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[>] EMACS Turns 50
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 21:22:02


"EMACS, the mother of all editors, turns 50!" writes Slashdot reader dr_jerry, sharing a report from MIT Technology Review: Programming used to be a very different experience from the one we know today. In fact, the first programmers didn't write code at all; the six women who worked on the ENIAC, one of the world's first computers, at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946 did it by physically configuring switches, cables, and plugboards.

A few years later, MIT engineers programmed the Whirlwind by punching code onto paper tape that was then loaded into the computer's memory -- making it among the first "stored-program" machines. Later, they and others moved on to punch cards, one for each line of code.

By the early 1960s, programmers with interactive computers could use a "line editor" to type their code on teletypes -- large, noisy keyboard-and-printer machines. They'd type one line of code at a time, and their work would be saved on a spinning hard disk the size of a modern washing machine. But there was still no such thing as the now-familiar full-screen text editors that allow programmers to see and modify many lines at a time on a display.

One of the first such tools, EMACS, turns 50 this year, and it is still widely used. EMACS first ran on the early video terminals at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1976, but its core concepts were so powerful that it was rewritten for many operating systems in the decades that followed. Apple even distributed it with Mac OS X. Beyond that, the software-sharing community that started around EMACS helped give rise to the modern-day free software movement and the GNU/Linux operating system.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/28/1541214/emacs-turns-50?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] FCC Approves Amazon Leo's $11.5 Billion Acquisition of Globalstar
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 20:22:02


The FCC has approved (PDF) Amazon Leo's $11.5 billion acquisition of satellite operator Globalstar, giving the Starlink rival additional infrastructure and spectrum to expand into direct-to-device satellite connectivity. Engadget reports: You may not know Globalstar but have possibly used its services, as the company provides Apple's emergency satellite connectivity for compatible iPhones and Watches. Interestingly, Apple also held a 20 percent stake in Globalstar prior to its takeover. As part of the deal, Leo will power satellite services for supported iPhone and Apple Watch models.

Leo, a rival to SpaceX's Starlink, has been active of late. The company recently announced that it has 400 satellites in orbit and revealed last month that it had launched high-quality satellite internet service in Uzbekistan. It's teaming up with Delta to eventually bring satellite internet to flights, as well. Amazon recently added six new Arianespace launches and aims to have more than 3,000 low-earth orbit satellites up in the near future, still well short of SpaceX's 11,000 satellites.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/10/28/1532238/fcc-approves-amazon-leos-115-billion-acquisition-of-globalstar?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Ghostty 1.4.0
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 19:44:04


Команда разработчиков представила Ghostty 1.4.0 — крупный релиз популярного эмулятора терминала. Новая версия вобрала в себя 7 месяцев активной разработки: над ней трудились 172 контрибьютора, сделавших 2 289 коммитов. Обновление приносит колоссальное ускорение, снижение потребления памяти, полноценную поддержку протокола Kitty и множество других улучшений для всех поддерживаемых платформ.

Ghostty — это быстрый, многофункциональный и кроссплатформенный эмулятор терминала, использующий собственный пользовательский интерфейс и аппаратное ускорение графики. Ghostty построен на libghostty — высокопортативной, встраиваемой библиотеке, которая предоставляет базовую эмуляцию терминала, состояние рендеринга и многое другое. libghostty [ лежит в основе всех встроенных терминалов в IDE от JetBrains ]( https://blog.jetbrains.com/platform/2026/10/jetbrains-terminal-now-uses-ghostty/ ) , и сейчас ведутся работы [ по замене ядра терминала с libvterm на libghostty ]( https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/39773 ) в Neovim.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18409755#cut0 ) )

[>] Google Begins Certifying Registered App Stores For Android
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 19:22:02


An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Running an app ecosystem has gotten a lot more complex for Google after its loss in the Epic Games antitrust case. While U.S. users can access app stores in Google Play by court order, international users will use Google's voluntary Registered App Stores program. Google has announced that stores wishing to be part of that program are now free to apply, and support will roll out to some Android devices later this year. App stores accepted into the program will enjoy preferential treatment on the Android platform. Users of approved stores will be able to install apps with a single click, similar to the experience in the Play Store. These stores will also be allowed to update apps silently in the background like Google's store does.

[...] Registered App Stores are still happening on Android, but they won't be supported in the U.S. -- you can go to Google Play for alternative stores stateside, but so far, Aptoide remains the only one listed. Those operating Android app storefronts who want to be included in the international program can now review the program and begin the enrollment process. Any store hoping to get approval will have to adhere to a number of requirements, including protecting intellectual property, removing illegal content, and publishing a privacy policy for both users and developers. Google also requires several ongoing security measures to ensure the stores do not give malware easier access to Android devices. As part of the application process, store operators must provide documentation for all these points (in English) and upload copies of all their apps.

It costs $10,000 per year to participate in the Android Registered App Stores program, and that fee must be paid before Google will review the application. Google says this fee covers the additional support necessary to run the program. There may also be additional review fees if Google detects a store has a problem with malware. Google plans to roll out support in dozens of nations, which includes most of the world outside of the U.S. and Europe. The program goes live on December 1, but it will only work on Android devices running the latest builds of Android 17. Google says support will start with Android 17 QPR2, which is expected to arrive on Pixel phones in the coming weeks.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/10/28/0313217/google-begins-certifying-registered-app-stores-for-android?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Удалённая уязвимость в серверных UEFI-прошивках, эксплуатируемая через отправку ICMP-пакета
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 17:44:03


В TianoCore EDK II (EFI Development Kit II), открытой эталонной реализации UEFI, применяемой в большинстве серверных материнских плат, устранена критическая уязвимость (CVE-2026-97631). Уязвимость присутствует в драйвере PXE и может быть эксплуатирована через отправку специально оформленных ICMP-пакетов во время сетевой загрузки в сетях IPv4 или IPv6. Атака не требует аутентификации и позволяет злоумышленнику выполнить свой код с привилегиями UEFI-прошивки на этапе до передачи управления операционной системе, что может быть использовано для обхода механизма верифицированной загрузки UEFI Secure Boot и подстановки вредоносных компонентов на этапе загрузки.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=66565

