Electronic messages travel faster than seismic waves, Gizmodo points out — meaning some people near an earthquake receive an Android Earthquake Alert "before the seismic waves reach them — and even a few seconds could be just enough time to hide under a table or run outside."

Richard Allen from the University of California in Berkeley's Seismological Laboratory, writes in a new study that "The global adoption of smartphone technology places sophisticated sensing and alerting capabilities in people's hands, in both the wealthy and less-wealthy portions of the planet."

From Gizmodo:

According to the study, 70% of the world's smartphones are Android phones, which by default come with the aforementioned sensing and alerting capabilities. From 2021 to 2024, the Android Earthquake Alert (AEA) system detected an average of 312 earthquakes per month across 98 countries. The earthquakes had a magnitude between 1.9 and 7.8, and the system alerted users of earthquakes at or over a magnitude of 4.5, averaging around 60 events and 18 million alerts per month. The AEA system also collected user feedback, revealing that 85% of users who received alerts experienced shaking, with 36% receiving the alert before, 28% during, and 23% after the shaking began...
"AEA demonstrates that globally distributed smartphones can be used to detect earthquakes and issue warnings at scale with an effectiveness comparable to established national systems," the researchers wrote.
The system detected 11,231 earthquakes between April of 2021 and March of 2024, according to the study, which notes that the length of the advanced warning "ranged from seconds up to a minute" for moderate shaking, and about 15 seconds for the strongest shaking.

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Historian Garrett M. Graff describes his upcoming book, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb. "I assembled an oral history of the Manhattan Project, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II in the Pacific, told through the voices of around 500 participants and witnesses of the events — including luminaries like Albert Einstein and Oppenheimer and political figures like President Harry Truman."

It was 80 years ago this week that physicists and 150 other leaders in the atomic bomb program "gathered in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, for the world's first test of a nuclear explosion." In an except from his upcoming book, Graff publishes quotes from eyewitness:

Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world. He had also said that after all it wouldn't make any difference whether the bomb went off or not because it would still have been a well worthwhile scientific experiment. For if it did fail to go off, we would have proved that an atomic explosion was not possible. Afterward, I realized that his talk had served to smooth down the frayed nerves and ease the tension of the people at the base camp, and I have always thought that this was his conscious purpose. Certainly, he himself showed no signs of tension that I could see...

As the hour approached, we had to postpone the test — first for an hour and then later for 30 minutes more — so that the explosion was actually three- and one-half hours behind the original schedule... Our preparations were simple. Everyone was told to lie face down on the ground, with his feet toward the blast, to close his eyes and to cover his eyes with his hands as the countdown approached zero. As soon as they became aware of the flash they could turn over and sit or stand up, covering their eyes with the smoked glass with which each had been supplied... The quiet grew more intense. I, myself, was on the ground between Bush and Conant... ... [>>>]

ABC News reports:

Dialogue heard on a cockpit voice recording indicates that the captain of the Air India flight that crashed in June, killing 260 people, may have turned off the fuel just after takeoff, prompting the first officer to panic, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited sources familiar with U.S. official's early assessment... The president of the Federation of Indian Pilots condemned the Wall Street Journal report, saying, "The preliminary report nowhere states that the pilots have moved the fuel control switches, and this has been corroborated by the CVR [cockpit voice recorder] recording."

But meanwhile "India on Monday ordered its airlines to examine fuel switches on several Boeing aircraft models," reports Reuters, "while South Korea ordered a similar measure on Tuesday, as scrutiny intensified of fuel switch locks at the centre of an investigation into a deadly Air India crash."

The precautionary moves by the two countries and airlines in several others came despite the planemaker and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration assuring airlines and regulators in recent days that the fuel switch locks on Boeing jets are safe... [The preliminary report] noted a 2018 advisory from the FAA, which recommended, but did not mandate, operators of several Boeing models, including the 787, to inspect the locking feature of fuel cutoff switches to ensure they could not be moved accidentally... Some airlines around the world told Reuters they had been checking relevant switches since 2018 in accordance with the FAA advisory, including Australia's Qantas Airways. Others said they had made additional or new checks since the release of the preliminary report into the Air India crash.

The web site of India's Financial Express newspaper spoke to Mary Schiavo, who was Inspector General of America's Transportation Department from 1990 to 1996 (and is also a long-time critic of the FAA). The site notes Schiavo "rejected the claims of human error that a pilot downed the Ahmedabad to London flight by cutting off the fuel supply." ... [>>>]

"The U.S. is absolutely facing the most serious Chinese hacking ever." That's what the Washington Post was told by a China-focused consultant at security company SentinelOne:

Undeterred by recent indictments alleging widespread cyberespionage against American agencies, journalists and infrastructure targets, Chinese hackers are hitting a wider range of targets and battling harder to stay inside once detected, seven current and former U.S. officials said in interviews. Hacks from suspected Chinese government actors detected by the security firm CrowdStrike more than doubled from 2023 to more than 330 last year and continued to climb as the new administration took over, the company said... Although the various Chinese hacking campaigns seem to be led by different government agencies and have different goals, all benefit from new techniques and from Beijing's introduction of a less constrained system for cyber offense, the officials and outside researchers told The Washington Post... Chinese intelligence, military and security agencies previously selected targets and tasked their own employees with breaking in, they said. But the Chinese government decided to take a more aggressive approach by allowing private industry to conduct cyberattacks and hacking campaigns on their own, U.S. officials said.

The companies are recruiting top hackers who discover previously unknown, or "zero-day," flaws in software widely used in the United States. Then the companies search for where the vulnerable programs are installed, hack a great many of them at once, and then sell access to multiple Chinese government customers and other security companies. That hacking-for-hire approach creates hundreds of U.S. victims instead of a few, making it hard to block attacks and to decide which were China's key targets and which were unintentionally caught in the hacks, an FBI official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to follow agency practices... "The result of that incentive structure is that there is significantly more hacking...." ... [>>>]

"Commodore has returned from a parallel timeline where tech stayed optimistic, inviting, and human," explains the official web site for "the first real Commodore computer in over 30 years..." You can check out an ad for it here. "Not an emulator. Not a PC... Powered by a FPGA recreation of the original motherboard, wrapped in glowing game-reactive LEDs (or classic beige of course)."

Fast Company calls it "a $299 device that its makers claim is compatible with over 10,000 retro games, cartridges, and peripherals." In a YouTube video posted last month, "Peri Fractic" said he'd purchased the company for "a low seven-figure sum," and said he'd recruited several former Commodore employees to help relaunch the brand.

The new C64s are expected to begin shipping as early as October, though that date could slip... There are three models to choose from, all with the same internal components. If you were expecting a vastly outdated machine, however, you're in for a surprise. The Commodore 64 Ultimate will include 128 megabytes of RAM and 16 megabytes of flash memory. It connects to modern monitors via HDMI in high-definition 1080p resolution and features three USB-A ports and one USB-C port. Beyond the computer itself, the power source, and HDMI cable, your $299 also gets you a spiral-bound user guide, a 64-gigabyte USB drive featuring over 50 licensed games, a quick-start guide, and stickers.
Aesthetically, the Commodore 64 Ultimate is available in the original beige or in premium variants: the Starlight Edition, with a clear case and LED lights ($249), or the Founder's Edition, which includes 24-karat gold-plated badges, satin gold keys, and a translucent amber case ($499). Just 6,400 units of the Founder's Edition will be produced, according to the company. The preorder setup resembles a Kickstarter campaign, though it doesn't use that platform. Commodore says all preorders come with a money-back guarantee, but it chose to skip the service's fees. Buyers should be aware that accounts are charged at the time of preorder... ... [>>>]

The Independent notes a remarkable-if-true figure that's being bandied around this week.

Meta "started making these, like, giant offers to a lot of people on our team," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told his brother Jack on his podcast. "You know, like, $100 million signing bonuses, more than that [in] compensation per year... I'm really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that."

Previous reports have also suggested that Meta is targeting employees at Google DeepMind, offering similar levels of compensation. Some of these efforts appear to have been successful, with DeepMind researcher Jack Rae joining Meta's 'Superintelligence' team earlier this month...

During the podcast, which was published on Tuesday, Mr Altman also gave details about future AI products that OpenAI is hoping to build, claiming that they will enable "crazy new social experiences" and "virtual employees". The most important breakthrough over the next decade, he said, would involve radical new discoveries powered by AI. "The thing that I think will be the most impactful in that five-to-10 year timeframe is AI will actually discover new science," he said.
The Washington Post notes that Zuckerberg "responded to recent reports of his compensation offers in an interview posted by the Information on YouTube on Tuesday, saying that 'a lot of the numbers specifically have been inaccurate" but acknowledging there is "an absolute premium for the best and most talented people."

Zuckerberg's recent hires and other comments this week suggest he's not taking any chances of being left behind. He announced plans for a giant data center campus large enough to obscure Manhattan to power future AI projects by his superintelligence team.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0612203/openai-ceo-says-meta-tried-poaching-chatgpt-engineers-with-100m-bonuses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Felix Baumgartner has died. He was 56.
In 2012 Slashdot extensively covered the skydiver's "leap from the edge of space."

ABC News remembers it as a Red Bull-financed stunt that involved "diving 24 miles from the edge of space, in a plummet that reached a speed of more than 500 mph."

Baumgartner recalled the legendary jump in the documentary, "Space Jump," and said, "I was the first human being outside of an aircraft breaking the speed of sound and the history books. Nobody remembers the second one...."
Baumgartner, also known as "Fearless Felix," accomplished many records in his career, including setting the world record for highest parachute jump atop the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, flying across the English Channel in a wingsuit in 2003, and base jumping from the 85-foot arm of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil in 2007.

"Baumgartner's altitude record stood for two years," remembers the Los Angeles Times, "until Google executive Alan Eustace set new marks for the highest free-fall jump and greatest free-fall distance."

They report that Baumgartner died Thursday "while engaged in a far less intense activity, crashing into the side of a hotel swimming pool while paragliding in Porto Sant Elpidio, a town on central Italy's eastern coast." More details from the Associated Press:

"It is a destiny that is very hard to comprehend for a man who has broke all kinds of records, who has been an icon of flight, and who traveled through space," Mayor Massimiliano Ciarpella told The Associated Press.Ciarpella said that Baumgartner had been in the area on vacation, and that investigators believed he may have fallen ill during the fatal flight... Baumgartner, a former Austrian military parachutist, made thousands of jumps from planes, bridges, skyscrapers and famed landmarks...

ABC News remembers that in 2022 Baumgartner wrote in Newsweek that "Since I was a little kid, I've always looked up to people who left a footprint on this planet... now I think I have left a footprint... ... [>>>]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: California Forever announced on Thursday plans to build a massive manufacturing park called Solano Foundry, the newest addition to its master-planned "utopian" city backed by a group of Silicon Valley billionaires. Solano Foundry is 2,100 acres that can host 40 million square feet of advanced tech manufacturing space. The manufacturing park will be built as part of its planned walkable city with over 175,000 homes, CEO Jan Sramek said at the Reindustrialize conference in Detroit.

Sramek tweeted that U.S. manufacturers can't win by "building factories off of random freeway exits in the middle of nowhere. The best people don't want to work there." This site will offer expedited permitting, transportation for finished goods, and plenty of power from renewable energy, he said. The hope is that it will attract hardware, engineering, and AI talent from relatively nearby Silicon Valley. Solano County is about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0022209/utopian-city-california-forever-announces-huge-tech-manufacturing-park?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft will stop using China-based engineers to support U.S. military cloud services after a ProPublica report revealed their involvement, prompting backlash from Senator Tom Cotton and a two-week Pentagon review ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In response, Hegseth announced an immediate ban on any Chinese involvement in Department of Defense cloud contracts. Reuters reports: The report detailed Microsoft's use of Chinese engineers to work on U.S. military cloud computing systems under the supervision of U.S. "digital escorts" hired through subcontractors who have security clearances but often lacked the technical skills to assess whether the work of the Chinese engineers posed a cybersecurity threat. [Microsoft] told ProPublica it disclosed its practices to the U.S. government during an authorization process.

On Friday, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw said on social media website X the company changed how it supports U.S. government customers "in response to concerns raised earlier this week ... to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance" for services used by the Pentagon.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0028202/microsoft-to-stop-using-engineers-in-china-for-tech-support-of-us-military?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

At Sotheby's Geek Week auction, the largest known Martian meteorite on Earth sold for a record-breaking $5.3 million. The Associated Press reports: The 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby's. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2 million to $4 million. The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. The final bid was $4.3 million. Adding various fees and costs, the official sale price was about $5.3 million, making it the most valuable meteorite ever sold at auction, Sotheby's said.

The live bidding was slow, with the auctioneer trying to coax more offers and decreasing the minimum bid increases. [...] The bidding for the Mars meteorite began with two advance offers of $1.9 million and $2 million. The live bidding slowly proceeded with increases of $200,000 and $300,000 until $4 million, then continued with $100,000 increases until reaching $4.3 million. The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby's says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters). It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, the auction house says.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/18/2228201/largest-piece-of-mars-on-earth-fetches-53-million-at-auction?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Live Science: In a world first, scientists have demonstrated an enigmatic phenomenon in quantum computing that could pave the way for fault-tolerant machines that are far more powerful than any supercomputer. The process, called "magic state distillation," was first proposed 20 years ago, but its use in logical qubits has eluded scientists ever since. It has long been considered crucial for producing the high-quality resources, known as "magic states," needed to fulfill the full potential of quantum computers. [...] Now, however, scientists with QuEra say they have demonstrated magic state distillation in practice for the first time on logical qubits. They outlined their findings in a new study published July 14 in the journal Nature.

In the study, using the Gemini neutral-atom quantum computer, the scientists distilled five imperfect magic states into a single, cleaner magic state. They performed this separately on a Distance-3 and a Distance-5 logical qubit, demonstrating that it scales with the quality of the logical qubit. "A greater distance means better logical qubits. A Distance-2, for instance, means that you can detect an error but not correct it. Distance-3 means that you can detect and correct a single error. Distance-5 would mean that you can detect and correct up to two errors, and so on, and so on," [explained Yuval Boger, chief commercial officer at QuEra who was not personally involved in the research]. "So the greater the distance, the higher fidelity of the qubit is -- and we liken it to distilling crude oil into a jet fuel."

As a result of the distillation process, the fidelity of the final magic state exceeded that of any input. This proved that fault-tolerant magic state distillation worked in practice, the scientists said. This means that a quantum computer that uses both logical qubits and high-quality magic states to run non-Clifford gates is now possible. "We're seeing sort of a shift from a few years ago," Boger said. "The challenge was: can quantum computers be built at all? Then it was: can errors be detected and corrected? Us and Google and others have shown that, yes, that can be done. Now it's about: can we make these computers truly useful? And to make one computer truly useful, other than making them larger, you want them to be able to run programs that cannot be simulated on classical computers." ... [>>>]

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Intel has quietly pulled the plug on Clear Linux OS, officially ending support for the once-promising Linux distribution that it had backed for nearly a decade. Effective immediately, the company says it will no longer provide any updates, security patches, or maintenance for the operating system. In a final blow, the Clear Linux OS GitHub repository is now archived in read-only mode.

The move was announced with little fanfare, and for users still relying on Clear Linux OS, there's no sugarcoating it... you need to move on. Intel is urging everyone to migrate to an actively maintained Linux distribution as soon as possible to avoid running unpatched software. "Rest assured that Intel remains deeply invested in the Linux ecosystem, actively supporting and contributing to various open-source projects and Linux distributions to enable and optimize for Intel hardware," the company said in a statement. "A heartfelt thank you to every developer, user, and contributor who helped shape Clear Linux OS over the last 10 years. Your feedback and contributions have been invaluable."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0016204/intel-kills-clear-linux-os-as-support-ends-without-warning?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google has filed a lawsuit to dismantle the sprawling Badbox 2.0 botnet, which infected over 10 million Android devices with pre-installed malware. Badbox 2.0 "is already the largest known botnet of internet-connected TV devices, and it grows each day. It has harmed millions of victims in the United States and around the world and threatens many more," Google said in its complaint. SecurityWeek reports: The internet giant cautions that, while it has been used mainly for fraud, the botnet could be used for more harmful types of cybercrime, such as ransomware or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In addition to pre-installing the malware on devices, Badbox 2.0's operators also tricked users into installing infected applications that provided them with further access to their personal devices, Google says. As part of their operation, the individuals behind Badbox 2.0 sold access to the infected devices to be used as residential proxies, and conducted ad fraud schemes by abusing these devices to create fake ad views or to exploit pay-per-click compensation models, the company continues. The internet giant also points out that this is the second global botnet the perpetrators have built, after the initial Badbox botnet was disrupted by German law enforcement in 2023.

According to Google, Badbox 2.0 is operated by multiple cybercrime groups from China, each having a different role in maintaining the botnet, such as establishing infrastructure, developing and pre-installing the malware on devices, and conducting fraud. "The BadBox 2.0 Enterprise includes several connected threat actor groups that design and implement complex criminal schemes targeting internet-connected devices both before and after the consumer receives the device," Google says. "While each member of the Enterprise plays a distinct role, they all collaborate to execute the BadBox 2.0 Scheme. All of the threat actor groups are connected to one another through the BadBox 2.0 shared C2 infrastructure and historical and current business ties," the company continues. ... [>>>]

Ukrainian hacker group BO Team, with help from the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance and possibly Ukraine's military, claims to have wiped out one of Russia's largest military drone manufacturers, destroying 47TB of production data and even disabling the doors in the facility. "Or, as described by the hacking collective (per Google translate), they 'deeply penetrated' the drone manufacturer 'to the very tonsils of demilitarization and denazification,'" reports The Register. From the report: BO Team (also known as Black Owl) announced the breach on its Telegram channel, and claimed to have carried out the operation alongside fellow hackers the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance "and one very well-known organization, the mention of which makes Vanya's bottle receivers explode," according to a Google translation of the Russian text. While the "very well-known organization" isn't named, BO Team included a link to Ukraine's Ministry of Defence.

The military intelligence agency, working alongside the attackers, "carried out large-scale work to capture the entire network and server infrastructure of Gaskar Group, collect valuable information about the UAVs being produced and prospective, and then destroy the information and disable this infrastructure," the Telegram post continued. This reportedly included 47TB of technical information about the production of Russian drones, and BO Team claims to have destroyed all of the information on Gaskar's servers, including 10TB of backup files. "By the way, from the information we received, China is providing assistance in the production and training of specialists of Gaskar Group," the hackers added via Telegram. BO Team also posted what they claim to be confidential employee questionnaires [PDF].

On their own Telegram channel, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance said they also stole "all the source code" before destroying everything. "The network went down so thoroughly that the doors in the building were blocked," the pro-Ukraine crew wrote, per Google translate. "To open them, the administration had to turn on the fire alarm. Most likely, the defense order is on the verge of failure, and thousands of drones will not get to the front in the near future." ... [>>>]

Dictionary.com abruptly deleted all user accounts and saved word lists from its premium apps without notice or refunds, leaving long-time logophiles "devastated." "The company deleted all accounts, as well as the only ways to use Dictionary.com without seeing ads -- even if you previously paid for an ad-free experience," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Dictionary.com offers a free dictionary through its website and free Android and iOS apps. It used to offer paid-for mobile apps, called Dictionary.com Pro, that let users set up accounts, use the app without ads, and enabled other features (like grammar tips and science and rhyming dictionaries) that are gone now. Dictionary.com's premium apps also let people download an offline dictionary (its free apps used to let you buy a downloadable dictionary as a one-time purchase), but offline the dictionaries aren't available anymore.

About a year ago, claims of Dictionary.com's apps being buggy surfaced online. We also found at least one person claiming that they were unable to buy an ad-free upgrade at that time. Reports of Dictionary.com accounts being deleted and the apps not working as expected, and with much of its content removed, started appearing online about two months ago. Users reported being unable to log in and access premium features, like saved words. Soon after, Dictionary.com's premium apps were removed from Google Play and Apple's App Store. The premium version was available for download for $6 as recently as March 23, per the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/2329217/dictionarycom-devastated-paid-users-by-abruptly-deleting-saved-word-lists?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The House passed a bipartisan bill regulating stablecoins which now heads to President Trump's desk as part of his push to make the U.S. the "crypto capital of the world." Two other crypto-related bills -- one defining digital asset market structure and another banning a U.S. central bank digital currency -- were also approved by the House but face uncertain futures in the Senate amid partisan tensions and concerns over Trump's personal financial ties to crypto ventures. CNBC reports: The stablecoin bill, passed on a 308-122 vote, sets initial guardrails and consumer protections for the cryptocurrency, which is tied to a stable asset, often the U.S. dollar, to reduce price volatility. It passed the Senate with bipartisan support in June. "Around the world, payment systems are undergoing a revolution," said House Financial Services Chair French Hill of Arkansas as lawmakers debated the stablecoin legislation Thursday morning. Hill said the bill will "ensure American competitiveness and strong guardrails for our consumers."

After Trump declared it "crypto week," the bills were stalled for more than a day amid disagreements among House Republicans about how to combine the legislation. In the end, GOP leaders put the three bills for a separate votes, leaving the fate of the other two bills unclear in the Senate. The internal dissent could foreshadow challenges ahead for the more sweeping crypto legislation that Trump has demanded and the industry has poured millions into advancing. The stablecoin measure is seen by lawmakers and the industry as a step toward adding legitimacy and consumer trust to a rapidly growing sector. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in June that the legislation could help that currency "grow into a $3.7 trillion market by the end of the decade."

The bill outlines requirements for stablecoin issuers, including compliance with U.S. anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, and mandates that issuers hold reserves backing the cryptocurrency. Without such a framework, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee in a statement warned, "consumers face risks like unstable reserves or unclear operations from stablecoin issuers." After the votes, House Republicans strongly urged the Senate to take up the second bill, which would create a new market structure for cryptocurrency. ... [>>>]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: Threat actors are stealing sensitive data from organizations by breaching end-of-life appliances made by cybersecurity company SonicWall. Incident responders from Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant said on Wednesday that they have uncovered an ongoing campaign by an unidentified threat group that leverages credentials and one-time password (OTP) seeds stolen during previous intrusions -- allowing the hackers to regain access to organizations even after security updates are installed. [...]

The campaign is targeting fully patched end-of-life SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series appliances. Google explained that the malware the hackers are using removes log entries, making it difficult to figure out how they initially gained access to a system. Google said the campaign extends beyond the incidents they investigated directly and added that SonicWall has "confirmed reports of other impacted organizations." The company noted that SonicWall updated an advisory for a bug tracked as CVE-2024-38475 in light of Google's findings. "As an added security measure, we strongly advise customers to reset the OTP (One-Time Password) binding for all users. This step ensures that any potentially compromised or stale OTP secrets are invalidated, thereby mitigating unauthorized access risks," SonicWall said in the update to the advisory..

One novel aspect of the campaign is the use of a backdoor called OVERSTEP, which modifies the SonicWall appliance's boot process to maintain persistent access, steal sensitive credentials and conceal the malware's own components. Incident responders struggled to track other activities by the hackers because OVERSTEP allowed them to delete logs and largely cover their tracks. OVERSTEP is specifically designed for SonicWall SMA 100 series appliances, according to Google. In addition to CVE-2024-38475, Google and Mandiant experts floated several potential vulnerabilities the hackers may have used to gain initial access, including CVE-2021-20038, CVE-2024-38475, CVE-2021-20035, CVE-2021-20039 and, CVE-2025-32819. Beyond those, Google theorized that the hackers may have used an unknown zero-day vulnerability to deploy the malware on targeted SonicWall SMA appliances. ... [>>>]

Russian lawmakers passed sweeping new legislation allowing authorities to fine individuals simply for searching and accessing content labeled "extremist" via VPNs. The Washington Post reports: Russia defines "extremist materials" as content officially added by a court to a government-maintained registry, a running list of about 5,500 entries, or content produced by "extremist organizations" ranging from "the LGBT movement" to al-Qaeda. The new law also covers materials that promote alleged Nazi ideology or incite extremist actions. Until now, Russian law stopped short of punishing individuals for seeking information online; only creating or sharing such content is prohibited. The new amendments follow remarks by high-ranking officials that censorship is justified in wartime. Adoption of the measures would mark a significant tightening of Russia's already restrictive digital laws.

The fine for searching for banned content in Russia would be about a $65, while the penalty for advertising circumvention tools such as VPN services would be steeper -- $2,500 for individuals and up to $12,800 for companies. Previously, the most significant expansion of Russia's restrictions on internet use and freedom of speech occurred shortly after the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when sweeping laws criminalized the spread of "fake news" and "discrediting" the Russian military. The new amendment was introduced Tuesday and attached to a mundane bill on regulating freight companies, according to documents published by Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma.

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The Verge's Emma Roth reports: The News/Media Alliance, a trade association behind major news publishers, announced that it has "successfully secured" the removal of 12ft.io, a website that helped users bypass paywalls online. The trade association says 12ft.io's webhost took down the site on July 14th "following the News/Media Alliance's efforts." 12ft.io -- or 12 Foot Ladder -- also allowed users to view webpages without ads, trackers, or pop-ups by disguising a user's browser as a web crawler, giving them unfettered access to a webpage's contents. Software engineer Thomas Millar says he created the site when he realized "8 of the top 10 links on Google were paywalled" when doing research during the pandemic. [...]

In its announcement, News/Media Alliance says 12ft.io "offered illegal circumvention technology" that allowed users to access copyrighted content without paying for it. The organization adds that it will take "similar actions" against other sites that let users get around paywalls. The News Media Alliance recently called Google's AI Mode "theft." (Like many chatbots, Google's AI Mode eliminates the need to visit a website, starving publishers of the pageviews they need to be compensated for their work.) "Publishers commit significant resources to creating the best and most informative content for consumers, and illegal tools like 12ft.io undermine their ability to financially support that work through subscriptions and ad revenue," News/Media Alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey said in the press release. "Taking down paywall bypassers is an essential part of ensuring we have a healthy and sustainable information ecosystem."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/2029207/news-publishers-take-paywall-blocker-12ftio-offline?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Mark Zuckerberg and current and former directors and officers of Meta Platforms agreed on Thursday to settle claims seeking $8 billion for the damage they allegedly caused the company by allowing repeated violations of Facebook users' privacy, a lawyer for the shareholders told a Delaware judge on Thursday. The parties did not disclose details of the settlement and defense lawyers did not address the judge, Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery. McCormick adjourned the trial just as it was to enter its second day and she congratulated the parties. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Sam Closic, said the agreement just came together quickly.

Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who is a defendant in the trial and a Meta director, was scheduled to testify on Thursday. Shareholders of Meta sued Zuckerberg, Andreessen and other former company officials including former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg in hopes of holding them liable for billions of dollars in fines and legal costs the company paid in recent years. The Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 after finding that it failed to comply with a 2012 agreement with the regulator to protect users' data. The shareholders wanted the 11 defendants to use their personal wealth to reimburse the company. The defendants denied the allegations, which they called "extreme claims." "This settlement may bring relief to the parties involved, but it's a missed opportunity for public accountability," said Jason Kint, the head of Digital Content Next, a trade group for content providers.

"Facebook has successfully remade the 'Cambridge Analytica' scandal about a few bad actors rather than an unraveling of its entire business model of surveillance capitalism and the reciprocal, unbridled sharing of personal data. That reckoning is now left unresolved."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/2017244/meta-investors-mark-zuckerberg-reach-settlement-to-end-8-billion-trial-over-facebook-privacy-litigation?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has said that the majority of his company's new code is written by AI, with "close to 100%" of engineers using AI code editors. Speaking on the 20VC podcast, Tenev estimated around 50% of new code at the trading platform is AI-generated.

Tenev said the 50% figure is imprecise due to advanced "agentic" code editors that have made it difficult to distinguish human-written from AI-generated code. The company has progressed from GitHub Copilot to Cursor and now Windsurf, where "nearly all of the code is written by AI," he said. Tenev estimated only a "minority" of new code at Robinhood is written by humans.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/1918220/robinhood-ceo-says-majority-of-companys-new-code-written-by-ai?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Mozilla will ship WebGPU support in Firefox 141 when the browser launches July 22, bringing graphics processing capabilities that Chrome users have had since 2023. The initial release supports Windows only, with Mac, Linux, and Android planned for the coming months.

WebGPU provides web content direct access to graphics processors for high-performance computation and rendering in games and complex 3D applications. Chrome gained WebGPU support with version 113 in 2023, while Safari 26 is expected to add the feature this fall. Firefox's implementation uses the WGPU Rust crate, which translates web requests into native commands for Direct3D 12, Metal, or Vulkan.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/1829201/mozilla-ships-webgpu-in-firefox-141-catching-up-to-chromes-2023-launch?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

British universities face mounting financial pressures with four in ten institutions running deficits, according to the Office for Students regulator. Half have closed courses to save money, while Durham and Newcastle each shed 200 staff members. Lancaster's cost-saving plan could eliminate one in five academic positions. The crisis, writes Economist, stems from frozen tuition fees for English students, which will rise by only a few percent in August for the first time in eight years.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/188217/britains-bankrupt-universities-are-hunting-for-cheaper-models?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT agent Thursday, an AI tool that can complete multi-step tasks including online shopping, creating PowerPoint presentations, and generating spreadsheets. The agent combines capabilities from two existing OpenAI services: Operator, which can browse and interact with websites like a human, and Deep Research, which handles complex online research tasks.

The tool runs on a new AI model developed specifically for agent capabilities and can perform tasks such as planning meals and ordering ingredients online, booking restaurant reservations, and creating slide decks based on competitor analysis. In demonstrations, the agent successfully browsed Etsy for vintage lamps under $200 with free shipping and automatically added items to a shopping cart.

ChatGPT agent is immediately available to Pro, Plus, and Team subscribers, with Enterprise and Education users gaining access later this summer. The tool requires user permission before making purchases or performing "irreversible" actions like sending emails. The startup, however, has cautioned that the agent "is far from perfect" and can take several minutes to complete tasks.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/1726216/openai-debuts-ai-agent-that-controls-browsers-to-automate-shopping-presentations?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Sony removed the tiltable screen from its new RX1R III full-frame compact camera to maintain similar dimensions to the previous model, despite adding numerous new features and charging $5,100 for the device, The Verge reports.

The company increased the camera's size by only 2.5mm in height and 15.5mm in depth while incorporating the high-resolution sensor from the A7R V, Sony's latest autofocus tracking system, a longer-lasting battery, and a proper electronic viewfinder. Sony integrated the top dials and hot shoe into the body for a sleeker appearance. The camera's compact design prevents the inclusion of lens or sensor-based image stabilization. The Verge points out that Leica also added a tilt screen to its Q3 model after users requested the feature, despite the design compromise required.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/1635202/sony-is-still-stubborn-about-the-size-of-its-cameras?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A California federal judge has ruled that three authors suing Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent writers nationwide whose books the AI startup allegedly pirated to train its Claude chatbot.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the authors can bring a class action on behalf of all U.S. writers whose works Anthropic allegedly downloaded from pirate libraries LibGen and PiLiMi to create a repository of millions of books in 2021 and 2022.

Alsup said Anthropic may have illegally downloaded as many as 7 million books from the pirate websites, which could make it liable for billions of dollars in damages if the authors' case succeeds.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/1548245/judge-allows-nationwide-class-action-against-anthropic-over-alleged-piracy-of-7-million-books-for-ai-training?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Cancer death rates in the U.S. have fallen by approximately one-third since the 1990s when adjusted for age, according to data cited in a new analysis of global cancer trends. The decline represents a steady, year-over-year reduction that began in the early 1990s and continues across developed countries.

Prevention efforts have contributed substantially to the decline. Reduced smoking rates in wealthy nations prevented more than 3 million cancer deaths since 1975 in America alone. Britain's HPV vaccination program, launched in 2008 for teenage girls, produced a 90% reduction in cervical cancer rates among women in their 20s within 15 years. Treatment advances have transformed outcomes for specific cancers. Childhood leukemia, once virtually fatal, now has a five-year survival rate above 90%.

Researchers have identified inexpensive drugs with cancer-prevention properties, including aspirin, which cuts bowel cancer risk in half for patients with Lynch syndrome. Future progress faces obstacles, however, including high treatment costs and planned cuts to the National Cancer Institute under the Trump administration. China overtook America as the primary source of cancer research in 2025.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/1455213/cancer-death-rates-fall-one-third-in-us-since-1990s-as-prevention-efforts-take-hold?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Uber said Thursday it will partner with electric vehicle maker Lucid Group and autonomous driving startup Nuro to deploy robotaxis using Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with Nuro Driver technology on its ride-sharing network. The companies plan to launch the first vehicles in late 2026 in an unidentified major US city and deploy at least 20,000 robotaxis over six years.

Uber will make multi-hundred-million dollar investments in both partners, including $300 million for Lucid to upgrade its assembly line for integrating Nuro hardware into Gravity vehicles.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/145222/uber-plans-20000-robotaxis-in-six-year-rollout-with-lucid-and-nuro?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Major US theater chains including Cinemark, Regal and Marcus have held preliminary talks about jointly marketing their big-screen theaters to compete with Imax, according to Bloomberg. The discussions have focused on setting shared standards for the chains' "premium large-format" theaters, with options including uniting around a new brand name or adding an industrywide designation that would serve as a stamp of approval for their locations.

The chains are motivated by Imax's growing influence in the industry, as the company consistently generates more than 10% of the box office for blockbusters despite operating only 372 US locations. AMC Entertainment, the largest chain and biggest operator of Imax screens in the US, is not participating in the deliberations, the report added.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2325227/cinemas-weigh-launching-new-large-screen-brand-to-challenge-imax?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

VMware is overhauling its partner program again under Broadcom's direction, drastically reducing the number of authorized partners -- especially small and mid-size ones -- while ending the white label program by October 31, 2025. The Register reports: Australian IT service provider Interactive outlined the changes on Wednesday in a post that explained the changes with the following five points:

- Partner Reduction: The new program significantly reduces the number of authorized partners, being a by-invitation-only program. As a result on July 15, 2025 VCSP partners who are not invited to participate in the new Program for VCSP partners will be sent a notice of non-renewal.
- Transition Period Until 31 October, 2025: Non-invited partners can continue to transact until 31 October 2025. After that date, they may only service existing VCSP commitment contracts for the remainder of the current term. No new commitment contracts or renewals will be accepted for those partners.
- White Label Program Ending: Broadcom is also sunsetting the White Label model on 31 October 2025. The same transitional commercial conditions apply to White Label contracts as stated above.
- Immediate Impact: Departing partners are encouraged to work with authorized VCSP partners to ensure a smooth transition for customers who seek to renew a service at the end of their current term.
- Shift Toward Hyperscale Private Compute: Broadcom is reshaping its vision for private compute, whereby VMware Cloud Foundation 9 underpins a small number [of] hyperscale private cloud platforms in each region. A future where customers buy managed infrastructure from partners like Interactive to support their compute requirements.

Interactive also warned that customers whose partners are no longer part of the partner program could expect the change to effect:
- Your ability to renew licenses through your existing partner
- The support and service quality you've come to expect
- Potential delays or confusion during upcoming renewals or service requests ... [>>>]

Perplexity has partnered with Indian telecoms giant Bharti Airtel to provide its premium Pro service to 360 million customers for free for an entire year, representing the largest distribution deal of its kind globally.

The service normally costs $200 annually and provides access to advanced models including GPT-4.1 and Claude Sonnet and Opus 4. India is already ChatGPT's largest market by mobile usage.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/0742246/360-million-indians-just-got-premium-ai-chatbots-for-free-for-a-year?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Monitoring changes in water temperature and pressure at the seafloor can improve understanding of ocean circulation, climate, and natural hazards such as tsunamis. In recent years, scientists have begun gathering submarine measurements via an existing infrastructure network that spans millions of kilometers around the planet: the undersea fiber-optic telecommunications cables that provide us with amenities like Internet and phone service. Without interfering with their original purpose, the cables can be used as sensors to measure small variations in the light signals that run through them so that scientists can learn more about the sea. Meichen Liu and colleagues recently developed a new instrument, consisting of a receiver and a microwave intensity modulator placed at a shore station, that facilitates the approach. Their work is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Transcontinental fiber-optic cables are divided into subsections by repeaters, instruments positioned every 50 to 100 kilometers that boost information-carrying light signals so that they remain strong on the journey to their destination. At each repeater, an instrument called a fiber Bragg grating reflects a small amount of light back to the previous repeater to monitor the integrity of the cable. By observing and timing these reflections, the new instrument measures the changes in the time it takes for the light to travel between repeaters. These changes convey information about how the surrounding water changes the shape of the cable, and the researchers used that information to infer properties such as daily and weekly water temperature and tide patterns.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2246201/transatlantic-communications-cable-doubles-as-ocean-sensor?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For some years now, detractors of battery electric vehicles have held up hydrogen as a clean fuel panacea. That sometimes refers to hydrogen combustion engines, but more often, it's hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, or FCEVs. Both promise motoring with only water emitted from the vehicles' exhausts. It's just that hydrogen actually kinda sucks as a fuel, and automaker Stellantis announced today that it is ending the development of its light-, medium- and heavy-duty FCEVs, which were meant to go into production later this year.

Hydrogen's main selling point is that it's faster to fill a tank with the stuff than it is to recharge a lithium-ion battery. So it's a seductive alternative that suggests a driver can keep all the convenience of their gasoline engine with none of the climate change-causing side effects. But in reality, that's pretty far from true. [...] Between the high development costs and the fact that FCEVs only sell with strong incentives, the decision was made to cancel the production of hydrogen vans in France and Poland. Stellantis says there will be no job losses at its factories and that R&D staff will be put to work on other projects. "In a context where the Company is mobilizing to respond to demanding CO2 regulations in Europe, Stellantis has decided to discontinue its hydrogen fuel cell technology development program," said Jean-Philippe Imparato, chief operating officer for Enlarged Europe. "The hydrogen market remains a niche segment, with no prospects of mid-term economic sustainability. We must make clear and responsible choices to ensure our competitiveness and meet the expectations of our customers with our electric and hybrid passenger and light commercial vehicles offensive."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2112231/stellantis-abandons-hydrogen-fuel-cell-development?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Longtime Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: Heise, a German IT news publisher, reports (English version via Google Translate) that the German state of Brandenburg is getting the world's tallest wind turbine, with an overall height of 300 meters (approximately 365 meters including rotor blades), designed to capture so-called third-level winds at higher altitudes. The article also includes a short 3D animation illustrating the construction and its size relative to standard modern wind turbines. The wind turbine uses a dual-framework base instead of a traditional closed tower to access stronger high-altitude winds, aiming to match offshore energy output while keeping onshore operating costs.

According to Heise, the prototype could lead to the installation of up to 1,000 units across Germany -- fitting seamlessly between existing wind farms without needing extra land.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2120247/germany-is-building-the-worlds-tallest-wind-turbine?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Intel is laying off more than 5,000 employees across four states, according to updated Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings. From a report: Most of the cuts are happening in California and Oregon. Intel more than doubled its layoff estimates for Santa Clara and Folsom to a total of 1,935 affected employees, according to California WARN filings. The cuts began taking place in Folsom on July 11, and in Santa Clara on July 15.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2246205/intel-layoffs-exceed-5000-across-us?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Scale AI is laying off 14% of its workforce and 500 contractors as part of a major restructuring just weeks after Meta bought a 49% stake and absorbed its CEO into a new superintelligence lab. The Verge reports: Jason Droege, CEO of Scale AI, sent an email to all Scale employees today, which was viewed by The Verge. Droege said he plans to restructure several parts of Scale's generative AI business and organize it from 16 pods to "the five most impactful": code, languages, experts, experimental, and audio. The company will also reorganize its go-to-market team into a single "demand generation" team that will have four pods, each covering a specific set of customers.

"The reasons for these changes are straightforward: we ramped up our GenAI capacity too quickly over the past year," Droege wrote. "While that felt like the right decision at the time, it's clear this approach created inefficiencies and redundancies. We created too many layers, excessive bureaucracy, and unhelpful confusion about the team's mission. Shifts in market demand also required us to re-examine our plans and refine our approach."

Droege said that he believes the changes to the company will make it more able to adapt to market shifts, serve existing customers, and win back customers that have "slowed down" work with Scale. He also said that the company would deprioritize generative AI projects with less growth potential. "We remain a well-resourced, well-funded company," he wrote. Scale's generative AI business unit will have an all-hands meeting tomorrow, followed by a company-wide meeting on July 18th.

Osborne said that Scale plans to increase investment and hire hundreds of new employees in areas like enterprise, public sector, and international public sector, in the second half of 2025 and that severance has been paid out to impacted roles. "We're streamlining our data business to help us move faster and deliver even better data solutions to our GenAI customers," he said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2058240/scale-ai-lays-off-200-employees-we-ramped-up-our-genai-capacity-too-quickly?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Longtime Slashdot reader bobdevine shares a report from OSTechNix: For the first time, Linux has officially broken the 5% desktop market share barrier in the United States of America! It's a huge milestone for open-source and our fantastic Linux community. While many might think of Linux as a niche choice, this new data shows a significant shift is happening.

According to the latest StatCounter Global Stats for June 2025, Linux now holds 5.03% of the desktop operating system market share in the United United States of America. This is fantastic news! [...] One truly satisfying detail for me? Linux has finally surpassed the "Unknown" category in the USA! It shows that our growth is clear and recognized. "It took eight years to go from 1% to 2% (by April 2021), then just 2.2 years to reach 3% (June 2023), and a mere 0.7 years to hit 4% (February 2024)," notes the report. "Now, here we are, at over 5% in the USA! This exponential growth suggests that we're on a promising upward trend."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2048246/linux-reaches-5-on-desktop?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Security researchers say Chinese authorities are using a new type of malware to extract data from seized phones, allowing them to obtain text messages -- including from chat apps such as Signal -- images, location histories, audio recordings, contacts, and more. In a report shared exclusively with TechCrunch, mobile cybersecurity company Lookout detailed the hacking tool called Massistant, which the company said was developed by Chinese tech giant Xiamen Meiya Pico.

Massistant, according to Lookout, is Android software used for the forensic extraction of data from mobile phones, meaning the authorities using it need to have physical access to those devices. While Lookout doesn't know for sure which Chinese police agencies are using the tool, its use is assumed widespread, which means Chinese residents, as well as travelers to China, should be aware of the tool's existence and the risks it poses. [...]

The good news ... is that Massistant leaves evidence of its compromise on the seized device, meaning users can potentially identify and delete the malware, either because the hacking tool appears as an app, or can be found and deleted using more sophisticated tools such as the Android Debug Bridge, a command line tool that lets a user connect to a device through their computer. The bad news is that at the time of installing Massistant, the damage is done, and authorities already have the person's data. "It's a big concern. I think anybody who's traveling in the region needs to be aware that the device that they bring into the country could very well be confiscated and anything that's on it could be collected," said Kristina Balaam, a researcher at Lookout who analyzed the malware. "I think it's something everybody should be aware of if they're traveling in the region."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2042245/chinese-authorities-are-using-a-new-tool-to-hack-seized-phones-and-extract-data?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Steam has begun banning games that violate the payment rules of banks and card networks, targeting adult content in particular -- especially titles with extreme or controversial themes. Engadget reports: The new clause states that "content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers" is not allowed and could result in removal from the platform. In other words, if credit card companies get mad about something, they could actually have the power to ban a game. The clause goes on to say that this will affect "certain kinds of adult-only content."

This has likely already resulted in many games being pulled off the platform. SteamDB doesn't give a reason for these removals, but the timing does match up.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2034212/steam-now-bans-games-that-violate-the-rules-and-standards-of-payment-processors?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI has added Google Cloud as a provider for ChatGPT and its API, expanding beyond Microsoft to address growing demand for computing power. CNBC reports: OpenAI has added Google to a list of suppliers, specifying that ChatGPT and its application programming interface will use the Google Cloud Platform, as well as Microsoft, CoreWeave and Oracle. The announcement amounts to a win for Google, whose cloud unit is younger and smaller than Amazon's and Microsoft's. Google also has cloud business with Anthropic, which was established by former OpenAI executives. The Google infrastructure will run in the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2030234/openai-says-it-will-use-googles-cloud-for-chatgpt?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: Italian YouTuber Once Were Nerd covers a variety of retro gaming topics, but his reviews of ANBERNIC devices appear to be the straw that broke the camel's back. According to the video [here], customs enforcement officers from the Guardia di Finanza showed up at his home and office on April 15 with a search warrant to investigate promotion of pirated copyrighted materials. They seized a variety of ANBERNIC, Powkiddy, and TrimUI gaming handhelds from his collection. In total, more than 30 consoles were taken. The creator, assuming he didn't do anything wrong, complied with demands, providing full transcripts of his conversations and chats with gaming handheld manufacturers. The officers also took his phone, promising to return it in a few days. It was returned two months later, on June 15.

According to the video, officials are not required to disclose what exactly the charges are or who has brought them until the initial investigation is complete under Italian law. At that point, the case is either dismissed or goes to trial. The complaint specifically mentions reproduction of copyrighted material from Nintendo and Sony, but the case may originate from the agency itself. However, in the meantime officials have the option to shut down his channel, even before proving any wrongdoing. This is a scary prospect for any creator who has spent years building a channel, and unlike YouTube copyright strikes, there's likely no remedy.

Currently, officials contest that his reviews of ANBERNIC devices like the RG Slide, which often, but not always, ship with microSD cards filled with copyrighted ROMs, are punishable under Article 171 ter of the Italian Copyright Law. This law, which was originally written in 1941, allows for a maximum punishment of 15,000 euros (or 30 million Italian Lira, since the law pre-dates the Euro) and three years of jail time.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2021243/a-retro-gaming-youtuber-faces-possible-jail-time-for-reviewing-gaming-handhelds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

The abstract of a paper featured on NBER: Most U.S. innovation output originates from firms that operate R&D facilities across multiple local markets. We study how this geographic structure influences aggregate innovation and growth, and whether it is socially optimal. First, we develop an endogenous growth model featuring multi-market innovative firms that generate knowledge spillovers to geographically proximate firms. In equilibrium, firms may operate in too few or too many local markets, depending on how sensitive are the local spillovers they generate to their local size. Second, to quantify these effects, we link the model to data on firms' R&D locations, patents, and citation networks. Using an event-study design, we show that firms' spatial expansion increases spillovers to other firms and estimate how these spillovers depend on a firm's local footprint. Our estimates imply that U.S. innovative firms operate in too few markets relative to the social optimum. Third, using quantitative counterfactuals, we find that policies promoting broader spatial scope yield larger welfare gains than standard R&D subsidies. Moreover, unlike R&D subsidies, such policies can also reduce regional inequality.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/194217/the-geography-of-innovative-firms?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

VMware has notified partners that its current channel program will end, replacing it with an invitation-only system that significantly reduces the number of authorized partners. Partners not invited to the new VMware Cloud Service Provider program would have received non-renewal notices on July 15, 2025, and can continue transactions only until October 31, 2025, after which they may service existing contracts through their current terms.

The company is also ending its White Label program on October 31, 2025. The changes mark the second major partner program overhaul in 18 months, following Broadcom's January 2024 decision to terminate partners operating VMware-powered clouds with fewer than 3,500 processor cores.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/1850252/vmware-reboots-its-partner-program-again?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli writes: Meta has partnered with Amrize and the University of Illinois to develop an "AI-optimized" concrete mix that cuts carbon by 35% for its new data center.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/1813221/meta-uses-open-source-ai-to-design-greener-concrete-for-its-next-data-center?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google will now let everyone in the US call local businesses using AI. The feature, which is now available in Search, allows you to use AI for pricing or availability information without having to talk on the phone.

Google first started testing this feature in January, and it's still only available for certain kinds of businesses, like pet groomers, dry cleaners, and auto shops. When you search for one of these services, like a pet groomer, Google will display a new "have AI check pricing" prompt beneath the business listing.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/1732222/googles-ai-can-now-make-phone-calls?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Amazon.com marked its 30th anniversary Wednesday, three decades after Jeff Bezos launched the company as an online bookstore promising "one million titles" from Seattle. The e-commerce giant began in 1995 with Bezos, his then-wife MacKenzie Scott, and seven employees.

The company now employs 1.5 million people and carries a market capitalization exceeding $2 trillion. Amazon has expanded from books into groceries through its $13.7 billion Whole Foods acquisition, cloud computing via Amazon Web Services, and entertainment with Prime Video.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/1634255/amazon-turns-30?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

WeTransfer has reversed controversial terms of service changes after users protested language suggesting uploaded files could be used to "improve machine learning models."

The file-sharing service, popular among creative professionals and used by 80 million users across 190 countries, clarified that user content had never been used to train AI models and removed all references to machine learning from its updated terms. Creative users including voice actors, filmmakers, and journalists had threatened to cancel subscriptions over the changes.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/165222/wetransfer-backtracks-on-terms-suggesting-user-files-could-train-ai-models-after-backlash?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Digital tokens designed to track popular stocks have suffered extreme price deviations since launching two weeks ago, with an Amazon-tracking token briefly spiking to more than 100 times the underlying stock's closing price. The token AMZNX hit $23,781.22 on crypto trading platform Jupiter on July 3, while Amazon shares had closed the previous day around $200.

A similar Apple-tracking token jumped to $236.72 on July 3, representing a 12% premium to the actual stock price. Companies including Robinhood, Kraken, Gemini and Bybit launched these blockchain-based versions of U.S. stocks in late June for non-U.S. customers. Robinhood is facing scrutiny from Lithuania's central bank after launching tokens tied to OpenAI and SpaceX without permission from either company, prompting OpenAI to disavow the tokens on social media.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/1428240/stock-tracking-tokens-debut-with-price-chaos-amazon-token-spikes-100x?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Seagate has released its first heat-assisted magnetic recording hard drives for individual buyers, marking the commercial debut of technology the company has developed for more than two decades. The 30TB IronWolf Pro and Exos M drives cost $600, while 28TB models are priced at $570.

The drives use HAMR technology, which uses tiny lasers to heat and expand drive platter sections within nanoseconds to write data at higher densities. Seagate announced delivery of HAMR drives up to 36TB to datacenter customers in late 2024. The consumer models use conventional magnetic recording technology and are built on Seagate's Mosaic 3+ platform, achieving areal densities of 3TB per disk.

Western Digital plans to release its first HAMR drives in 2027, though it has reached 32TB capacity using shingled magnetic recording. Toshiba will sample HAMR drives for testing in 2025 but has not announced public availability dates.

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Airbus's Silicon Valley innovation center Acubed and Google spinout SandboxAQ have successfully tested a quantum-sensing navigation device as an alternative to GPS during 150 hours of flights across the continental United States. The toaster-sized MagNav device uses quantum physics to measure unique magnetic signatures in Earth's crust [non-paywalled, syndicated link], with an AI algorithm matching those signatures to exact locations.

The technology achieved Federal Aviation Administration requirements by pinpointing aircraft location within two nautical miles 100% of the time and within 550 meters 64% of the time. SandboxAQ CEO Jack Hidary called it "the first novel absolute navigation system to our knowledge in the last 50 years." The analog system cannot be jammed or spoofed like GPS, which faces increasing tampering in the Middle East and around Ukraine and Russia.

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