На первый 1 квартал 2025 года намечено поступление в продажу игровой консоли OrangePi Neo, совместно развиваемой компанией Orange Pi и сообществом разработчиков дистрибутива Manjaro Linux. Устройство снабжено 7-дюймовым экраном (1920 x 1200, 120Hz), CPU AMD Ryzen 7 7840U или 8840U, 16ГБ или 32ГБ ОЗУ, от 512ГБ до 2ТБ NVMe SSD, двумя портами USB 4.0, звуковым портом 3.5мм, слотом для TF-карт, тачпадом, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, 2-ватными динамиками, джойстиком Hall Rocker и RGB-подсветкой. Размер 259мм*107мм*19.9мм.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62528

The Japanese government published an alert on Wednesday accusing a Chinese hacking group of targeting and breaching dozens of government organizations, companies, and individuals in the country since 2019. From a report: Japan's National Police Agency and the National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity attributed the years-long hacking spree to a group called MirrorFace.

"The MirrorFace attack campaign is an organized cyber attack suspected to be linked to China, with the primary objective of stealing information related to Japan's national security and advanced technology," the authorities wrote in the alert, according to a machine translation. A longer version of the alert said the targets included Japan's Foreign and Defense ministries, the country's space agency, as well as politicians, journalists, private companies and tech think tanks, according to the Associated Press. In July 2024 Japan's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) wrote in a blog post that MirrorFace's "targets were initially media, political organisations, think tanks and universities, but it has shifted to manufacturers and research institutions since 2023."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/1646213/japan-says-chinese-hackers-targeted-its-government-and-tech-companies-for-years?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft will begin enforcing storage limits on unlicensed OneDrive accounts from January 27, 2025, ending a loophole that allowed organizations to retain departed employees' data without cost.

Data from accounts unlicensed for over 93 days will move to recycle bins for another 93 days before permanent deletion, unless under retention policies. Archived data retrieval will cost $0.60 per gigabyte plus $0.05 monthly per gigabyte. Organizations must either retrieve data, add licenses, or risk losing access, Microsoft has warned.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/181251/microsoft-kills-free-onedrive-storage-loophole?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As music sales and streaming revenue reaches a high of $3 billion -- the highest since 2001, not accounting for significant inflation -- the UK video game market, which has grown almost continually for decades, has shrunk by 4.4%. The most significant decline was in boxed video game sales, down 35%.

Data from Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA) puts the total worth of the UK video game market in 2024 at $5.7 billion, double the music market and behind TV and movies at $6.2 billion. The numbers show a shift in players' purchasing habits that has been ongoing for years, from physical games to digital downloads and in-game purchases in popular, established games such as Fortnite and Roblox. Boxed games now account for 27.7% of new game sales in the UK, according to ERA data.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/1642242/boxed-video-game-sales-collapse-in-uk-as-digital-revenues-flatten?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It looks like Samsung is finally ready to roll out a paid subscription for its AI-powered smartphones, but it might not look like what we were expecting.

According to ETNews, Samsung Electronics vice chair Han Jong-hee has confirmed that the company's AI Subscription Club, which launched last December for some of Samsung's home appliances in South Korea, will soon roll out to both Galaxy phones and the upcoming Ballie AI robot.

"We will apply the subscription service to Galaxy smartphones starting next month," he says. "Ballie will be introduced first in Korea and the US, and we plan to supply it as a subscription in Korea."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/1524249/samsung-is-rolling-out-a-smartphone-subscription-next-month?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Indonesia will continue to block iPhone 16 sales despite Apple's planned $1 billion AirTag factory investment, as the facility does not meet local content requirements for smartphones, Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita said on Wednesday. Indonesia banned iPhone 16 sales last year after Apple failed to meet rules requiring 35% locally-made components in smartphones sold domestically.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/1829223/apples-1-billion-indonesia-investment-fails-to-unlock-iphone-16-sales-ban?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T, following last year's embarrassing botched update that kicked every device off its wireless network and blocked over 92 million phone calls, is now promising full-day bill credits to mobile customers for future outages that last at least 60 minutes and meet certain other criteria. A similar promise is being made to fiber customers for unplanned outages lasting at least 20 minutes, but only if the customer uses an AT&T-provided gateway. The "AT&T Guarantee" announced today has caveats that can make it possible for a disruption to not be covered. AT&T says the promised mobile bill credits are "for wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers."

The full-day bill credits do not include a prorated amount for the taxes and fees imposed on a monthly bill. The "bill credit will be calculated using the daily rate customer is charged for wireless service only (excludes taxes, fees, device payments, and any add-on services," AT&T said. If an outage lasts more than 24 hours, a customer will receive another full-day bill credit for each additional day. If only nine or fewer AT&T towers aren't functioning, a customer won't get a credit even if they lose service for an hour. The guarantee kicks in when a "minimum 10 towers [are] out for 60 or more minutes resulting from a single incident," and the customer "was connected to an impacted tower at the time the outage occurs," and "loses service for at least 60 consecutive minutes as a result of the outage."

The guarantee "excludes events beyond the control of AT&T, including but not limited to, natural disasters, weather-related events, or outages caused by third parties." AT&T says it will determine "in its sole discretion" whether the disruption is "a qualifying" network outage. "Consumers will automatically receive a bill credit equaling a full day of service and we'll reach out to our small business customers with options to help make it right," AT&T said. When there's an outage, AT&T said it will "notify you via e-mail or SMS to inform you that you've been impacted. Once the interruption has been resolved, we'll contact you with details about your bill credit." If AT&T fails to provide the promised credit for any reason, customers will have to call AT&T or visit an AT&T store.

To qualify for the similar fiber-outage promise, "customers must use AT&T-provided gateways," the firm said. There are other caveats that can prevent a home Internet customer from getting a bill credit. AT&T said the fiber-outage promise "excludes events beyond the control of AT&T, including but not limited to, natural disasters, weather-related events, loss of service due to downed or cut cable wires at a customer residence, issues with wiring inside customer residence, and power outages at customer premises. Also excludes outages resulting from planned maintenance." AT&T notes that some residential fiber customers in multi-dwelling units "have an account with AT&T but are not billed by AT&T for Internet service." In the case of outages, these customers would not get bill credits but would be given the option to redeem a reward card that's valued at $5 or more.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/2028245/att-promises-bill-credits-for-future-outages?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Register's Connor Jones reports: Marc Rogers, DEF CON's head of security, faces tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills following an accident that left him with a broken neck and temporary quadriplegia. The prominent industry figure, whose work has spanned roles at tech companies such as Vodafone and Okta, including ensuring the story lines on Mr Robot and The Real Hustle were factually sound, is recovering in hospital. [...] Rogers said it will be around four to six weeks before he returns to basic independence and is able to travel, but a full recovery will take up to six months. He begins a course of physical therapy today, but his insurance will only cover the first of three required weeks, prompting friends to set up a fundraiser to cover the difference.