[>] Astronomers May Have Just Discovered Our Solar System's Sixth Dwarf Planet
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2026-10-28 15:22:02


Astronomers using the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have discovered 2026 ED138, a large object beyond Neptune that could become the solar system's sixth recognized dwarf planet if further observations confirm it is massive enough to be round. Located about 46 times farther from the Sun than Earth, the object is estimated to be 600 to 1,500 kilometers wide and had remained hidden because it lies against a particularly crowded field of Milky Way stars. Scientific American reports: The discovery was made by running billions of pieces of data collected by the Rubin Observatory through a search code developed by Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian astronomers Matthew Holman and Kevin Napier. "My first reaction was one of excited disbelief," Holman said in a statement. "Objects like this are very rare, so I immediately started checking whether I or the code had done something wrong."

When Holman and his colleague Mario Juric of the University of Washington went to double-check, they found 30 more observations of the object by Rubin that dated to between March and July 2026. Looking at other observation tools, the pair found even more sightings going back to 2016. Together, these data allowed the astronomers to begin mapping out 2026 ED138's orbit. The suspected dwarf planet is about 46 times as far from the sun as Earth, making it even more remote than Pluto, which is just 40 times as far. The object is also tilted off the solar system's plane by around 25 degrees, an arrangement that could be linked to disruptions caused by Neptune's gravitational pull.

Initial measurements indicate that 2026 ED138 has a diameter between 600 and 1,500 kilometers (373 and 932 miles), which makes it one of the largest dwarf planet candidates yet detected. But size isn't all that matters: further observations are required to determine if the object has enough mass to be pulled into a round shape, which is a key requirement for a dwarf planet. Despite its size, 2026 ED138 was able to avoid detection for all these years because it's located in a part of the night sky that's crowded with stars whose light drowned it out.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/10/28/035218/astronomers-may-have-just-discovered-our-solar-systems-sixth-dwarf-planet?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Взлом сервера с модами, дополнениями и ресурсами для игрового движка Luanti
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 13:44:03


Разработчики свободного игрового движка Luanti, позволяющего создавать игры в стиле Minecraft, объявили об инциденте, в результате которого атакующие получили доступ к серверу проекта, обслуживающему каталог content.luanti.org, через который производится загрузка модов, игр, дополнений, текстур и прочих ресурсов в экосистеме Luanti. В руки атакующих попали персональные данные, IP-адреса и хэши паролей (bcrypt) зарегистрированных пользователей. Атакующие также имели возможность вносить изменения в пакеты, распространяемые через каталог ContentDB.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=66563

[>] Firefox 159
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 12:44:03

[>] Основатель CentOS и Rocky Linux представил Linux-совместимое ядро Ginux, написанное на Rust
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 12:44:02


Грегори Курцер (Gregory Kurtzer), основатель дистрибутивов CentOS и Rocky Linux, представил проект Ginux, развивающий ядро операционной системы на языке Rust, нацеленное на достижение совместимости с ядром Linux. Опубликованный исследовательский прототип уже способен загрузить системное окружение дистрибутивов Alpine с BusyBox и Rocky Linux 10 с systemd в многопользовательском консольном режиме. Код проекта распространяется под лицензией Apache 2.0. Поддерживается работа на системах с архитектурой x86-64.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=66562

[>] CDC Warns of Rising Threat of Drug-Resistant Germs
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 11:22:01


The CDC estimates that 19 drug-resistant pathogens cause 9.7 million infections and more than 50,000 deaths annually in the U.S., with resistance continuing to outpace development of new treatments. "The agency considers this problem to be one of our most urgent public health threats," reports NBC News. From the report: The report is the CDC's first comprehensive assessment of these drug-resistant pathogens in seven years. [...] The new report offers a detailed picture of these threats in the U.S., including a ranking of which are the most urgent concerns, based on the number and severity of infections they cause and how easily preventable or transmissible they are. The ranking also factors in how many treatment options exist and their costs. [...] The report estimates that 19 drug-resistant germs cause 9.7 million infections annually in the U.S. Of these, four pathogens are ranked as most worrisome, including the fungus Candida auris and the bacteria that causes gonorrhea, which has become resistant to all but one class of antibiotics used to treat it.

The other two urgent threats, according to the CDC, are the bacteria Acinetobacter and Enterobacterales, both of which are resistant to a class of antibiotics widely considered a "last resort" for patients. In addition, the report adds a new bacteria to the list of "concerning" threats, which are considered less worrisome but still warrant monitoring: neisseria meningitidis, which causes meningococcal disease. The rare but life-threatening illness can be prevented through childhood vaccinations, but the bacteria that causes it is slowly developing a resistance to penicillin and another antibiotic called ciprofloxacin.

The report also offers some good news: The CDC determined that the bacteria Clostridioides difficile, or "C. diff," which causes diarrhea and inflammation of the colon and can be deadly, is causing fewer cases year over year. The agency downgraded it to a serious threat, whereas it was categorized as urgent in the prior version of the report, which came out in 2019.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/10/28/0256204/cdc-warns-of-rising-threat-of-drug-resistant-germs?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] STATS 2026-10-27
spnet.stats
root(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 11:11:01


TOP20 VISITORS:

[1] ClaudeBot point=0 web=276 up=10.1MB (20%)
[2] PetalBot point=5 web=1312 up=8.2MB (16%) <--- PetalBot
[3] AhrefsBot point=0 web=958 up=7.5MB (14%)
[4] 216.244.66.x point=0 web=148 up=5.8MB (11%)
[5] Amazon point=0 web=150 up=2.0MB (3%)
[6] 217.114.158.x point=25 web=0 up=1.3MB (2%) <--- fox (1/hr)
[7] 16.216.88.x point=0 web=147 up=1.0MB (2%)
[8] 104.250.53.x point=0 web=122 up=1.0MB (1%)
[9] 54.37.252.x point=0 web=11 up=0.7MB (1%)
[10] TikTok point=0 web=53 up=0.7MB (1%)
[11] 37.252.14.x point=20 web=0 up=0.6MB (1%) <--- ake (1/hr)
[12] Google point=0 web=65 up=0.5MB (1%)
[13] 145.239.195.x point=0 web=4 up=0.4MB (<1%)
[14] 147.135.252.x point=0 web=7 up=0.3MB (<1%)
[15] 135.181.213.x point=0 web=4 up=0.3MB (<1%)
[16] 192.3.149.x point=0 web=35 up=0.3MB (<1%)
[17] 104.250.52.x point=0 web=29 up=0.2MB (<1%)
[18] 116.179.37.x point=0 web=35 up=0.2MB (<1%)
[19] AwarioBot point=0 web=5 up=0.2MB (<1%)
[20] 220.181.108.x point=0 web=20 up=0.1MB (<1%)

TOTAL TRAFFIC: 50MB

[>] Greenhouse Gas Levels Set Records In 2025, UN Says
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 08:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere rose to record highs in 2025, locking in climate impacts that will persist for centuries, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Levels of the three main greenhouse gases -- the climate-warming carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide -- all rose to unprecedented figures in 2025, the U.N.'s weather and climate agency said. The World Meteorological Organization said the rise would lead to more long-term temperature increases for the planet.

The bulletin looks at greenhouse gas concentrations -- the amount of those gases in the atmosphere -- rather than new annual emissions amounts as the world burns more coal, oil and gas. In 2025, carbon dioxide concentrations were at 426.8 parts per million (ppm); methane at 1,948 parts per billion, and nitrous oxide at 339.1 parts per billion. That takes them, respectively, to 153%, 267% and 126% of the pre-industrial levels witnessed before 1750. Of the three major greenhouse gases, CO2 accounts for about 66% of the warming effect on the climate.

Around half of the total CO2 emitted each year remains in the atmosphere; the rest is absorbed by the land and oceans. From 2024 to 2025, the global average concentration of CO2 rose by 2.8 ppm -- smaller than the record surge from 2023 to 2024 of 3.6 ppm. WMO senior scientific officer Oksana Tarasova said this reflected the "recovery of the land carbon sinks and reduced fire carbon emissions in 2025 after the strong 2023/2024 El Nino," the naturally occurring, climate-warming weather phenomenon. "However, a 2.8 ppm annual increase is still a substantial addition of carbon to the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning." It is also above the average growth rate for the past decade of 2.6 ppm -- a figure that stood at 0.8 ppm in the 1960s. "Another year, another new record," said WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett. "Greenhouse gases are trapping an unprecedented amount of heat in the atmosphere, providing energy for more extreme weather and associated risks to our economies and societies.

Further reading: UN Says Breaching 1.5C Warming Limit Is 'Imminent and Unavoidable'

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/2325218/greenhouse-gas-levels-set-records-in-2025-un-says?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Ford's Most Affordable EV Will Offer Built-In Bidirectional Home Charging
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 03:22:01


Ford's upcoming $28,350 Fathom electric truck will include a built-in inverter capable of supplying up to 10 kW of AC power to a home, bringing bidirectional charging to a significantly cheaper EV. Owners will still need additional Ford home hardware for features like outage backup and peak-rate energy management, but the company expects the necessary equipment to cost substantially less than its previous-generation system. CNET reports: The upcoming Fathom will be based on what Ford calls its Universal EV Platform, designed with the aid of its 2023 acquisition, startup Auto Motive Power, with bidirectional power on the plate from the start. The hardware required to invert the battery's DC energy to an estimated 10 kW of AC home power will be built into the truck, so it won't require a separate wall-mounted inverter box. Ford says the Fathom's system will meet all applicable UL 1741 requirements and IEEE 1547 standards to ensure the vehicle is safely connected to the grid. As for the actual hardware you plug into your car, all signs point to the Fathom using the NACS plug type pioneered by Tesla and now widely adopted by new EVs in North America. In terms of the communication standard -- the one that governs how AC power is routed from the slim wall box to the car's onboard charger -- that'll be via SAE J3068, a software protocol developed for high-power, heavy-duty AC charging.

[...] However, while Fathom's Universal EV Platform eliminates the need for a wall inverter box, it doesn't completely bypass the need for additional hardware to make your home ready to accept bidirectional power. Say you wanted to take advantage of the Home Power Management feature to draw energy into the Fathom's battery when power is cheapest, and then use that energy to offset peak-hour usage when power is most expensive. You'll have to install at least the Ford Home Power Station in your home, at an additional cost. The automaker hasn't specified pricing, but says that it's working to reduce costs and expects this component alone to cost half as much as the first-generation Ford Home Energy system, which debuted at around $1,300. That could put the new system at roughly $650.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/2151204/fords-most-affordable-ev-will-offer-built-in-bidirectional-home-charging?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Growing List of Firms Object to OKX-ICE Tokenized Stock Plans
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 02:22:01


Intel, Oracle, IBM and IonQ have joined a growing list of companies objecting to having tokenized versions of their shares traded through OKX and Intercontinental Exchange's blockchain venture, bringing the total number of objections to 26. About 37% of the companies on OKXICE's original list have now opted out, according to CoinDesk. From the report: The four companies were named in an updated public notice (PDF) dated Monday, Oct. 26, from OKXICE, the two firms' joint venture. They join earlier objectors including Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Cisco and Wells Fargo. The growing list underscores a hurdle for OKXICE and the SEC's new framework for tokenized stock trading: building a market that issuers are willing to join. The agency's five-year "Innovation Exemption" gives qualifying venues room to test round-the-clock blockchain-based trading of stocks, and it also gives public companies an option to block their shares from being offered.

OKXICE issued its initial public notice on Oct. 4, outlining plans to use Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on OKX's XLayer blockchain, with transactions settled in stablecoins. The venue would use automated market makers -- software that executes trades through pools of assets rather than matching buyers and sellers through a conventional order book. Under the framework, venues must notify issuers and give them 30 days to object before offering tokenized versions of their shares.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/2130245/growing-list-of-firms-object-to-okx-ice-tokenized-stock-plans?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Code-Execution Flaw In UEFI Firmware Threatens Most Servers On Planet Earth
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 02:22:01


Ars Technica's Dan Goodin reports: Defenders across the world face the burden of responding to yet another botched code-execution vulnerability, this time in boot-time firmware used by most of the world's server vendors and data centers. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 9.5 out of 10, resides in the TianoCore EDK II, an open source codebase that hardware makers and cloud providers use to create the UEFI firmware that runs during the boot-up sequence. Last year, a representative of the UEFI Forum called (PDF) EDK2 the "preeminent solution / implementation of the UEFI specifications." Virtually all UEFI suppliers (sometimes still called IBVs or independent BIOS vendors), including AMI, Insyde, and Phoenix, use the reference code extensively. Project Mu, Microsoft's hardened EDK2 fork, used the code containing the vulnerable component as well.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-97631, is a memory-corruption flaw in an ICMP component that attackers can exploit to execute malicious code that runs before the operating system and firmware can implement defenses like Secure Boot, which establishes a chain of trust for all code, including the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), loaded during boot. While final payloads delivered by CVE-2026-97631 have no persistence -- meaning they run only once -- they can give attackers a wide opening to install other payloads that also run each time early in the boot process.

The parties that discovered CVE-2026-97631 -- Alex Matrosov of Anthropic and Dan Holmes of Google -- had arranged for it to stay under wraps until a coordinated disclosure that was scheduled for January. AMI, a maker of motherboards and other hardware, published this pull request last month that detailed the vulnerability and included a code fix. Once the post came to the attention of the discovering parties, TianoCore Project members published a public advisory last week. With publicly available patch code, it will be trivial for advanced hackers to learn how the vulnerability is triggered and to build working exploits. Further compounding the urgency, patching UEFI code vulnerabilities in millions of end devices sold and used by thousands of hardware makers and cloud providers is cumbersome and time-consuming.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/2121232/code-execution-flaw-in-uefi-firmware-threatens-most-servers-on-planet-earth?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] 10 уязвимостей в ядре Linux и 4 во FreeBSD, позволяющие получить права root в системе
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 01:44:03


Выявлена серия уязвимостей в ядре Linux и FreeBSD. Уязвимости в Linux дают возможность удалённо выполнить код, поднять свои привилегии в системе, выйти из контейнеров или обойти изоляцию виртуальных машин. Уязвимости во FreeBSD позволяют удалённо остановить работу ядра, поднять свои привилегии в системе и обойти изоляцию гипервизора Bhyve.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=66542

[>] Google's Genie 4 World Model Adds Audio, More Realistic Worlds
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-28 00:22:02


An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google DeepMind released its newest world model, Genie 4, in research preview on Tuesday. The latest model generates the most photorealistic and interactive worlds yet, allowing users to type prompts mid-simulation to change the scene. The model also generates real-time audio that matches the simulated world, including music, ambient noises, and interactive dialogue.

[...] Google released its predecessor, Genie 3, as a research preview a little over a year ago. Aside from being far more photorealistic and featuring audio, Genie 4 allows for freeform edits, like changing the weather or camera angle in real time or adding new people or objects. It can maintain a consistent scene for up to two minutes, double its predecessor's limit, and offers better physics and more human-like characters. Gemini, Google's AI model, is also mo "What we'll increasingly see in the future are these hybrid world models, where you have a combination of Gemini writing code and text, and Genie ingesting that in real time and simulating reality at different levels of abstraction," Tejas Kulkarni, research director at Google, said during a briefing.

Genie 4 is now available to select testers, with a broader rollout planned in the coming weeks for Google AI Ultra subscribers.

You can watch a demo of Genie 4 on YouTube.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/1841227/googles-genie-4-world-model-adds-audio-more-realistic-worlds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Anduril Partners With Qualcomm to Build Laptops On US Soil
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 23:22:01


Longtime Slashdot reader fadethepolice writes: Anduril, arguing that its manufacturing capabilities are directly applicable to laptop manufacturing, is starting a project for a fully 100% U.S.-sourced laptop. The computer will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. I did not see any information about the OS, but I'm assuming that, given the type of processor, this will be Linux-based? "Other companies might design their computers in the U.S., Anduril makes them here,â the Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said in a YouTube video. "We're making parts out of metals that the U.S. knows how to extract, knows how to refine, knows how to process, and knows how to mill at scale at a reasonable price; and that goes for the entire laptop. The same thing goes for the battery technology."

The project, called BlueChip, "will take a phased approach, beginning with expanding domestic sourcing and manufacturing, progressing toward eliminating reliance on foreign suppliers, and ultimately establishing an end-to-end American supply chain." The first device is expected in April 2027.

A press release with additional information is available here.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/1833240/anduril-partners-with-qualcomm-to-build-laptops-on-us-soil?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Apple's Foldable iPhone Duo Draws Early Complaints of the Screen Cracking
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 22:22:01


Apple has acknowledged an inner-display defect affecting a small number of its new $1,999 iPhone Duo foldables after customers reported hearing a crunch while unfolding the device before cracks, lines and other display failures appeared along the crease. Apple is replacing affected phones and investigating the problem.

iFixit believes a failing hinge component may be pressing into and cracking the display rather than the panel itself being defective. Bloomberg reports: Reports of the problem first surfaced on Reddit and other social media sites. Bloomberg News has since independently verified the issue with more than half a dozen customers, who provided photos showing damage to their devices or evidence of their support conversations with Apple. Apple acknowledged the issue in a statement, saying it was "aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units."

"If users experience issues with their iPhone Duo display, they should contact AppleCare for a replacement," the Cupertino, California-based company said. Most Duos aren't affected by the problem, and the units that are impacted exhibit the defect quickly, Apple said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/1630226/apples-foldable-iphone-duo-draws-early-complaints-of-the-screen-cracking?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Cybersecurity CEO Indicted For Allegedly Scamming Millions From Ransomware Victims
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 21:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: A Florida man who was the subject of a 2019 investigation by ProPublica was indicted last month on federal charges that he defrauded clients of his ransomware data recovery firm. According to the Justice Department, the man, Zohar Pinhasi, told customers he could recover their encrypted files without having to pay hackers, when, in reality, he paid the ransom and charged victims a hefty fee on top. The indictment mirrors the findings from ProPublica's 2019 article "The Trade Secret," which centered on Pinhasi and his scheme.

The outlet found that the ransomware victims were being harmed twice: once by the hackers, who locked their targets' files and demanded ransom, and a second time by MonsterCloud, Pinhasi's Florida-based data recovery firm, which misled its clients about not paying ransoms. "By falsely claiming to decrypt ransomware without paying off the ransomers, the defendant re-victimized his clients while extracting a hefty profit for himself," U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said in an Oct. 7 press release. "Our Office will vigorously prosecute ransomware attackers who prey on Americans from across the world and those who cynically profit from their criminal activity." [...] Pinhasi, who went by the alias Zack Green, told ProPublica in 2019 that MonsterCloud never promised clients that their data will be recovered by any particular method. "How we do it, it's our problem," he told ProPublica. "You will get your data back. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride." He called MonsterCloud's data recovery methods a "trade secret."

[...] Federal investigators found that, over the course of the scheme, Pinhasi allegedly charged clients more than $19 million and paid more than $8 million in ransom payments. In one example, Pinhasi made a ransom payment of about $8,200 but charged the client about $150,000. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison. [...] In 2019, Pinhasi touted MonsterCloud's ties to law enforcement as evidence of its integrity. Pistole, who also headed the Transportation Security Administration under President Barack Obama, was listed on MonsterCloud's website as the only member of its "Cyber Security Advisory Council."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/1550230/cybersecurity-ceo-indicted-for-allegedly-scamming-millions-from-ransomware-victims?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Apple Updates MacBook Pro With M6 Chips
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 20:22:01


Ahead of the touchscreen MacBook Pro expected to debut tomorrow, Apple has refreshed its standard 14-inch MacBook Pro with the new M6 processor, promising up to 20% faster multithreaded performance, improved power efficiency, and more powerful on-device AI capabilities. The Verge reports: Announced this morning through a press release, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro features three Thunder 4 USB-C ports that all support charging and DisplayPort connectivity, a MagSafe 3 charging port, full-size HDMI, and an SDXC memory card slot accommodating photographers. Pricing for the new M6 version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 with 16GB of memory, the same as last year's M5 model. Preorders start on October 28th and shipping is expected to begin on November 6th.

The new M6 processor is Apple's first 2nm chip with a bump to a 12-core CPU, up from 10 cores in the M5, and the company says it offers up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance when compared to its predecessor. The M6 also features a Dual 16-core Neural Engine to handle heavy on-device AI tasks, plus an upgraded 12-core GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core. In addition to performance improvements, Apple says its M6 processor is more power efficient.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/1541235/apple-updates-macbook-pro-with-m6-chips?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Релиз Firefox 159
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 19:44:02


Состоялся релиз web-браузера Firefox 159 и сформированы обновления прошлых веток с длительным сроком поддержки - 153.6.0 и 115.44.0. В рамках нового двухнедельного цикла формирования релизов на стадию бета-тестирования переведена ветка Firefox 160, релиз которой намечен на 10 ноября.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=66557

[>] In China, the AI Bubble Has Already Burst
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 19:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: While global tech stocks teeter, in China they have already crashed as lofty valuations collapse under worries about AI demand and curbs on Chinese exports. The meltdown, tanking the mainland STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor leaders by 40% in less than four months and vaporizing some $480 billion in market value, is an ill omen for wobbly world markets and a dampener on China's efforts at encouraging its savers into stocks to fund the AI boom. It has also slammed the brakes on a rally running two years, since economic stimulus promises sent shares soaring, and has stalled Beijing's push to break with a long boom-bust pattern and drive a "slow bull" market that delivers reliable performance. China's broad blue-chip index has dropped about 20% from highs made in June. "The stock market later evolved into a speculative crazy bull," said Beijing-based fund manager Dong Baozhen. "And now we see the bubble bursting." There was no clear trigger for the selloff in China, though traders pointed to high valuations, tax bills, and the threat of foreign bans on Chinese data center equipment. According to Goldman Sachs, AI stocks account for 42% of China's market capitalization and 57% of trading turnover, leaving investors widely exposed to the downturn.
"What's happening is now going to put a stop for many of the companies trying to get themselves listed," said Hong Hao, managing partner and chief investment officer at Lotus Asset Management in Hong Kong.

"Overemphasising the 'technology content' -- that is, the weighting of tech companies by market value in major indexes -- leads to a deviation, even a distortion, in capital behavior," said Leo Wang, partner at Beijing-based Qianchuang Capital. "This created a severe bubble in certain sectors and a serious drain on others."

"Just like all other Chinese manufacturers, (chipmakers and AI suppliers) will eventually end up in a price war," said fund manager Wang Zhuo, partner at Shanghai Zhuozhu Investment Management. "There's no exception," he said. "All bubbles inevitably burst."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/0218203/in-china-the-ai-bubble-has-already-burst?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Denmark Gives Up On Replacing Microsoft Office With Collabora
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 15:22:01


Denmark's Ministry of Digitization reportedly abandoned a pilot to replace Microsoft Office with the open-source Collabora suite less than six months after it began. Tom's Hardware reports: According to Danish publication Computerworld, the pilot project was launched in 2025 and involved 38 employees, all of whom would start using the British open-source Collabora office suite instead of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The experiment was initiated by the then Digitization Minister Caroline Stage, who wanted to reduce the country's dependence on American technology. Denmark isn't alone in moving away from U.S. software, with France and the Netherlands both taking steps to replace Microsoft Windows. However, it seemed that the experiment fizzled out less than six months after it started. It had reportedly ended by the time the Danish government called for an early election in February 2026, with some employees complaining about issues with style, paragraph formatting, blank pages, and challenges with tracking changes.

But even though it's been months since the experiment reportedly ended, Prof. Mikkel Flyberbom of the Copenhagen Business School complains that the project hasn't been properly evaluated. "It's a good idea to test alternatives in a pilot project," the professor said in an email. "However, I wish that the ministry would take the opportunity to learn from the pilot project and share those experiences with other parts of the public sector."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/2222246/denmark-gives-up-on-replacing-microsoft-office-with-collabora?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Выпуск DinoX 2.3.2 кроссплатформенного клиента для XMPP/Jabber
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 12:44:03


Доступен выпуск проекта DinoX 2.3.2, развивающего кроссплатформенный форк открытого коммуникационного клиента Dino, использующего протокол XMPP. В отличие от приложений Psi, Gajim, Pidgin и MirandaNG в DinoX все актуальные для современного пользователя XEP-спецификации доступны из коробки, без необходимости изменения настроек и установки внешних плагинов. В DinoX также предложен более привычный массовому пользователю интерфейс, напоминающий большинство мессенджеров последнего десятилетия. Код написан на языке Vala (интерфейс на GTK) и распространяется под лицензий GPLv3.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=66554

[>] Уязвимости в Rust-библиотеках zip-rs и librsvg
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 11:44:03


В библиотеке zip-rs, написанной на языке Rust и насчитывающей около 10 млн загрузок в неделю, выявлена уязвимость (CVE-2026-115905), позволяющая создавать архивы, которые выглядят безобидными, но при распаковке из них извлекаются другие, изначально не показанные в списке, файлы. Файлы могут быть размещены в архиве вне структуры "Central Directory", из-за чего при просмотре списка файлов показывается одно содержимое, но при распаковке через API ZipStreamReader извлекаются другие файлы. Проблеме присвоен уровень опасности 10 из 10. Уязвимость исправлена в версии zip-rs 9.0.5.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=66555

[>] Industry Executives Knew For Decades That Microplastics Were Infiltrating the Human Body
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 11:22:02


Susanne Rust of the Los Angeles Times reports (paywalled) that industry executives knew for decades that microplastics were infiltrating the human body. Slashdot reader joshuark shares an excerpt from the report: Scientists today say we're just beginning to understand the harm that the tiny bits of plastic we drink, eat and breathe are doing to the human body. Internal memos among company scientists and executives obtained by The Times reveal that for at least half a century, the plastics industry has been aware of and concerned about the potential for microplastic contamination in the human body. But recently discovered chemical company documents dating back several decades show that industry scientists have long been aware of -- and concerned about -- the way microplastic particles migrate beyond the gut in animals and humans, depositing in important organs. And the potential for that knowledge to affect the plastic food packaging industry.

Their concern goes back to 1974 and a scientific meeting at a New York City hotel, where a German gastroenterologist presented a scientific paper that showed for the first time that ingested particles like microplastics could infiltrate the rest of the body. His presentation was largely overlooked by the government scientists in attendance but became a point of worried discussion among company scientists. Tracey Woodruff, professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University, who reviewed the documents, said they indicate scientists and executives at major chemical companies have known and remained silent even as microplastics accumulated in tissues. She likened it to other industries that knew about pollutants -- greenhouse gases, asbestos and tobacco -- but did not take action to make them safer.

A spokesperson with the chemical industry's largest trade group took issue with that characterization. "Scientific debate over what the evidence shows is not silence. It is how sound science and effective policy advance," said Craig Davis, senior director of plastics chemistry at the American Chemistry Council. "Our industry is committed to advancing microplastics science by supporting independent research and policies that would do so."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/10/27/0232248/industry-executives-knew-for-decades-that-microplastics-were-infiltrating-the-human-body?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] STATS 2026-10-26
spnet.stats
root(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 11:11:02


TOP20 VISITORS:

[1] ClaudeBot point=0 web=147 up=15.2MB (19%)
[2] 216.244.66.x point=0 web=238 up=14.9MB (19%)
[3] PetalBot point=11 web=1308 up=8.9MB (11%) <--- PetalBot
[4] AhrefsBot point=0 web=840 up=6.2MB (8%)
[5] DataForSeoBot point=1 web=87 up=3.3MB (4%) <--- DataForSeoBot
[6] 37.252.14.x point=144 web=0 up=2.6MB (3%) <--- ake (6/hr)
[7] Amazon point=0 web=109 up=2.1MB (2%)
[8] 217.114.158.x point=26 web=0 up=1.3MB (1%) <--- fox (1/hr)
[9] 16.216.88.x point=0 web=158 up=1.3MB (1%)
[10] 85.215.50.x point=0 web=8 up=1.2MB (1%)
[11] 104.250.53.x point=0 web=147 up=1.2MB (1%)
[12] 147.135.252.x point=0 web=18 up=1.1MB (1%)
[13] TikTok point=0 web=54 up=1.0MB (1%)
[14] 54.37.252.x point=0 web=10 up=0.7MB (<1%)
[15] Facebook point=0 web=14 up=0.6MB (<1%)
[16] 51.83.6.x point=0 web=9 up=0.5MB (<1%)
[17] 51.75.119.x point=0 web=5 up=0.4MB (<1%)
[18] 81.167.26.x point=0 web=6 up=0.4MB (<1%)
[19] 192.3.149.x point=0 web=24 up=0.3MB (<1%)
[20] 37.221.198.x point=0 web=2 up=0.3MB (<1%)

TOTAL TRAFFIC: 76MB

[>] US Designates Helium As a Critical Material
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 08:22:02


An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The U.S. designated helium as a critical material on Friday because it's indispensable for making semiconductors that are essential to energy generation, and the global supply is at risk of disruption, according to the Energy Department. The designation by the Energy Department means that more federal financing will be available for helium producers and that the government will monitor it more closely. Helium is primarily produced as a byproduct of natural gas processing. The United States is the world's largest producer of natural gas and of helium. Qatar and Russia are the other top helium producers.

[...] Helium makes balloons rise, but that's not why the DOE is interested in it. Helium plays an important role in wind, solar and nuclear energy production, space exploration, medical imaging and research. Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson said helium's unique properties make it irreplaceable, such as the fact that it's non-combustible and has the lowest boiling point of any gas. The nation needs an ample supply for semiconductors, quantum and super computing, and superconducting magnets, added Robertson, who oversees the Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation.

[...] Despite environmental concerns with recovering helium from natural gas, there are also opportunities, said Greeshma Gadikota, director of the Lenfast Center for Sustainable Energy at Columbia University. "If we burn the natural gas, there are a lot of CO2 emissions associated with that," Gadikota said. "But if you just extract the helium and use it, the uses of it don't contribute necessarily to greenhouse gas emissions. "So from a climate standpoint, if we are going to continue down the line of extracting natural gas and recovering helium," she added, "I would prefer to see natural gas being used in a form where we directly produce hydrogen and we produce solid carbon." Hydrogen is a clean burning fuel, and solid carbon can provide permanent carbon sequestration and can be used widely in industrial applications, including rubber and pigments.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/227203/us-designates-helium-as-a-critical-material?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] PHP2Shell Security Flaws Now Successfully Exploited
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 03:22:02


The critical PHP2Shell vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619) have now been successfully exploited in the wild, just days after patches were released and initial exploitation attempts failed. BleepingComputer reports: The malicious activity was caught by Adel Karimi, detection and response lead at Perplexity, whose honeypots recorded evidence of confirmed remote code execution against an Apache mod_php installation running PHP 8.4.26. "This is now confirmed RCE with usable memory disclosure, not just a crash followed by a suspicious process. The response delivered an 800 KiB decoded cookie dump, and a function address derived from that dump using the public exploit's offsets appears in the subsequent execution payload," Karimi shared.

"The evidence demonstrates this chain on the intentionally favorable single-worker mod_php profile; it is not a measurement of exploit reliability on other worker counts, PHP builds, or applications," he added. Karimi's findings were also confirmed by Expel threat researcher Marcus Hutchins, who has been tracking a stream of alleged successful PHP2Shell exploitation reports.

"This is by far the highest quality confirmation of in-the-wild php2shell exploitation I've seen so far. Deep technical breakdown of a successful exploitation attempt against an Apache mod_php installation running PHP 8.4.26," Hutchins said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/2150206/php2shell-security-flaws-now-successfully-exploited?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Skydance Offers Buyouts, Gives 5-Day RTO Order
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 02:22:01


Skydance, as it begins integrating Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, is offering voluntary buyouts to some employees and imposing a five-day-a-week office requirement. Layoffs are also expected as the company targets more than $6 billion in annualized cost savings within three years. Variety reports: The new program was outlined by chairman and CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz in a memo to staffers Monday. "As we bring our teams together, we recognize that not everyone will see their future here, and we respect that. To give eligible employees the option to move on in a way that works for them, we are introducing a Voluntary Buyout (VBO) Program," the execs wrote. "Those who qualify will receive an individual communication with their personalized details and terms, and a window to decide whether to accept this one-time offer."

They added, "Please know we don't take any of this lightly. We are clear about what we're building: a company that tells the stories people around the world love, embraces new ways to connect with audiences, and leads the next era of media and entertainment. We have the talent, the creative firepower and the ambition to do it, and we will get there together."

[...] In the Oct. 26 memo, Ellison and Kreiz also said the new Skydance is moving to a mandatory five-days-per-week in-office policy across the company. "We believe in-person collaboration is vital to our culture and to the success of our business. Especially in a creative company like ours, the best ideas come from people in the same room, sharing perspectives, challenging one another and solving problems," the execs said. "We truly believe this is in the best interest of our company and our people. We've seen the benefits firsthand at Paramount, and we want every part of Skydance to share in them."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/2128235/skydance-offers-buyouts-gives-5-day-rto-order?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Firefox Tries to Bring Back the Internet's 'Good Old Days'
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 02:22:01


Mozilla launched a new ad campaign for Firefox that leverages early internet nostalgia in a bid to win back users who switched browsers. "Today's internet tracks you, interrupts you, and asks for permissions it already took. But it wasn't always that way, and it's not how it's supposed to work," writes Mozilla CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo in a post on LinkedIn. "It's how a few companies decided it should work, because it pays."

"We're making a different bet at Firefox. Remember us? Well, we're still here, and we don't think the internet should be like this..." The ad features viral internet stars from yesteryear, including Tay Zonday of "Chocolate Rain" fame, Gary Brolsma of "Numa Numa", Noah Ritter, better known as the "Apparently Kid", and Laina Morris, the face of the "Overly Attached Girlfriend" meme, among others.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/1931208/firefox-tries-to-bring-back-the-internets-good-old-days?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Instagram Chases YouTube With a Push For Longer, Widescreen Videos
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 02:22:01


Instagram is testing a new longform, horizontal video format called "Features" as it pushes further into YouTube territory and expands its presence on TVs. The Verge reports: Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has been against doing longform video on the platform "for a long time," he says in a six-and-a-half-minute video (here's the widescreen version) with VP of product Tessa Lyons, saying that "one of my concerns has been, how do we make sure that we keep Instagram not just about entertainment, but about connecting with friends." If you watch a longform video, "it's a lot of Reels, photos, and carousels that you might not have sent to a friend," meaning less likes and shares. Now, though, the team is working on making shortform and longform video "symbiotic," according to Mosseri, like podcasts or comedy specials that can be both long videos and broken up into shorter ones.

The announcement of this widescreen video push also follows the launch of Instagram's TV app late last year. That app launched first as a Reels-focused experience and as a pilot for Amazon Fire TV devices in the US, but it's since expanded to Google TVs, Samsung TVs and Apple TV, and Instagram launched new features like the ability to watch Stories earlier this year.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/1846258/instagram-chases-youtube-with-a-push-for-longer-widescreen-videos?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Walter Koenig, Chekov On Original 'Star Trek,' Dies At 90
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 02:22:01


Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: Walter Koenig, the actor who played Pavel Chekov in the original "Star Trek" series and several movies, has died, his rep confirmed to CBS News. He was 90. Koenig died Sunday night at his home in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, talent rep Zachery McGinnis said in a statement. He died surrounded by his daughter and niece, McGinnis said.

In 'Star Trek,' Ensign Chekov was the sole member of the spaceship Enterprise bridge staff from what was the Communist bloc. His friendly, supportive presence showed how the rival nations (in the far-off future in which the show was set) were capable of working together. Speaking heavily Russian-accented English, Chekov embodied stereotypical Russian personality traits, including fierce pride, love of poetry and blind loyalty. "Through countless convention appearances and interactions with fans, he shared his kindness, wit, and appreciation with everyone fortunate enough to meet him. He understood what Star Trek meant to people and embraced the community that grew around it," McGinnis said. "Thank you, Walter, for the memories, the inspiration, and for boldly going where few have gone before."

Watch some of the Chekov's best moments on YouTube.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/1828230/walter-koenig-chekov-on-original-star-trek-dies-at-90?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Highway Thieves Are Spoofing GPS To Steal Millions In Data Center-Bound Cargo
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 02:22:01


Highway thieves have stolen more than $100 million in data center equipment since June, employing increasingly sophisticated tactics such as forging driver IDs and spoofing GPS tracking systems. NBC News (paywalled) reports that thieves have "made away with more than $100 million in data center freight." Ars Technica reports: Here's how they said thieves get away with it: First, thieves hack freight brokers' accounts on shipment-listing websites and post fake shipments to lure real bids, then send a malicious link to any trucking companies that respond. Once victims click, thieves install software to take control of their accounts and start bidding on real shipments. Sometimes, a real delivery driver is hired to collect the cargo, unaware of the scam, and other times fake driver's licenses are used to get accomplices hired. Either way, the goods are eventually transferred to a driver working with the thieves to resell the gear, and, in one of the largest thefts, tracking coordinates were spoofed to prevent digital monitoring. Equipment commonly targeted includes "servers, fiber-optic cables, computer memory chips, copper wires, and bitcoin mining machines," NBC News reported.

Some trailers hit seem to be carrying only data center equipment, like two stolen freights found in Illinois. The Cook County Sheriff's Office estimated those contained $300,000 worth of copper wire spools and about $1 million in "custom-made data center modular power solutions equipment," NBC News reported. Other trucks impacted were carrying additional freight, like a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department case where "data center cooling equipment" bound for Deepcool AI was recovered among nicotine pouches, televisions, shoes, printers, speakers, and skin care cosmetics. Experts worry that means Americans may be broadly harmed by the thefts, not just the AI industry.

While some stolen goods have been recovered, in two of the largest thefts that NBC News found, none of the equipment was found, and off-duty cops hired to escort the shipments were targeted in hit-and-runs. [...] Broadly, cargo thieves are infiltrating email accounts to find lucrative shipments, misdirecting shipments, disrupting GPS tracking, and using AI to create fake driver's licenses to get accomplices hired as delivery drivers. LASD's Sgt. David Pantoja told NBC News "that's how most of it is being done," which is a big shift from the past when highway thefts were largely opportunistic.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/1759233/highway-thieves-are-spoofing-gps-to-steal-millions-in-data-center-bound-cargo?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Apple Updates the iPad Mini With a Larger OLED Display
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-27 02:22:01


Apple has unveiled a redesigned iPad Mini with a larger 8.5-inch OLED display, an A20 Pro chip, twice the peak brightness and slimmer bezels while maintaining roughly the same footprint. It starts at $699 ($200 more than its predecessor) and will be available November 6. The Verge reports: Despite having a slightly bigger display than the 8.3-inch screen on its predecessor, Apple says the device maintains the same small footprint thanks to bezels that are 24 percent slimmer. The iPad Mini is 5.4mm thick as well, making it thinner and lighter than the previous generation, according to Apple. It also comes with an IP67 rating for protection against water and dust.

Aside from an OLED display, the new iPad Mini features an upgraded A20 Pro chip. This enables support for some of Apple's new Siri AI features, including the ability to tweak the expressiveness and pace of the assistant's voice. Apple says the upgraded iPad Mini also comes with two times the peak brightness than the previous generation. iPad Mini's 12MP front-facing camera is now on the long edge of the device, making it easier for video calls in landscape orientation.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/1549226/apple-updates-the-ipad-mini-with-a-larger-oled-display?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Strata 1.1.1 — быстрый файловый менеджер
lor.opennet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 23:44:03


https://www.linux.org.ru/images/24208/1000px.jpg
Состоялся корректирующий релиз Strata 1.1.1 — файлового менеджера, написанного с использованием GTK4 и GIO. Проект изначально развивался как штатное решение для дистрибутива Omarchy, однако не завязан на него и работает в любых современных Linux-дистрибутивах с Wayland.

Ключевой акцент при разработке Strata — скорость отклика интерфейса и сквозное управление без мыши (keyboard-first).

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18408900#cut ) )

[>] Microsoft Offers Mass Buyouts For Roughly a Quarter of Its Workforce
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 21:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Seattle Times: Microsoft is offering buyouts to about 60,000 employees, or roughly a quarter of its workforce, as the company tries to control its head count while avoiding layoffs. The Redmond-based tech giant announced Monday morning that eligible employees at the vice president level and below in the U.S., