many-things-copilot-watchdog-says?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Tewi — это TUI-клиент для управления демоном [ Transmission ]( https://transmissionbt.com/ ) через его RPC-протокол.

Проект написан на Python и использует фреймворк [ Textual ]( https://textual.textualize.io/ ) для реализации интерфейса. Лицензия — GPLv3+.

Поддерживается Transmission 2.40 и выше.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18002731#cut ) )

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused Meta of attempting to poach his developers with $100 million sign-on bonuses and higher compensation packages as the social media giant races to catch up in AI race. Altman said Meta, which has a $1.8 trillion market capitalization, began making the offers to his team members after falling behind in AI efforts. "I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor," Altman said on the Uncapped podcast [video] hosted by his brother.

None of his "best people" had accepted Zuckerberg's offers, he said. Meta has been recruiting top researchers and engineers from rival companies to build a new "superintelligence" team focused on developing AGI. The Facebook parent company has struggled this year to match competitors, facing criticism over its Llama 4 language model and delaying its flagship "Behemoth" AI model.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/0751230/altman-says-meta-targeting-openai-staff-with-100-million-bonuses-as-ai-race-intensifies?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Опубликован выпуск интегрированной среды разработки Qt Creator 17, предназначенной для создания кроссплатформенных приложений с использованием библиотеки Qt. Поддерживается как разработка классических программ на языке C++, так и использование языка QML, в котором для определения сценариев используется JavaScript, а структура и параметры элементов интерфейса задаются CSS-подобными блоками. Новая версия доступна в виде обновления в Qt Online Installer (коммерческий, opensource). Offline-установщики под коммерческой лицензией можно найти на Qt Account Portal, а opensource-пакеты - на соответствующей странице загрузок. Это бесплатное обновление для всех пользователей.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63425

DC Studios co-head James Gunn argues that the movie industry is "dying" primarily because productions begin before screenplays are complete, while also delivering a sharp critique of his former employer Marvel Studios, which he claims Disney has "killed" through output mandates.

Gunn dismissed common explanations for Hollywood's struggles like declining theater attendance or improved home viewing experiences, telling Rolling Stone that "the number one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay." The filmmaker has implemented a strict rule at DC Studios requiring finished scripts before production starts, recently scrapping a project because its screenplay wasn't ready.

The director, who previously helmed three "Guardians of the Galaxy" films for Marvel, said Disney's corporate directive to increase output destroyed the studio's creative process. "They were under a corporate mandate, yeah. That wasn't fair. It wasn't right. And it killed them," Gunn said, referring to Marvel's mandated production quotas for movies and television shows. By contrast, Gunn said DC Studios operates without numerical mandates. "We don't have the mandate to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we're going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality," he explained.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/0245223/dc-studios-chief-says-movie-industry-is-dying-claims-disney-killed-marvel-with-output-mandates?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

U.S. public companies have cut their white-collar workforces by 3.5% over the past three years, marking a fundamental shift in corporate philosophy that views fewer employees as a path to faster growth. One in five S&P 500 companies now employ fewer people than they did a decade ago, according to employment data-provider Live Data Technologies.

The reductions extend beyond typical cost-cutting measures and coincide with record corporate profits at the end of last year. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees Tuesday that AI will eliminate certain jobs in coming years, while Procter & Gamble announced plans to cut 7,000 positions to create "broader roles and smaller teams."

Bank of America reduced its workforce from 285,000 in 2010 to 213,000 today while revenues climbed 18% over the past decade. Managers have faced particularly steep cuts, with their ranks falling 6.1% between May 2022 and May 2025. Companies are flattening organizational structures and pushing remaining employees to handle larger workloads as executives track revenue per employee more closely.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1245216/the-biggest-companies-across-america-are-cutting-their-workforces?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Starting in summer 2026, Netflix subscribers in France will be able to watch commercially broadcast TV content "without ever having to leave the service." The Verge adds: The streaming giant has announced a distribution deal with French media company TF1 Group to make TF1's free-to-air live TV channels and on-demand TF1 Plus streaming content available to French Netflix users as part of their existing subscription plan.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1443245/netflix-will-air-traditional-tv-channels-in-france?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Nature will automatically publish peer review reports and author responses alongside all newly submitted research papers starting this week. The flagship scientific journal previously offered transparent peer review as an optional service since 2020, while Nature Communications has required it since 2016.

All exchanges between authors and anonymous reviewers will become publicly accessible (reviewer identities remain confidential unless they choose disclosure). Nature aims to open what it calls the "black box" of science by revealing the months-long conversations that shape research papers before publication.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1452206/nature-journal-mandates-public-peer-review-for-all-new-research-papers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The UK Information Commissioner's Office has issued its first guidance demanding manufacturers of air fryers, smart speakers, fertility trackers, and smart TVs respect users' privacy rights after reports of excessive data collection in homes.

The regulator requires companies to ensure data security, provide transparency to consumers, and regularly delete collected information. Stephen Almond, the ICO's executive director for regulatory risk, said smart products know who users live with, their music preferences, and medication details. The guidance addresses "internet of things" devices, including fertility trackers that record menstrual dates and body temperature before sending data to manufacturer servers.

Additionally, smart speakers that monitor family members and visitors must allow users to configure settings that minimize personal information collection. The ICO warned manufacturers it stands ready to take enforcement action in the event of noncompliance.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/152236/british-watchdog-cracks-down-on-data-collection-by-smart-tvs-speakers-and-air-fryers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Swiss Re has identified extreme heat as a significant insurance threat in its latest annual report on emerging risks with the Zurich-based reinsurer noting that up to half a million people globally die from extreme heat effects each year. The death toll exceeds the combined impact of floods, earthquakes and hurricanes. Heat waves contributed to conditions that generated $78.5 billion in insured wildfire losses globally from 2015-2024, Swiss Re reported.

The Los Angeles wildfires this year could add up to $45 billion in insured losses, according to UCLA Anderson School of Business estimates. The insurance industry has historically underestimated heat-related costs because damages spread across multiple policy types rather than appearing as a single category. Construction firms face rising medical insurance and workers compensation claims when outdoor workers suffer heat injuries, plus potential liability for inadequate cooling breaks.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1550243/insurers-want-businesses-to-wake-up-to-costs-of-extreme-heat?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft is positioning Windows as the primary gaming platform for Xbox, according to Xbox president Sarah Bond. "We're working closely with the Windows team to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for gaming," Bond said in a video announcing a partnership with AMD for next-generation Xbox hardware spanning consoles and handhelds.

The statement, PCWorld points out, aligns with Microsoft's recent "This is an Xbox" marketing campaign, which promotes phones, PCs, televisions, and traditional consoles as Xbox devices. The company's newly announced Xbox Ally X handheld runs Windows beneath its Xbox interface, allowing access to multiple game stores unlike Valve's Steam Deck.

Microsoft has shifted strategy following weak Xbox console sales compared to PlayStation, spending billions to acquire publishers including Bethesda and Activision Blizzard while expanding Xbox Cloud Gaming services across multiple device types.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/174256/xbox-president-were-working-to-ensure-windows-is-the-number-one-platform-for-gaming?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The NFC Forum has released NFC Release 15 (that's what it's calling it), extending the operating range of Near Field Communication connections from 0.5 centimeters to 2 centimeters -- a fourfold increase that reduces the precision required for device alignment.

The global standards body, whose board includes representatives from Apple, Google, Huawei, Infineon, NXP, Sony, and ST Microelectronics, designed the enhancement to accelerate transaction speeds and improve reliability across NFC-enabled devices. The expanded range addresses technical challenges in smaller form-factor devices like wearables and smartphones while maintaining compatibility with existing ISO/IEC 14443 standards.

The standard also incorporates support for NFC Digital Product Passport specifications, allowing single NFC tags embedded in products to store and transmit sustainability data throughout their lifecycle.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1640225/nfc-release-15-extends-tap-to-pay-range-from-05cm-to-2cm?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Investigators believe Air India Flight 171 had an emergency-power generator operating when it crashed last week, raising questions about whether the plane's engines functioned properly during takeoff. WSJ: The preliminary finding [non-paywalled source], according to people familiar with the probe, gives investigators a new line of inquiry as they study a crash that killed all but one of the plane's passengers. In all, at least 270 people died following the crash, including some on the ground in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

The emergency system is known as a ram air turbine. It is a small propeller that drops from the bottom of the 787 Dreamliner's fuselage to serve as a backup generator. Engines normally produce electricity for an aircraft and help run its flight-control systems. The power generated by the RAT can enable crucial aircraft components to function. The system can deploy automatically in flight if both engines have failed or if all three hydraulic system pressures are low, according to an airline's Boeing 787 manual reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

It can also deploy if cockpit instruments lose power or problems emerge with the aircraft's electric motor pumps. Pilots can manually deploy the RAT if needed. The most common occurrence is when a pilot thinks that both engines failed, according to Anthony Brickhouse, a U.S.-based aerospace safety consultant. Engine failures can result from a variety of causes, including bird strikes or problems with fuel.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1759205/boeing-787s-emergency-power-system-likely-active-before-air-india-crash?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft is planning to ax thousands of jobs, particularly in sales, as part of the company's latest move to trim its workforce amid heavy spending on AI. From a report: The cuts are expected to be announced early next month [non-paywalled source], following the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, according to people familiar with the matter. The reductions won't exclusively affect sales teams, and the timing could still change, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. The terminations would follow a previous round of layoffs in May that hit 6,000 people and fell hardest on product and engineering positions, largely sparing customer-facing roles like sales and marketing.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1855243/microsoft-planning-thousands-more-job-cuts-aimed-at-salespeople?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has announced that the Google Veo 3 AI video generator will be integrated with YouTube Shorts later this summer. According to Mohan, YouTube Shorts has seen a rise in popularity even compared to YouTube as a whole. The streaming platform is now the most watched source of video in the world, but Shorts specifically have seen a massive 186 percent increase in viewership over the past year. Mohan says Shorts now average 200 billion daily views.

YouTube has already equipped creators with a few AI tools, including Dream Screen, which can produce AI video backgrounds with a text prompt. Veo 3 support will be a significant upgrade, though. At the Cannes festival, Mohan revealed that the streaming site will begin offering integration with Google's leading video model later this summer. "I believe these tools will open new creative lanes for everyone to explore," said Mohan. [...]

While you can add Veo 3 videos (or any video) to a YouTube Short right now, they don't fit with the format's portrait orientation focus. Veo 3 outputs 720p landscape videos, meaning you'd have black bars in a Short. Presumably, Google will create a custom version of the model for YouTube to spit out vertical video clips. Mohan didn't mention a pricing model, but Veo 3 probably won't be cheap for Shorts creators. Currently, you must pay for Google's $250 AI Ultra plan to access Veo 3, and that still limits you to 125 8-second videos per month.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/197203/googles-frighteningly-good-veo-3-ai-videos-to-be-integrated-with-youtube-shorts?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Waymo plans to relaunch its robotaxi service in New York City, starting with safety driver testing while lobbying to change state law to eventually allow fully autonomous vehicles without human operators. The company has applied for a permit and will begin mapping in Manhattan, though legislative hurdles and skepticism from lawmakers remain. The Verge reports: A bill was introduced in the New York State Legislature earlier this year that would permit autonomous vehicles without safety drivers "provided that the automated driving system is engaged and the vehicle meets certain conditions." The bill is currently under consideration by the state Senate's transportation committee.

New York City also has some of the most dangerous, congested, and poorly managed streets in the world. They are also full of construction workers, pedestrians, bicyclists, and double- and sometimes even triple-parked cars. In theory, this would make it very difficult for an autonomous vehicle to navigate, given that AVs typically rely on good weather, clear signage, and less aggressive driving from other road users for safe operation. And it's not clear that the state will amend its laws to allow for fully driverless vehicles, with some lawmakers expressing reservations. "This kind of testing hasn't even been completed in other parts of the country," state Senator John Liu told Daily News last year after the city announced its new permitting process. "It would behoove New York City to wait to see some of those other results of driverless technology in less dense urban settings. This is an example of something where New York City does not have to be first."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1912202/waymos-robotaxis-are-coming-back-to-new-york-city?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Facebook now supports passkeys for login, offering users a more secure, phishing-resistant alternative to passwords by using biometrics or a PIN stored on their device. The feature is rolling out to iOS and Android "soon," while Messenger will get the feature "in the coming months." Lifehacker reports: Meta seems pretty excited about the news -- and not just because the company happens to be a member of the FIDO Alliance, the organization that developed passkeys. Aside from logging into your Facebook account, Meta says you'll be able to use passkeys to autofill your payment info when buying things with Meta Pay. You'll also be able to use the same passkey between both Facebook and Messenger, and your passkey will act as a key to lock out your encrypted Messenger chats.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1917222/facebook-now-supports-passkeys?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Napster, the brand synonymous with the music piracy boom of the early 2000s, has a new copyright challenge. Together with audio giant Sonos, Napster faces a lawsuit demanding over $3.4 million in alleged unpaid copyright royalties. Filed by collective rights management organization SoundExchange, the complaint (PDF) centers on missed payments related to the "Sonos Radio" service, which until 2023 was powered by Napster's music catalog. [...]

Sonos Radio launched in April 2020 with Napster as the authorized agent, submitting the required royalty reports and royalties to SoundExchange. While all went well initially, payments stopped around May 2022. At the time, Napster had been acquired by venture capital firms Hivemind and Algorand, with a focus on "web3" technologies, including cryptocurrencies and blockchain. According to the complaint, the takeover resulted in a "complete breakdown of reporting and payment for the Sonos Radio service." The alleged payment problems eventually came to light during an audit initiated by SoundExchange in 2023, which concluded that Sonos and Napster owed millions in unpaid royalties.

Sonos and Napster are no longer partners in the radio service, as the audio equipment manufacturer switched to Deezer around April 2023. That appears to have solved the royalty issues, but SoundExchange still believes it is owed more than $3 million. "In total, Sonos, and its agent Napster, have failed to pay at least $3,423,844.41 comprising royalties owed for the period October 2022 to April 2023, interest, late fees, and auditor fee-shifting costs, and subtracting Sonos and Napster's payments made to date. "Late fees and interest continue to grow," SoundExchange adds, while requesting compensation in full. The complaint lists one count of "underpayment" of statutory royalties, and one count of "non-payment" of royalties, as determined by the audit. For both Copyright Act violations, SoundExchange requests damages of at least $3.4 million.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1921253/napster-and-sonos-sued-for-millions-in-unpaid-music-royalties?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Austria's coalition government has agreed on a plan to enable police to monitor suspects' secure messaging in order to thwart militant attacks, ending what security officials have said is a rare and dangerous blind spot for a European Union country. From a report: Because Austria lacks a legal framework for monitoring messaging services like WhatsApp, its main domestic intelligence service and police rely on allies with far more sweeping powers like Britain and the United States alerting them to chatter about planned attacks and spying.

That kind of tip-off led to police unravelling what they say was a planned attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, which prompted the cancellation of all three of her planned shows there in August of last year. "The aim is to make people planning terrorist attacks in Austria feel less secure - and increase everyone else's sense of security," Joerg Leichtfried of the Social Democrats, the junior minister in charge of overseeing the Directorate for State Security and Intelligence (DSN), told a news conference.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1930216/austrian-government-agrees-on-plan-to-allow-monitoring-of-secure-messaging?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Midjourney has launched its first AI video generation model, V1, which turns images into short five-second videos with customizable animation settings. While it's currently only available via Discord and on the web, the launch positions the popular AI image generation startup in direct competition with OpenAI's Sora and Google's Veo. TechCrunch reports: While many companies are focused on developing controllable AI video models for use in commercial settings, Midjourney has always stood out for its distinctive AI image models that cater to creative types. The company says it has larger goals for its AI video models than generating B-roll for Hollywood films or commercials for the ad industry. In a blog post, Midjourney CEO David Holz says its AI video model is the company's next step towards its ultimate destination, creating AI models "capable of real-time open-world simulations." After AI video models, Midjourney says it plans to develop AI models for producing 3D renderings, as well as real-time AI models. [...]

To start, Midjourney says it will charge 8x more for a video generation than a typical image generation, meaning subscribers will run out of their monthly allotted generations significantly faster when creating videos than images. At launch, the cheapest way to try out V1 is by subscribing to Midjourney's $10-per-month Basic plan. Subscribers to Midjourney's $60-a-month Pro plan and $120-a-month Mega plan will have unlimited video generations in the company's slower, "Relax" mode. Over the next month, Midjourney says it will reassess its pricing for video models.

V1 comes with a few custom settings that allow users to control the video model's outputs. Users can select an automatic animation setting to make an image move randomly, or they can select a manual setting that allows users to describe, in text, a specific animation they want to add to their video. Users can also toggle the amount of camera and subject movement by selecting "low motion" or "high motion" in settings. While the videos generated with V1 are only five seconds long, users can choose to extend them by four seconds up to four times, meaning that V1 videos could get as long as 21 seconds. The report notes that Midjourney was sued a week ago by two of Hollywood's most notorious film studios: Disney and Universal. "The suit alleges that images created by Midjourney's AI image models depict the studio's copyrighted characters, like Homer Simpson and Darth Vader."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1935234/midjourney-launches-its-first-ai-video-generation-model-v1?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

iPhone sales jumped 15% year-over-year in April and May 2025, "signaling Apple's strongest two-month performance for the period since the pandemic," reports MacRumors, citing preliminary data from Counterpoint Research. From the report: The growth was driven mainly by the United States and China, Apple's two largest markets. Both regions returned to positive year-over-year growth after three years of declines during what is typically a less seasonal period. China sales were particularly notable, with Apple capturing the top spot in May. It's quite the turnaround, after Apple only recently sustained market share losses to Huawei and other local mobile vendors. [...]

The report showed Japan also indicated strong iPhone demand, with the more affordable iPhone 16e proving especially popular among consumers who favor smaller devices. The device's entry-level pricing apparently appealed to Japanese tastes, while Apple also maintained strong sales for the iPhone 16 base model and even the older iPhone 14. India continued its growth trajectory as Apple expands both manufacturing and market presence in the world's most populous country.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1945255/apple-posts-strongest-two-month-iphone-growth-since-pandemic?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The daughter of a Seattle woman who died during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave has filed the first wrongful death lawsuit directly linking fossil fuel companies to an individual's climate-related death.

Misti Leon is suing seven oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP, claiming they caused her mother Juliana Leon's death from hyperthermia on June 28, 2021, when temperatures reached 108 degrees Fahrenheit. The lawsuit alleges the companies created a "fossil fuel-dependent economy" that resulted in "more frequent and destructive weather disasters and foreseeable loss of human life." Attribution science research determined the 2021 heatwave would have been "virtually impossible" without human-made climate change and was at least 150 times rarer without warming.

The case seeks damages and funding for a public education campaign about fossil fuels' role in planetary heating.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1951212/major-oil-companies-face-first-climate-death-lawsuit?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader walterbyrd shares news that Texas Instruments has announced plans to invest more than $60 billion to expand its U.S. manufacturing operations in the United States. From a report: The funds will be used to build or expand seven chip-making facilities in Texas as well as Utah, and will create 60,000 jobs, TI said on Wednesday, calling it the "largest investment in foundational semiconductor manufacturing in U.S. history." The company did not give a timeline for the investment.

Unlike AI chip firms Nvidia and AMD, TI makes analog or foundational chips used in everyday devices such as smartphones, cars and medical devices, giving it a large client base that includes Apple, SpaceX and Ford Motor. The spending pledge follows similar announcements from others in the semiconductor industry, including Micron, which said last week that it would expand its U.S. investment by $30 billion, taking its planned spending to $200 billion. [...]

Like other companies unveiling such spending commitments, TI's announcement includes funds already allocated to facilities that are either under construction or ramping up. It will build two additional plants in Sherman, Texas, based on future demand. "TI is building dependable, low-cost 300 millimeter capacity at scale to deliver the analog and embedded processing chips that are vital for nearly every type of electronic system," said CEO Haviv Ilan.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/2310223/texas-instruments-to-invest-60-billion-to-make-semiconductors-in-us?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Tech support scammers have devised a method to inject their fake phone numbers into webpages when a target's web browser visits official sites for Apple, PayPal, Netflix, and other companies. The ruse, outlined in a post on Wednesday from security firm Malwarebytes, threatens to trick users into calling the malicious numbers even when they think they're taking measures to prevent falling for such scams. One of the more common pieces of security advice is to carefully scrutinize the address bar of a browser to ensure it's pointing to an organization's official website. The ongoing scam is able to bypass such checks.

The unknown actors behind the scam begin by buying Google ads that appear at the top of search results for Microsoft, Apple, HP, PayPal, Netflix, and other sites. While Google displays only the scheme and host name of the site the ad links to (for instance, https://www.microsoft.com/ the ad appends parameters to the path to the right of that address. When a target clicks on the ad, it opens a page on the official site. The appended parameters then inject fake phone numbers into the page the target sees.

Google requires ads to display the official domain they link to, but the company allows parameters to be added to the right of it that aren't visible. The scammers are taking advantage of this by adding strings to the right of the hostname. The parameters aren't displayed in the Google ad, so a target has no obvious reason to suspect anything is amiss. When clicked on, the ad leads to the correct hostname. The appended parameters, however, inject a fake phone number into the webpage the target sees. The technique works on most browsers and against most websites. Malwarebytes.com was among the sites affected until recently, when the site began filtering out the malicious parameters.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/2317216/scammers-use-google-ads-to-inject-phony-help-lines-on-apple-microsoft-sites?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The U.S. Army Reserve has directly commissioned four top Silicon Valley executives as lieutenant colonels under a new initiative, Detachment 201, aimed at accelerating tech integration into military operations. While these part-time roles are intended to bring private-sector innovation to defense modernization, the move is pretty unusual. Gizmodo reports: The Army said in a press release that the four executives are Shyam Sankar, CTO at Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, CTO at Meta; Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former Chief Research Officer for OpenAI. The four men are being commissioned at the high rank of lieutenant colonel as part of a program called Detachment 201: The Army's Executive Innovation Corps. As Task & Purpose notes, the men will get to skip the usual process of taking a Direct Commissioning Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, and they won't need to complete the Army Fitness Test.

The Army didn't respond to questions emailed Tuesday but said in a statement published on its website that, "Their swearing-in is just the start of a bigger mission to inspire more tech pros to serve without leaving their careers, showing the next generation how to make a difference in uniform." Their role in the Army Reserve is to "work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems," as the Army puts it. The new reservists will serve for about 120 hours a year, according to the Wall Street Journal, and will have a lot of flexibility to work remotely. They'll work on helping the Army acquire more commercial tech, though it's not clear how conflict-of-interest issues will be enforced, given the fact that the people all work for companies that would conceivably be selling their wares to the military. In theory, they won't be sharing information with their companies or "participating in projects that could provide them or their companies with financial gain," according to the Journal.

Silicon Valley has always benefited greatly from ties to the U.S. military. Silicon Valley companies were bringing in $5 billion annually from defense contracts during the Reagan administration, something that the average person may not remember about the 1980s. But it's always been an uneasy alliance for consumer-facing tech companies, especially over recent decades. That's all changing, according to many folks who align more with President Donald Trump, who was once considered a shameful person to represent in polite company. As Andrew Bosworth, the CTO at Meta, who is joining the Army Reserves, told the Wall Street Journal, "There's a lot of patriotism that has been under the covers that I think is coming to light in the Valley."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/0046242/silicon-valley-execs-join-the-army-as-officers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Доступен выпуск ONLYOFFICE DocumentServer 9.0 с реализацией сервера для online-редакторов ONLYOFFICE и организации совместной работы. Редакторы можно использовать для работы с текстовыми документами, таблицами и презентациями. Для совместной работы на своих мощностях также можно использовать платформу Nextcloud Hub, в которой обеспечена полная интеграция с ONLYOFFICE. Готовые сборки сформированы для Linux, Windows и macOS. Код проекта написан на JavaScript с использованием web-технологий и распространяется под свободной лицензией AGPLv3.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63429

15 июня состоялся выпуск 4.0.7 многопоточной консольной утилиты поиска файлов [ bfs ]( https://github.com/tavianator/bfs ) ( [ Breadth-First Search, поиск в ширину ]( https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Поиск_в_ширину ) ), написанной на языке C и распространяемой по лицензии BSD.

Изменения:

• Для выбора количества используемых потоков теперь используется CPU affinity (sched_getaffinity(...) или xsysconf(_SC_NPROCESSORS_ONLN)).

• -execdir /bin/... теперь разрешён даже при относительном пути в $PATH.

• Тесты больше не зависят от утилиты expect.

• Для соответствия GNU find теперь только последний аргумент -files0-from имеет эффект.

• Исправлена ошибка -execdir {}, случайно добавленная в bfs 4.0.

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18004077

Компания Cisco опубликовала новые выпуски свободного антивирусного пакета ClamAV 1.4.3 и 1.0.98, в которых устранены уязвимости, одна из которых может привести к выполнению кода атакующего при проверке специально оформленного содержимого.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63430

Valve has quietly updated the Steam Beta Client to enable Proton by default for all Windows games on Linux, eliminating the need for users to toggle compatibility settings manually. GamingOnLinux reports: For some context here: originally, Proton had an option to enable / disable it globally. That was removed with the Game Recording update last year. That made sense, because people kept somehow turning it entirely off and now it's required by Steam. Currently, there's still an option in the stable Steam Client that you need to manually check to enable Steam Play (Proton) for "all other titles". This is something of a leftover from when Proton was initially revealed, and only worked for a specific set of games on Valve's whitelist. It now covers what Valve set by default for Steam Deck and SteamOS verification.

What's changed is that at some point in the recent Steam Beta releases, is that "for all other titles" option is gone. I've scrolled back through changelogs and not seen it mentioned. So now, Proton is just enabled properly in full by default in the Steam Beta like shown in the [image here]. This is a good (and needed) change that I'm happy to see. There's often confusion when people try to run Windows games on Linux and end up with no install button because Proton isn't turned on for all titles. [This] will soon be a thing of the past. To be clear, this is not setting Proton on every game by default, it does not override Native Linux games. It's just making Proton available by default.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/0053207/steam-beta-enables-proton-on-linux-for-all-titles?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

В библиотеке Libxml2, разрабатываемой проектом GNOME и применяемой для разбора содержимого в формате XML, выявлено 5 уязвимостей, две из которых потенциально могут привести к выполнению кода при обработке специально оформленных внешних данных. Библиотека Libxml2 широко распространена в открытых проектах и, например, используется как зависимость в более чем 800 пакетах из состава Ubuntu.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63431

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Foreign students will be required to unlock their social media profiles to allow US diplomats to review their online activity before receiving educational and exchange visas, the state department has announced. Those who fail to do so will be suspected of hiding that activity from US officials. The new guidance, unveiled by the state department on Wednesday, directs US diplomats to conduct an online presence review to look for "any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States."

A cable separately obtained by Politico also instructs diplomats to flag any "advocacy for, aid or support for foreign terrorists and other threats to US national security" and "support for unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence." The screening for "antisemitic" activity matches similar guidance given at US Citizenship and Immigration Services under the Department of Homeland Security and has been criticized as an effort to crack down on opposition to the conduct of Israel's war in Gaza.

The new state department checks are directed at students and other applicants for visas in the F, M and J categories, which refer to academic and vocational education, as well as cultural exchanges. "It is an expectation from American citizens that their government will make every effort to make our country safer, and that is exactly what the Trump administration is doing every single day," said a senior state department official, adding that Marco Rubio was "helping to make America and its universities safer while bringing the state Department into the 21st century."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/2323209/new-us-visa-rules-will-force-foreign-students-to-unlock-social-media-profiles?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Некоммерческая организация Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) представила открытый игровой 3D-движок Open 3D Engine 25.05 (O3DE), пригодный для разработки современных игр класса AAA и высокоточных симуляторов, способных работать в режиме реального времени и обеспечивать качество кинематографического уровня. Код написан на С++ и опубликован под лицензией Apache 2.0. Имеется поддержка платформ Linux, Windows, macOS, iOS и Android.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63432

ChatGPT-assisted writing dampened brain activity and recall in a controlled MIT study [PDF] of 54 college volunteers divided into AI-only, search-engine, and no-tool groups. Electroencephalography recorded during three essay-writing sessions found the AI group consistently showed the weakest neural connectivity across all measured frequency bands; the tool-free group showed the strongest, with search users in between.

In the first session 83% of ChatGPT users could not quote any line they had just written and none produced a correct quote. Only nine of the 18 claimed full authorship of their work, compared with 16 of 18 in the brain-only cohort. Neural coupling in the AI group declined further over repeated use. When these participants were later asked to write without assistance, frontal-parietal networks remained subdued and 78% again failed to recall a single sentence accurately.

The pattern reversed for students who first wrote unaided: introducing ChatGPT in a crossover session produced the highest connectivity sums in alpha, theta, beta and delta bands, indicating intense integration of AI suggestions with prior knowledge. The MIT authors warn that habitual reliance on large language models "accumulates cognitive debt," trading immediate fluency for weaker memory, reduced self-monitoring, and narrowed neural engagement.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/089201/mit-experiment-finds-chatgpt-assisted-writing-weakens-student-brain-connectivity-and-memory?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

93 Escort Wagon writes: More proof that Amazon's leadership views the balance of power between itself and its workforce tilting decisively in its favor: Amazon's employees are being told they must relocate to one of the company's large hubs -- with the company specifying the required location -- or resign with no severance. CEO Andy Jassy did have the grace to give people 30 days to decide.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/0535202/amazon-orders-employees-to-relocate-to-seattle-and-other-hubs?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Iranian state television has instructed residents to delete WhatsApp from their smartphones, claiming the messaging platform gathers user information to share with Israel.

The local media provided no evidence supporting these allegations but additionally encouraged residents to avoid other "location-based" apps. WhatsApp has disputed the claims, with a spokesperson telling Time magazine the Meta-owned platform uses end-to-end encryption and does not track precise locations, keep messaging logs, or provide bulk information to governments.

The episode comes at a time when Iran is simultaneously experiencing a "near-total national Internet blackout," according to NetBlock, an internet governance monitoring organization. The disruption follows earlier partial outages amid escalating military tensions with Israel after days of missile strikes between the countries.

Further reading, from earlier this week: Iran Bans Officials From Using Internet-Connected Devices.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/0711241/iran-tells-citizens-to-delete-whatsapp?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face and founder of Google's responsible AI team, has dismissed artificial general intelligence as "just vibes and snake oil." Mitchell, who was ousted from Google in 2021, has co-written a paper arguing that AGI should not serve as a guiding principle for the AI industry.

Mitchell contends that both "intelligence" and "general" lack clear definitions in AI contexts, creating what she calls an "illusion of consensus" that allows technologists to pursue any development path under the guise of progress toward AGI. "But as for now, it's just like vibes, vibes and snake oil, which can get you so far. The placebo effect works relatively well," she told FT in an interview. She warns that current AI advancement is creating a "massive rift" between those profiting from the technology and workers losing income as their creative output gets incorporated into AI training data.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/0510206/ai-ethics-pioneer-calls-artificial-general-intelligence-just-vibes-and-snake-oil?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Apple software chief Craig Federighi has ruled out bringing macOS to the iPad, amusingly using a kitchen utensil analogy to explain the company's design philosophy. "We don't want to create a boat car or, you know, a spork," Federighi said in an interview. "Someone said, 'If a spoon's great, a fork's great, then let's combine them into a single utensil, right?' It turns out it's not a good spoon and it's not a good fork. It's a bad idea. And so we don't want to build sporks."

The new version of iPadOS, which will ship to consumers later this year, features dynamically resizable windows that users can drag by their corners and a menu bar that is accessible through swipe gestures or cursor movement.

Some observers might consider the iPad Pro itself a "convertible" product that blurs the line between tablet and laptop, he said. However, the Mac and iPad serve distinct purposes, he asserted. "The Mac lets the iPad be iPad," he said adding that Apple's objective "has not been to have iPad completely displace those places where the Mac is the right tool for the job." Rather than full convergence, Federighi said the iPad "can be inspired by elements of the Mac" while remaining a separate platform. "I think the Mac can be inspired by elements of iPad, and I think that that's happened a great deal."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/084215/apple-software-chief-rejects-macos-on-ipad?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Simon Willison, commenting on the recent paper from Apple researchers that found state-of-the-art large language models face complete performance collapse beyond certain complexity thresholds: I thought this paper got way more attention than it warranted -- the title "The Illusion of Thinking" captured the attention of the "LLMs are over-hyped junk" crowd. I saw enough well-reasoned rebuttals that I didn't feel it worth digging into.

And now, notable LLM skeptic Gary Marcus has saved me some time by aggregating the best of those rebuttals together in one place!

[...] And therein lies my disagreement. I'm not interested in whether or not LLMs are the "road to AGI". I continue to care only about whether they have useful applications today, once you've understood their limitations.

Reasoning LLMs are a relatively new and interesting twist on the genre. They are demonstrably able to solve a whole bunch of problems that previous LLMs were unable to handle, hence why we've seen a rush of new models from OpenAI and Anthropic and Gemini and DeepSeek and Qwen and Mistral.

They get even more interesting when you combine them with tools.

They're already useful to me today, whether or not they can reliably solve the Tower of Hanoi or River Crossing puzzles.

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Google is using its expansive library of YouTube videos to train its AI models, including Gemini and the Veo 3 video and audio generator, CNBC reported Thursday. From the report: The tech company is turning to its catalog of 20 billion YouTube videos to train these new-age AI tools, according to a person who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. Google confirmed to CNBC that it relies on its vault of YouTube videos to train its AI models, but the company said it only uses a subset of its videos for the training and that it honors specific agreements with creators and media companies.

[...] YouTube didn't say how many of the 20 billion videos on its platform or which ones are used for AI training. But given the platform's scale, training on just 1% of the catalog would amount to 2.3 billion minutes of content, which experts say is more than 40 times the training data used by competing AI models.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/1613206/google-is-using-youtube-videos-to-train-its-ai-video-generator?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Hackers have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from cryptocurrency holders and disrupted major retailers by targeting outsourced call centers used by American corporations to reduce costs, WSJ reported Thursday. The attackers exploit low-paid call center workers through bribes and social engineering to bypass two-factor authentication systems protecting bank accounts and online portals.

Coinbase faces potential losses of $400 million after hackers compromised data belonging to 97,000 customers by bribing call center workers in India with payments of $2,500. The criminals also used malicious tools that exploited vulnerabilities in Chrome browser extensions to collect customer data in bulk.

TaskUs, which handled Coinbase support calls, shut down operations at its Indore, India facility and laid off 226 workers. Retail attacks targeted Marks & Spencer and Harrods with hackers impersonating corporate executives to pressure tech support workers into providing network access. The same technique compromised MGM Resorts systems in 2023. Call center employees typically possess sensitive customer information including account balances and recent transactions that criminals use to masquerade as legitimate company representatives.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/1619248/hackers-are-turning-tech-support-into-a-threat?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cybernews: Several collections of login credentials reveal one of the largest data breaches in history, totaling a humongous 16 billion exposed login credentials. The data most likely originates from various infostealers. Unnecessarily compiling sensitive information can be as damaging as actively trying to steal it. For example, the Cybernews research team discovered a plethora of supermassive datasets, housing billions upon billions of login credentials. From social media and corporate platforms to VPNs and developer portals, no stone was left unturned.

Our team has been closely monitoring the web since the beginning of the year. So far, they've discovered 30 exposed datasets containing from tens of millions to over 3.5 billion records each. In total, the researchers uncovered an unimaginable 16 billion records. None of the exposed datasets were reported previously, bar one: in late May, Wired magazine reported a security researcher discovering a "mysterious database" with 184 million records. It barely scratches the top 20 of what the team discovered. Most worryingly, researchers claim new massive datasets emerge every few weeks, signaling how prevalent infostealer malware truly is.

"This is not just a leak -- it's a blueprint for mass exploitation. With over 16 billion login records exposed, cybercriminals now have unprecedented access to personal credentials that can be used for account takeover, identity theft, and highly targeted phishing. What's especially concerning is the structure and recency of these datasets -- these aren't just old breaches being recycled. This is fresh, weaponizable intelligence at scale," researchers said. The only silver lining here is that all of the datasets were exposed only briefly: long enough for researchers to uncover them, but not long enough to find who was controlling vast amounts of data. Most of the datasets were temporarily accessible through unsecured Elasticsearch or object storage instances. Key details to be aware of:
- The records include billions of login credentials, often structured as URL, login, and password.
- The datasets include both old and recent breaches, many with cookies, tokens, and metadata, making them especially dangerous for organizations without multi-factor authentication or strong credential practices.
- Exposed services span major platforms like Apple, Google, Facebook, Telegram, GitHub, and even government services.
- The largest dataset alone includes 3.5 billion records, while one associated with the Russian Federation has over 455 million; many dataset names suggest links to malware or specific regions.
- Ownership of the leaked data is unclear, but its potential for phishing, identity theft, and ransomware is severe -- especially since even a
- Basic cyber hygiene -- such as regularly updating strong passwords and scanning for malware -- is currently the best line of defense for users.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/2028246/the-16-billion-record-data-breach-that-no-ones-ever-heard-of?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

SpaceX's Starship exploded on its test stand in South Texas ahead of an engine test, marking the fourth loss of a Starship this year. "In three previous test flights, the vehicle came apart or detonated during its flight," notes the Washington Post. No injuries were reported but the incident highlights ongoing technical challenges as SpaceX races to prove Starship's readiness for deep-space travel. From the report: In a post on the social media site X, SpaceX said that the explosion on the test stand, which could be seen for miles, happened at about 11 p.m. Central time. For safety reasons, the company had cleared personnel from around the site, and "all personnel are safe and accounted for," it said. The company is "actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials," the post continued. "There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue."

Starship comprises two stages -- the Super Heavy booster, which has 33 engines, and the Starship spacecraft itself, which has six. Before Wednesday's explosion, the spacecraft was standing alone on the test stand, and not mounted on top of the booster, when it blew up. The engines are test-fired on the Starship before it's mounted on the booster. SpaceX had been hoping to launch within the coming weeks had the engine test been successful. [...] In a post on X, Musk said that preliminary data pointed to a pressure vessel that failed at the top of the rocket. You can watch a recording of the explosion on YouTube.

SpaceX called the incident a "rapid unscheduled disassembly," which caught the attention of Slashdot reader hambone142. In a story submitted to the Firehose, they commented: "I worked for a major computer company whose power supplies caught on fire. We were instructed to cease saying that and instead say the power supply underwent a 'thermal event.' Gotta love it."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/2034234/spacex-starship-explodes-on-test-stand?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Starting mid-July 2025, Microsoft 365 will begin blocking legacy authentication protocols like Remote PowerShell and FrontPage RPC to enhance security under its "Secure by Default" initiative. Admins must now grant explicit consent for third-party app access, which could disrupt workflows but aims to reduce unauthorized data exposure. The Register reports: First in line for the chop is legacy browser authentication to SharePoint and OneDrive using the Remote PowerShell (RPS) protocol. According to Microsoft, legacy authentication protocols like RPS "are vulnerable to brute-force and phishing attacks due to non-modern authentication." The upshot is that attempting to access OneDrive or SharePoint via a browser using legacy authentication will stop working.

Also being blocked is the FrontPage Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol. Microsoft FrontPage was a web authoring tool that was discontinued almost two decades ago. However, the protocol for remote web authoring has lived on until now. Describing legacy protocols like RPC as "more susceptible to compromise," Microsoft will block them to prevent their use in Microsoft 365 clients.

Finally, third-party apps will need administrator consent to access files and sites. Microsoft said: "Users allowing third-party apps to access file and site content can lead to overexposure of an organization's content. Requiring admins to consent to this access can help reduce overexposure." "While laudable, shifting consent to the administrator could disrupt some workflows," writes The Register's Richard Speed. "The Microsoft-managed App Consent Policies will be enabled, and users will be unable to consent to third-party applications accessing their files and sites by default. Need consent? A user will need to request an administrator to consent on their behalf."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/2046206/microsoft-365-brings-the-shutters-down-on-legacy-protocols?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.