Rogers has an impressive cyber CV. Beginning life in cybersecurity back in the '80s when he went by the handle Cjunky, he has gone on to assume various high profile roles in the industry. In addition to the decade leading Vodafone UK's cybersecurity and being the VP of cybersecurity strategy at Okta, as already mentioned, Rogers has also worked as head of security at Cloudflare and founded Vectra, among other experiences. Now he heads up security at DEF CON, is a member of the Ransomware Taskforce, and is the co-founder and CTO at AI observability startup nbhd.ai.

If you hadn't heard of him from any of these roles, or from his work in the entertainment biz, he's also known for his famous research into Apple's Touch ID sensor, which he was able to compromise on both the iPhone 5S and 6 during his time as principal researcher at Lookout. Other consumer-grade kit to get the Rogers treatment include the short-lived Google Glass devices, also while he was at Lookout, and the Tesla Model S back in 2015. "It's a sad fact that in the US GoFundMe has become the de facto standard for covering insurance shortfalls," Rogers said. "I will be forever grateful to my friends who stood it up for me and those who donated to it so that I can resume making bad guys cry as soon as feasibly possible."

The cybersecurity community has rallied together to support Rogers' fundraiser, which has accrued over $83,000 in donations. The goal is $100,000.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/2037204/def-cons-hacker-in-chief-faces-fortune-in-medical-bills?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Telegram's Transparency Report reveals a sharp increase in U.S. government data requests, with 900 fulfilled requests affecting 2,253 users. "The news shows a massive spike in the number of data requests fulfilled by Telegram after French authorities arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in August, in part because of the company's unwillingness to provide user data in a child abuse investigation," notes 404 Media. From the report: Between January 1 and September 30, 2024, Telegram fulfilled 14 requests "for IP addresses and/or phone numbers" from the United States, which affected a total of 108 users, according to Telegram's Transparency Reports bot. But for the entire year of 2024, it fulfilled 900 requests from the U.S. affecting a total of 2,253 users, meaning that the number of fulfilled requests skyrocketed between October and December, according to the newly released data. "Fulfilled requests from the United States of America for IP address and/or phone number: 900," Telegram's Transparency Reports bot said when prompted for the latest report by 404 Media. "Affected users: 2253," it added.

A month after Durov's arrest in August, Telegram updated its privacy policy to say that the company will provide user data, including IP addresses and phone numbers, to law enforcement agencies in response to valid legal orders. Up until then, the privacy policy only mentioned it would do so when concerning terror cases, and said that such a disclosure had never happened anyway. Even though the data technically covers the entire of 2024, the jump from a total of 108 affected users in October to 2253 as of now, indicates that the vast majority of fulfilled data requests were in the last quarter of 2024, showing a huge increase in the number of law enforcement requests that Telegram completed. You can access the platform's transparency reports here.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/223207/telegram-hands-us-authorities-data-on-thousands-of-users?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa has said Meta's decision to end factchecking on its platforms and remove restrictions on certain topics means "extremely dangerous times" lie ahead for journalism, democracy and social media users. The American-Filipino journalist said Mark Zuckerberg's move to relax content moderation on the Facebook and Instagram platforms would lead to a "world without facts" and that was "a world that's right for a dictator."

"Mark Zuckerberg says it's a free speech issue -- that's completely wrong," Ressa told the AFP news service. "Only if you're profit-driven can you claim that; only if you want power and money can you claim that. This is about safety." Ressa, a co-founder of the Rappler news site, won the Nobel peace prize in 2021 in recognition of her "courageous fight for freedom of expression." She faced multiple criminal charges and investigations after publishing stories critical of the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Ressa rejected Zuckerberg's claim that factcheckers had been "too politically biased" and had "destroyed more trust than they've created."

"Journalists have a set of standards and ethics," Ressa said. "What Facebook is going to do is get rid of that and then allow lies, anger, fear and hate to infect every single person on the platform." The decision meant "extremely dangerous times ahead" for journalism, democracy and social media users, she said. [...] Ressa said she would do everything she could to "ensure information integrity." "This is a pivotal year for journalism survival," she said. "We'll do all we can to make sure that happens."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/2217252/meta-is-ushering-in-a-world-without-facts-says-nobel-peace-prize-winner?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

BleepingComputer's Sergiu Gatlan reports: "Today, the White House announced the launch of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, a new cybersecurity safety label for internet-connected consumer devices. The Cyber Trust Mark label, which will appear on smart products sold in the United States later this year, will help American consumers determine whether the devices they want to buy are safe to install in their homes. It's designed for consumer smart devices, such as home security cameras, TVs, internet-connected appliances, fitness trackers, climate control systems, and baby monitors, and it signals that the internet-connected device comes with a set of security features approved by NIST.

Vendors will label their products with the Cyber Trust Mark logo if they meet the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity criteria. These criteria include using unique and strong default passwords, software updates, data protection, and incident detection capabilities. Consumers can scan the QR code included next to the Cyber Trust Mark labels for additional security information, such as instructions on changing the default password, steps for securely configuring the device, details on automatic updates (including how to access them if they are not automatic), the product's minimum support period, and a notification if the manufacturer does not offer updates for the device. "Americans are worried about the rise of criminals remotely hacking into home security systems to unlock doors, or malicious attackers tapping into insecure home cameras to illicitly record conversations," the Biden administration said on Tuesday.

"The White House launched this bipartisan effort to educate American consumers and give them an easy way to assess the cybersecurity of such products, as well as incentivize companies to produce more cybersecure devise [sic], much as EnergyStar labels did for energy efficiency.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/2225255/white-house-launches-cyber-trust-safety-label-for-smart-devices?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

TikTok has been pushing the platform's sister app, Lemon8, encouraging users to migrate via sponsored posts amid a looming ban. Axios reports: In the last few weeks, Lemon8 has been promoting its app to TikTok users through sponsored TikTok videos. In one sponsored post, TikTok user @miller.dailylife shares a video with a creator saying, "TikTok actually has another backup app. It's called Lemon8 ... and it automatically signs you in with your TikTok so you can still keep the same TikTok name and things like that. And it's supposed to transfer your followers over. ... Once you add Lemon8, it automatically pops up on your TikTok bio, so that people can just click on it. So, just so you guys know, now that they're trying to do this ban, if you want to have somewhere else to go where the government is not 100% controlling what we see, what we consume ... Just go ahead and go on to Lemon8."

In November, TikTok began informing users of its sister app, Lemon8, that beginning late that month Lemon8 would be powered by TikTok, and their TikTok usernames would also be used on Lemon8. "Some of your data on TikTok will be used to power services on lemon8," the notice says. "Your Lemon8 profile link will be shown to your TikTok profile publicly by default," it continues. "You can choose not to show it by editing your TikTok profile." Last March, Lemon8 jumped into the U.S. App Store's Top 10 list shortly after it launched in the U.S. It currently ranks as one of the top-ranking free apps on Apple's app store.

The report notes that the TikTok ban law also applies to other apps owned by TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance, like Lemon8. "ByteDance could be betting that regulators and app store companies are so focused on TikTok that they won't pay attention to its other apps," says Axios.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/2240212/tiktok-pushes-users-to-lemon8-as-ban-looms?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft temporarily rolled back its Bing Image Creator upgrade from OpenAI's DALL-E 3 PR16 to the previous PR13 version after users reported degraded image quality, including cartoonish and "lifeless" results. TechCrunch reports: Ahead of the holidays, Microsoft said it was upgrading the AI model behind Bing Image Creator, the AI-powered image editing tool built into the company's Bing search engine. Microsoft promised that the new model -- the latest version of OpenAI's DALL-E 3 model, code-named PR16 -- would allow users to create images "twice as fast as before" with "higher quality." But it didn't deliver. Complaints quickly flooded X and Reddit.

"The DALL-E we used to love is gone forever," said one Redditor. "I'm using ChatGPT now because Bing has become useless for me," wrote another. The blowback was such that Microsoft said it'll restore the previous model to Bing Image Creator until it can address the issues. "We've been able to [reproduce] some of the issues reported, and plan to revert to [DALL-E 3] PR13 until we can fix them," Jordi Ribas, head of search at Microsoft, said in a post on X Tuesday evening. "The deployment process is very slow unfortunately. It started over a week ago and will take 2-3 more weeks to get to 100%."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/2252248/microsoft-rolls-back-its-bing-image-creator-model-after-users-complain-of-degraded-quality?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: San Francisco startup Based Hardware announced during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week the launch of a new AI wearable, Omi, to boost productivity. The device can be worn as a necklace where Omi's AI assistant can be activated by saying "Hey Omi." The startup also claims Omi can be attached to the side of your head, using medical tape, using a "brain interface" to understand when you're talking to it. The startup's founder, Nik Shevchenko, started marketing this device on Kickstarter as "Friend," but changed the device's name after another San Francisco hardware maker launched his own Friend device and bought the domain name for $1.8 million.

Shevchenko, a Thiel fellow with a history of eye-grabbing stunts, is taking a slightly different approach with Omi. Instead of seeing the device as a smartphone replacement or an AI companion, he wants Omi to be a complementary device to your phone that boosts your productivity. The Omi device itself is a small, round orb that looks like it fell out of a pack of Mentos. The consumer version costs $89 and will start shipping in Q2 of 2025. However, you can order a developer version for delivery today for roughly $70. Based Hardware says the Omi device can answer your questions, summarize your conversations, create to-do lists, and help schedule meetings. The device is constantly listening and running your conversations through GPT-4o, and it also can remember the context about each user to offer personalized advice.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Shevchenko says he understands that there may be privacy concerns with a device that's always listening. That's why he built Omi on an open source platform where users can see where their data is going, or choose to store it locally. Omi's open source platform also allows developers to build their own applications or use the AI model of their choice. Shevchenko says developers have already created more than 250 apps on Omi's app store. [...] It's unclear if the "brain interface" of Omi actually works, but the startup is tackling a fairly simple use case to start. Shevchenko wants his device to understand whether a user is talking to Omi or not, without using one of its wake words.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/2310255/omi-wants-to-boost-your-productivity-using-ai-and-a-brain-interface?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

6 января состоялся выпуск 1.7.4 высокопроизводительной системы автоматического распознавания речи [ whisper.cpp ]( https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp ) , реализующей модель [ Whisper ]( https://github.com/openai/whisper ) от OpenAI, написанной на языках C и C++ и распространяемой по лицензии MIT.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/17842554#cut ) )

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains just north of Los Angeles, has been temporarily shuttered due to the nearby Eaton fire. "JPL is closed except for emergency personnel. No fire damage so far (some wind damage) but it is very close to the lab. Hundreds of JPLers have been evacuated from their homes & many have lost homes. Special thx to our emergency crews. Pls keep us in your thoughts & stay safe," JPL Director Laurie Leshin announced via X today (Jan. 8). Space.com reports: JPL is federally funded but managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The center runs many of NASA's high-profile robotic missions, such as the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers and the $5 billion Europa Clipper, which recently launched to explore an intriguing ocean moon of Jupiter.

The Eaton fire sparked up on Tuesday evening (Jan. 7) near Altadena, which is just north of Pasadena. It has burned at least 1,000 acres (400 hectares) to date, according to CBS News, which cited the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire). The Eaton fire is one of several big blazes churning through the Los Angeles area, driven and spread by record-setting winds. The biggest and most destructive is the Palisades Fire, which is laying waste to the Pacific Palisades neighborhood on the west side of the city.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/01/08/2315213/nasas-jet-propulsion-lab-closed-due-to-raging-la-fires?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Раскрыты сведения об уязвимости (CVE-2024-5594) в пакете для создания виртуальных частных сетей OpenVPN, которая может привести к подстановке произвольных данных в сторонние исполняемые файлы или плагины в системе на другой стороне соединения. Уязвимость вызвана отсутствием проверки наличия нулевых байтов и некорректных символов при обработке управляющих сообщений, таких как PUSH_REPLY.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62530

Представлен выпуск свободного пакета для верстки документов Scribus 1.6.3. Пакет предоставляет средства для профессиональной верстки печатных материалов, включает инструменты для генерации PDF и поддерживает работу с раздельными цветовыми профилями, CMYK, плашечными цветами и ICC. Программа написана с использованием тулкита Qt и поставляется под лицензией GPLv2+. Готовые бинарные сборки подготовлены для Linux (AppImage), macOS и Windows.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62531

После восьми месяцев разработки состоялся выпуск 0.38 консольной утилиты [ nwipe ]( https://github.com/martijnvanbrummelen/nwipe ) , предназначенной для надёжного стирания содержимого дисков с использованием многих методов стирания и генераторов псевдослучайных чисел. Она может стирать как один диск, так и несколько одновременно.
Утилита написана на языке C с использованием библиотеки ncurses для текстового интерфейса и распространяется по лицензии GNU GPL 2.0.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/17843271#cut ) )

Delta Air Lines has partnered with YouTube to provide ad-free YouTube Premium and YouTube Music to SkyMiles members on flights. "The deal includes a selection of curated content from key YouTube creators," notes Variety. The airline also said it would upgrade its fleet with better Wi-Fi and 4K HDR QLED displays, alongside AI-driven enhancements like a personal assistant on the Fly Delta app to improve travel experiences. From the report: Delta executives announced the YouTube deal and other flight-experience enhancements to its Delta Sync platform as the aviation giant gave an expansive presentation Tuesday evening at the Sphere in Las Vegas, in connection with the Consumer Electronics Show. Delta touted plans to mark the company's 100th anniversary this year, noting that it is the first airline to reach the centennial mark.

It's also no surprise that Delta is leaning hard into AI tech. The company hopes its Delta Concierge AI-powered personal assistant feature that is rolling out this year on its Fly Delta app will make strides in improving the overall customer experience. The goal is that with repeated use the Concierge tool will come to anticipate individual consumers' needs and help them streamline the logistics of travel -- or what Delta dubbed "contextualized guidance" on everything from departure gates to baggage claim details to alerting travelers to weather conditions at their destinations. [...]

Mary Ellen Coe, chief business officer of YouTube, emphasized that the ad-free YouTube offering will allow viewers to access streaming content as well as podcasts and music. She also asserted that consumers are increasingly gathering travel tips and inspiration through YouTube creators. "Creators are producing the must-see TV of today," Coe said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/0147249/delta-inks-exclusive-pact-with-youtube-for-in-flight-viewing?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Italy is in advanced talks with Elon Musk's SpaceX for a deal to provide secure telecommunications for the nation's government -- the largest such project in Europe, people with knowledge of the matter said Sunday. Discussions are ongoing, and a final agreement on the five-year contract hasn't been reached, said the people, who asked not to be identified citing confidential discussions. The project has already been approved by Italy's Intelligence Services as well as Italy's Defense Ministry, they said. Italy on Monday confirmed discussions are ongoing, saying no deal had yet been reached. "The talks with SpaceX are part of normal government business," the government said.

The negotiations, which had stalled until recently, appeared to move forward after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited President-elect Donald Trump in Florida on Saturday. The Italian government said the two didn't discuss the issue during their meeting. Italian officials have been negotiating on a $1.6 billion deal aimed at supplying Italy with a full range of top-level encryption for telephone and Internet services used by the government, the people said. The plan also includes communications services for the Italian military in the Mediterranean area as well as the rollout of so-called direct-to-cell satellite services in Italy for use in emergencies like terror attacks or natural disasters, they said. The possible deal has been under review since mid-2023. It's been opposed by some Italian officials concerned about how the services may detract from local carriers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/0158237/italy-plans-16-billion-spacex-telecom-security-deal?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

VLC media player, the popular open-source software developed by nonprofit VideoLAN, has topped 6 billion downloads worldwide and teased an AI-powered subtitle system. From a report: The new feature automatically generates real-time subtitles -- which can then also be translated in many languages -- for any video using open-source AI models that run locally on users' devices, eliminating the need for internet connectivity or cloud services, VideoLAN demoed at CES.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/1310205/vlc-tops-6-billion-downloads-previews-ai-generated-subtitles?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Unprecedented January wildfires in Los Angeles signal an emerging pattern of compound climate disasters, as record-breaking Santa Ana winds up to 100 mph combine with the driest start to a winter season in the city's history.

The Palisades and Eaton fires have each burned over 10,000 acres amid drought conditions that climate scientists say are intensified by global warming. The blazes, occurring weeks earlier than historical fire patterns, come just 16 months after Los Angeles experienced its first tropical storm, illustrating what experts describe as increasingly unpredictable weather extremes driven by climate change.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/1445229/the-los-angeles-wildfires-are-climate-disasters-compounded?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Проект VideoLAN сообщил о преодолении рубежа в шесть миллиардов загрузок видеоплеера VLC, зафиксированных системой сбора статистики, работающей на серверах проекта с февраля 2005 года. Около 4.8 миллиардов загрузок приходится на сборку VLC для платформы Windows, 380 млн - macOS и 6.8 млн на архив с исходными текстами. Опубликованные данные не учитывают загрузку VLC для Linux, так как большинство Linux-пользователей VLC получает данный видеоплеер через штатные репозитории своих дистрибутивов. Наиболее популярной версией VLC является 3.0.16, которая была загружена 416 млн раз (для сравнения последний выпуск 3.0.21 был загружен 373 млн раз, 3.0.20 - 370 млн, 3.0.19 - 51 млн, а выпуск 3.0.0 - 6.8 млн).

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62533

U.S. software giant Ivanti has warned that a zero-day vulnerability in its widely-used enterprise VPN appliance has been exploited to compromise the networks of its corporate customers. From a report: Ivanti said on Wednesday that the critical-rated vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-0282, can be exploited without any authentication to remotely plant malicious code on Ivanti's Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA Gateways products. Ivanti says its Connect Secure remote-access VPN solution is "the most widely adopted SSL VPN by organizations of every size, across every major industry."

This is the latest exploited security vulnerability to target Ivanti's products in recent years. Last year, the technology maker pledged to overhaul its security processes after hackers targeted vulnerabilities in several of its products to launch mass-hacks against its customers. The company said it became aware of the latest vulnerability after its Ivanti Integrity Checker Tool (ICT) flagged malicious activity on some customer appliances.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/1535218/hackers-are-exploiting-a-new-ivanti-vpn-security-bug-to-hack-into-company-networks?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft kicks off the new year with more job cuts, as fewer than 1% of employees reportedly face the axe. From a report: As first reported by Business Insider, Microsoft is trimming its workforce again, including roles in its security division, with the cuts targeting underperforming employees. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the layoffs with BI but declined to specify how many staffers are affected, stating, "At Microsoft, we focus on high-performance talent."

"We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action," the spokesperson told The Register.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/1610255/microsoft-cutting-more-jobs-as-new-year-begins?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Представлен релиз специализированного дистрибутива Tails 6.11 (The Amnesic Incognito Live System), развиваемого в составе проекта Tor. Дистрибутив основан на пакетной базе Debian 12, поставляется с рабочим столом GNOME 43 и предназначен для анонимного выхода в сеть при помощи инструментария Tor. Все соединения, кроме трафика через сеть Tor, по умолчанию блокируются пакетным фильтром. Для хранения пользовательских данных в режиме сохранения пользовательских данных между запусками применяется шифрование. Для загрузки подготовлен iso-образ, способный работать в Live-режиме, размером 1 ГБ.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62534

Engineering and construction group Larsen & Toubro Chairman S.N. Subrahmanyan has urged employees in India to work 90 hours weekly, including Sundays, surpassing Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy's recent 70-hour workweek proposal.

"What do you do sitting at home? Go to the office and start working," Subrahmanyan said in a leaked internal video. He cited a conversation about Chinese workers' 90-hour weeks versus Americans' 50 hours to justify the stance.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/1646208/lt-chief-pushes-for-90-hour-work-week-as-indias-tech-bosses-intensify-labor-demands?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

MicroStrategy's bitcoin holdings and a tech investment fund are commanding extraordinary premiums in U.S. markets, highlighting unusual price anomalies reminiscent of past market distortions. MicroStrategy shares are trading at more than double the market value of their main asset -- bitcoin holdings -- while closed-end fund Destiny Tech100 recently traded at 11 times its net asset value, down from 21 times earlier in 2024.

Similar market irregularities have emerged throughout history. In 1923, investor Benjamin Graham profited from a disconnect between DuPont and General Motors shares. During the 1929 bull market, closed-end fund Capital Administration Co. traded at a 1,235% premium to its net asset value. WSJ adds: The PalmPilot during the 1990s and early 2000s was a hand-held device and personal assistant that came with a touch-screen display and a stylus. Palm was the biggest maker of hand-held computer devices, with 70% market share, and it held its initial public offering in March 2000, about a week before the Nasdaq Composite Index's peak during the dot-com bubble.

Palm's shares jumped 150% on their first day of trading, giving Palm a stock-market value of about $53 billion. Palm was still 94%-owned by parent 3Com at the time. Yet on Palm's first day of trading, 3Com's shares fell 21%.

The funny part: According to the stock market, 3Com was worth about $23 billion less than the value of the Palm shares that 3Com owned. This made no sense, yet the valuations remained out of whack for months. In time, both stocks came down to earth, sanity prevailed and the world eventually moved on to smartphones.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/1659218/a-tour-through-historys-most-entertaining-price-anomalies?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Foundation has announced the launch of 'Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers,' an initiative aimed at funding and supporting open development within the Chromium ecosystem. The purpose of this effort is to provide resources and foster collaboration among developers, academia, and tech companies to drive the sustainability and innovation of Chromium projects. Major industry players, including Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Opera, have pledged their support.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/1728246/tech-giants-form-chromium-browser-coalition?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Правозащитная организация Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), предоставляющая юридическую защиту свободным проектам и отстаивающая необходимость соблюдения лицензии GPL, объявила об успешном завершении судебного разбирательства с компанией AVM, связанного с невыполнением условий лицензии LGPL в прошивках маршрутизаторов. Дело было открыто в немецком суде по иску Себастьяна Штека (Sebastian Steck), потребовавшего предоставить исходный код компонентов прошивки, распространяемых под лицензией LGPLv2.1, а также скриптов, используемых для их компиляции и установки.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62535

AI is coming for your job: 41% of employers intend to downsize their workforce as AI automates certain tasks, a World Economic Forum survey showed Wednesday. From a report: Out of hundreds of large companies surveyed around the world, 77% also said they were planning to reskill and upskill their existing workers between 2025-2030 to better work alongside AI, according to findings published in the WEF's Future of Jobs Report. But, unlike the previous, 2023 edition, this year's report did not say that most technologies, including AI, were expected to be "a net positive" for job numbers.

"Advances in AI and renewable energy are reshaping the (labor) market -- driving an increase in demand for many technology or specialist roles while driving a decline for others, such as graphic designers," the WEF said in a press release ahead of its annual meeting in Davos later this month. Writing in the wide-ranging report, Saadia Zahidi, the forum's managing director, highlighted the role of generative AI in reshaping industries and tasks across all sectors. The technology can create original text, images and other content in response to prompts from users.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/1937200/41-of-companies-worldwide-plan-to-reduce-workforces-by-2030-due-to-ai?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A federal judge this week rejected Google's motion to throw out a class-action lawsuit alleging that it invaded the privacy of users who opted out of functionality that records a users' web and app activities. A jury trial is scheduled for August 2025 in US District Court in San Francisco. The lawsuit concerns Google's Web & App Activity (WAA) settings, with the lead plaintiff representing two subclasses of people with Android and non-Android phones who opted out of tracking. "The WAA button is a Google account setting that purports to give users privacy control of Google's data logging of the user's web app and activity, such as a user's searches and activity from other Google services, information associated with the user's activity, and information about the user's location and device," wrote (PDF) US District Judge Richard Seeborg, the chief judge in the Northern District Of California.

Google says that Web & App Activity "saves your activity on Google sites and apps, including associated info like location, to give you faster searches, better recommendations, and more personalized experiences in Maps, Search, and other Google services." Google also has a supplemental Web App and Activity setting that the judge's ruling refers to as "(s)WAA." "The (s)WAA button, which can only be switched on if WAA is also switched on, governs information regarding a user's '[Google] Chrome history and activity from sites, apps, and devices that use Google services.' Disabling WAA also disables the (s)WAA button," Seeborg wrote. But data is still sent to third-party app developers through the Google Analytics for Firebase (GA4F), "a free analytical tool that takes user data from the Firebase kit and provides app developers with insight on app usage and user engagement," the ruling said. GA4F "is integrated in 60 percent of the top apps" and "works by automatically sending to Google a user's ad interactions and certain identifiers regardless of a user's (s)WAA settings, and Google will, in turn, provide analysis of that data back to the app developer."

Plaintiffs have brought claims of privacy invasion under California law. Plaintiffs "present evidence that their data has economic value," and "a reasonable juror could find that Plaintiffs suffered damage or loss because Google profited from the misappropriation of their data," Seeborg wrote. The lawsuit was filed in July 2020. The judge notes that summary judgment can be granted when "there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Google hasn't met that standard, he ruled. In a statement provided to Ars, Google said that "privacy controls have long been built into our service and the allegations here are a deliberate attempt to mischaracterize the way our products work. We will continue to make our case in court against these patently false claims."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/2059258/google-faces-trial-for-collecting-data-on-users-who-opted-out?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says IT departments will evolve into human resources managers for AI agents, as companies adopt AI tools across their operations. "In a lot of ways, the IT department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI agents in the future," Huang told the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. From a report: He believes that in the not so near future IT teams will be tasked with onboarding these agents and ensuring they're kept in line, similarly to how HR teams manage employees. They may need to be trained to use certain vocabulary that's unique to the company, or be given examples of the kind of product the team is looking to develop, or briefed on company culture policies. Instead of just fixing servers and resetting passwords, IT professionals will soon be supervising fleets of digital workers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/2112256/nvidias-huang-says-that-it-will-become-the-hr-of-ai-agents?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Plaintiffs in Kadrey v. Meta allege that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg authorized the team behind the company's Llama AI models to use a dataset of pirated ebooks and articles for training. They further accuse the company of concealing its actions by stripping copyright information and torrenting the data. TechCrunch reports: In newly unredacted documents filed (PDF) with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California late Wednesday, plaintiffs in Kadrey v. Meta, who include bestselling authors Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, recount Meta's testimony from late last year, during which it was revealed that Zuckerberg approved Meta's use of a data set called LibGen for Llama-related training. LibGen, which describes itself as a "links aggregator," provides access to copyrighted works from publishers including Cengage Learning, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill, and Pearson Education. LibGen has been sued a number of times, ordered to shut down, and fined tens of millions of dollars for copyright infringement.

According to Meta's testimony, as relayed by plaintiffs' counsel, Zuckerberg cleared the use of LibGen to train at least one of Meta's Llama models despite concerns within Meta's AI exec team and others at the company. The filing quotes Meta employees as referring to LibGen as a "data set we know to be pirated," and flagging that its use "may undermine [Meta's] negotiating position with regulators." The filing also cites a memo to Meta AI decision-makers noting that after "escalation to MZ," Meta's AI team "[was] approved to use LibGen." (MZ, here, is rather obvious shorthand for "Mark Zuckerberg.")

The details seemingly line up with reporting from The New York Times last April, which suggested that Meta cut corners to gather data for its AI. At one point, Meta was hiring contractors in Africa to aggregate summaries of books and considering buying the publisher Simon & Schuster, according to the Times. But the company's execs determined that it would take too long to negotiate licenses and reasoned that fair use was a solid defense. The filing Wednesday contains new accusations, like that Meta might've tried to conceal its alleged infringement by stripping the LibGen data of attribution.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/2116231/mark-zuckerberg-gave-metas-llama-team-the-ok-to-train-on-copyright-works-filing-claims?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI has shut down the developer behind a viral device that could respond to ChatGPT queries to aim and fire an automated rifle. Futurism reports: The contraption, as seen in a video that's been making its rounds on social media, sparked a frenzied debate over our undying attempts to turn dystopian tech yanked straight out of the "Terminator" franchise into a reality. STS 3D's invention also apparently caught the attention of OpenAI, who says it swiftly shut him down for violating its policies. When Futurism reached out to the company, a spokesperson said that "we proactively identified this violation of our policies and notified the developer to cease this activity ahead of receiving your inquiry."

STS 3D -- who didn't respond to our request for comment -- used OpenAI's Realtime API to give his weapon a cheery voice and a way to decipher his commands. "ChatGPT, we're under attack from the front left and front right," he told the system in the video. "Respond accordingly." Without skipping a beat, the rifle jumped into action, shooting what appeared to be blanks while aiming at the nearby walls.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/2126201/openai-cuts-off-engineer-who-created-chatgpt-powered-robotic-sentry-rifle?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Global banks will cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years as artificial intelligence encroaches on tasks currently carried out by human workers, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Chief information and technology officers surveyed for BI indicated that on average they expect a net 3% of their workforce to be cut, according to a report published Thursday. Back office, middle office and operations are likely to be most at risk, according to Tomasz Noetzel, the BI senior analyst who wrote the report. Customer services could see changes as bots manage client functions, while know-your-customer duties would also be vulnerable. "Any jobs involving routine, repetitive tasks are at risk," he said. "But AI will not eliminate them fully, rather it will lead to workforce transformation."

Nearly a quarter of the 93 respondents predict a steeper decline of between 5% and 10% of total headcount. The peer group covered by BI includes Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The findings point to far-reaching changes in the industry, feeding through to improved earnings. In 2027, banks could see pretax profits 12% to 17% higher than they would otherwise have been -- adding as much as $180 billion to their combined bottom line -- as AI powers an increase in productivity, according to BI. Eight in ten respondents expect generative AI to increase productivity and revenue generation by at least 5% in the next three to five years. Results from a recent World Economic Forum survey also predicted a reduction in the workforce due to AI. According to the survey, 41% of employers intend to downsize their workforce as AI automates certain tasks.

Unlike the survey results from 2023, this year's report did not say that most technology, including AI, were expected to be a "net positive" for job numbers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/01/09/2136249/wall-street-job-losses-may-top-200000-as-ai-replaces-roles?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said quantum computers won't be very useful for another 20 years, causing stocks in this emerging sector to plunge more than 40% for a total market value loss of over $8 billion. "If you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that'd probably be on the early side. If you said 30, is probably on the late side. But if you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it," Huang said during a Q&A with analysts. PCMag reports: The field of quantum computing hasn't gotten nearly as much hype as generative AI and the tech giants promoting it in the past few years. Right now, part of the reason quantum computers aren't currently that helpful is because of their error rates. Nord Quantique CEO Julien Lemyre previously told PCMag that quantum error correction is the future of the field, and his firm is working on a solution. The errors that qubits, the basic unit of information in a quantum machine, currently make result in quantum computers being largely unhelpful. It's an essential hurdle to overcomeâ"but we don't currently know if or when quantum errors will be eliminated.

Chris Erven, CEO and co-founder of Kets Quantum, believes quantum computers will eventually pose a significant threat to cybersecurity. "China is making some of the largest investments in quantum computing, pumping in billions of dollars into research and development in the hope of being the first to create a large-scale, cryptographically relevant machine," Erven tells PCMag in a statement. "Although they may be a few years away from being fully operational, we know a quantum computer will be capable of breaking all traditional cyber defenses we currently use. So they, and others, are actively harvesting now, to decrypt later." "The 15 to 20-year timeline seems very realistic," said Ivana Delevska, investment chief of Spear Invest, which holds Rigetti and IonQ shares in an actively managed ETF. "That is roughly what it took Nvidia to develop accelerated computing."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/01/10/0023257/nvidia-ceo-quantum-computers-wont-be-very-useful-for-another-20-years?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Biden administration plans one additional round of restrictions on the export of AI chips before leaving office, "a final push in his effort to keep advanced technologies out of the hands of China and Russia," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The US wants to curb the sale of AI chips used in data centers on both a country and company basis, with the goal of concentrating AI development in friendly nations and getting businesses around the world to align with American standards, according to people familiar with the matter. The result would be an expansion of semiconductor caps to most of the world -- an attempt to control the spread of AI technology at a time of soaring demand. The regulations, which could be issued as soon as Friday, would create three tiers of chip trade restrictions, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

At the top level, a small number of US allies would maintain essentially unmitigated access to American chips. A group of adversaries, meanwhile, would be effectively blocked from importing the semiconductors. And the vast majority of the world would face limits on the total computing power that can go to one country. Countries in the last group would be able to bypass their national limits -- and get their own, significantly higher caps -- by agreeing to a set of US government security requirements and human rights standards, one of the people said. That type of designation -- called a validated end user, or VEU -- aims to create a set of trusted entities that develop and deploy AI in secure environments around the world.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/01/10/0030236/biden-to-further-limit-ai-chip-exports-in-final-push?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Christie Wilcox reports via Science.org: Both longhorn crazy ants (Paratrechina longicornis) and humans can figure out how to work together to move an unwieldy object through a series of obstacles. So scientists pitted the two against each other. They had individuals and groups of different sizes of both species maneuver a T-shaped object through holes in walls (as seen in the video above), both of which were scaled to the body size of the participants. This kind of puzzle is hard for ants because their pheromone-based communication doesn't account for the kind of geometry needed to get the object through the doors. To make the experiments even more comparable, the team also took away the humans' communication in some of the trials by making them wear sunglasses and masks and forbidding talking and gestures. So the people, like the ants, had to work together without language, relying on the forces generated by their fellow participants to figure out how to move the T-shaped piece.

The groups of ants were much better at solving the puzzle than individual ants, exhibiting what the researchers described as "emergent" collective memory -- an intelligence greater than the sum of its parts. The groups of humans, on the other hand, often didn't do better when working together, especially if they weren't allowed to talk. In fact, multiple people sometimes performed worse than individuals -- and worse than the ants. The researchers posit that, in the absence of the ability to discuss and debate, individuals attempt to reach a consensus quickly rather than fully assessing the problem. This "groupthink," they suggest, leads people toward fruitless "greedy" efforts where they directly pull the T toward the gaps in the wall, rather than the less obvious, correct solution of pulling the object into the space between first. Whereas the ants "excel in cooperation," they write, humans need to be able to talk through their reasoning to avoid simply going with what they think the crowd wants.
The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/01/10/0039236/ants-best-humans-at-test-of-collective-intelligence?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Some of the world's most popular apps are likely being co-opted by rogue members of the advertising industry to harvest sensitive location data on a massive scale, with that data ending up with a location data company whose subsidiary has previously sold global location data to US law enforcement. The thousands of apps, included in hacked files from location data company Gravy Analytics, include everything from games likeCandy Crushand dating apps like Tinder to pregnancy tracking and religious prayer apps across both Android and iOS. Because much of the collection is occurring through the advertising ecosystem -- not code developed by the app creators themselves -- this data collection is likely happening without users' or even app developers' knowledge.

"For the first time publicly, we seem to have proof that one of the largest data brokers selling to both commercial and government clients appears to be acquiring their data from the online advertising 'bid stream,'" rather than code embedded into the apps themselves, Zach Edwards, senior threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Silent Push and who has followed the location data industry closely, tells 404 Media after reviewing some of the data. The data provides a rare glimpse inside the world of real-time bidding (RTB). Historically, location data firms paid app developers to include bundles of code that collected the location data of their users. Many companies have turned instead to sourcing location information through the advertising ecosystem, where companies bid to place ads inside apps. But a side effect is that data brokers can listen in on that process and harvest the location of peoples' mobile phones.

"This is a nightmare scenario for privacy, because not only does this data breach contain data scraped from the RTB systems, but there's some company out there acting like a global honey badger, doing whatever it pleases with every piece of data that comes its way," Edwards says. Included in the hacked Gravy data are tens of millions of mobile phone coordinates of devices inside the US, Russia, and Europe. Some of those files also reference an app next to each piece of location data. 404 Media extracted the app names and built a list of mentioned apps. The list includes dating sites Tinder and Grindr; massive games such asCandy Crush,Temple Run,Subway Surfers, andHarry Potter: Puzzles & Spells; transit app Moovit; My Period Calendar & Tracker, a period-tracking app with more than 10 million downloads; popular fitness app MyFitnessPal; social network Tumblr; Yahoo's email client; Microsoft's 365 office app; and flight tracker Flightradar24. The list also mentions multiple religious-focused apps such as Muslim prayer and Christian Bible apps, various pregnancy trackers, and many VPN apps, which some users may download, ironically, in an attempt to protect their privacy.

404 Media's full list of apps included in the data can be found here. There are also other lists available from other security researchers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/01/10/0056202/see-the-thousands-of-apps-hijacked-to-spy-on-your-location?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Разработчики проекта openSUSE представили январское обновление экспериментального дистрибутива openSUSE Slowroll, развивающего модифицированную редакцию непрерывно обновляемого дистрибутива openSUSE Tumbleweed, дополнительно стабилизированного для пользователей, которые не хотят ждать выхода консервативного релиза openSUSE Leap. openSUSE Slowroll можно рассматривать как промежуточный вариант между openSUSE Tumbleweed и openSUSE Leap, позволяющий получить доступ к свежим версиям программ, но после прохождения дополнительной стадии стабилизации. По сравнению с Tumbleweed в репозиторий Slowroll пакеты попадают с задержкой на стабилизацию, составляющей 5-10 дней.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62536

Scientists said the world just reached a grim milestone: the first full year where global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial times. Reuters reports: The milestone was confirmed by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which said climate change is pushing the planet's temperature to levels never before experienced by modern humans. "The trajectory is just incredible," C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters, describing how every month in 2024 was the warmest or second-warmest for that month since records began.

The planet's average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in 1850-1900, the "pre-industrial period" before humans began burning CO2-emitting fossil fuels on a large scale, C3S said. Last year was the world's hottest since records began, and each of the past ten years was among the ten warmest on record. Britain's Met Office confirmed 2024's likely breach of 1.5C, while estimating a slightly lower average temperature of 1.53C for the year. U.S. scientists will also publish their 2024 climate data on Friday.

Governments promised under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent average temperatures exceeding 1.5C, to avoid more severe and costly climate disasters. The first year above 1.5C does not breach that target, which measures the longer-term average temperature. Buontempo said rising greenhouse gas emissions meant the world was on track to soon also blow past the Paris goal - but that it was not too late for countries to rapidly cut emissions to avoid warming rising further to disastrous levels. "It's not a done deal. We have the power to change the trajectory from now on," Buontempo said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/10/0426254/2024-was-the-first-year-above-15c-of-global-warming-scientists-say?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

После двух с половиной лет разработки опубликована новая стабильная ветка инструментария Flatpak 1.16, предоставляющего систему для сборки самодостаточных пакетов, не привязанных к конкретным дистрибутивам Linux и выполняемых в специальном контейнере, изолирующем приложение от остальной системы. Поддержка выполнения Flatpak-пакетов обеспечена для Fedora, CentOS, Debian, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Linux Mint, Alt Linux и Ubuntu. Пакеты с Flatpak включены в репозиторий Fedora и поддерживаются в штатных программах управления приложениями GNOME и KDE.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62537

9 января состоялся выпуск 2.34.0 кроссплатформенных консольных утилит [ fastfetch и flashfetch ]( https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch ) , написанных на языке C и распространяемых по лицензии MIT.
Утилиты предназначены для вывода информации о системе подобно neofetch. Поддерживаются Linux, Android, FreeBSD, macOS, SunOS и Windows 7+.
В отличие от fastfetch, flashfetch не поддерживает расширенные возможности вывода информации, профили и многое другое.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/17843956#cut ) )

An IT engineer from Wales lost a decade-long legal battle to recover a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins from a Newport landfill. The hard drive, accidentally thrown away in 2013, is now valued between $700-750 million. crypto.news reports: However, Judge Keyser KC ruled there were no "reasonable grounds" for the claim, citing environmental concerns and the council's ownership of the landfill contents. The landfill reportedly holds 1.4 million tonnes of waste, but Howells claims to have pinpointed the hard drive's location to a 100,000-ton section. Reacting to the ruling, Howells expressed frustration, calling it a "kick in the teeth," according to the BBC.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/01/10/0434224/judge-rejects-man-from-retrieving-750-million-of-bitcoin-from-landfill?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания System76, разрабатывающая Linux-дистрибутив Pop!_OS, представила пятую альфа-версию среды рабочего стола COSMIC, написанной на языке Rust (не путать со старым COSMIC, который был основан на GNOME Shell). Для тестирования предложены iso-образы со свежей версией COSMIC, сформированные поверх альфа-сборок будущего выпуска дистрибутива Pop!_OS 24.04 для систем с GPU NVIDIA (2.9 ГБ) и Intel/AMD (2.5 ГБ). Также формируются готовые пакеты для Fedora, NixOS, Arch Linux, openSUSE, Serpent OS, Redox и CachyOS.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62538

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Crypto Briefing: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has been authorized to sell approximately 69,370 Bitcoin seized in connection with the Silk Road darknet marketplace, a haul currently valued at around $6.5 billion, DB News reported Wednesday. The decision is set to end a years-long legal dispute over the BTC stash's ownership. On December 30, a federal judge ruled in favor of the DOJ's request to liquidate the crypto assets, the report said. Battle Born Investments, which had asserted a claim to the Bitcoin stash through a bankruptcy estate, ultimately failed in its bid to delay the sale.

As noted, the group had pursued a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the identity of "Individual X," who initially surrendered Bitcoin, but the effort also proved unsuccessful. Battle Born's legal counsel criticized the DOJ's handling of the case, alleging the department employed "procedural trickery" in its use of civil asset forfeiture to avoid scrutiny. The DOJ, in its arguments before the court, cited Bitcoin's price volatility as motivation for seeking a quick sale of the seized assets. A DOJ spokesperson, when contacted, stated, "The Government will proceed further consistent with the judgment in this case."

The update comes after the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal challenging the seizure of the Bitcoin stash, which was brought by Battle Born last October. The decision likely paved the way for the US government to sell Bitcoin, which was valued at $4.4 billion at the time. The US Marshals Service is expected to manage the liquidation process, which, if confirmed, will be one of the largest sales of seized crypto in history. Further reading: Judge Rejects Man From Retrieving $750 Million of Bitcoin From Landfill

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/01/10/0441259/doj-cleared-to-sell-65-billion-in-bitcoin-seized-from-silk-road?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

India's homegrown digital payments ecosystem, anchored by two systems, is challenging Visa and Mastercard's dominance in the world's most populous nation. The backbone is UPI, a nine-year-old bank-to-bank payment network that processes over 13 billion monthly transactions through QR codes and phone numbers, accounting for 71% of all transactions and 36% of consumer spending, according to Bernstein.

RuPay, India's domestic card network, has leveraged its exclusive right to process credit card transactions through UPI to double its volume to $7.43 billion in fiscal 2025's first seven months. It now represents 28% of credit card transactions, up from 10% last year. Small merchants are adopting the system as RuPay only charges fees on transactions above $23.3. India's central bank has also mandated banks let customers choose their card network, ending exclusive deals with global providers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/10/147219/indias-payments-push-is-cutting-out-visa-and-mastercard?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Организация Linux Foundation объявила о создании инициативы "Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers", предоставляющей нейтральную площадку, на которой лидеры индустрии, академическое сообщество, разработчики и сторонники открытого программного обеспечения могут совместно работать над проектами, связанными с браузерным движком Chromium. Учредителями выступили компании Google, Meta, Microsoft и Opera.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62540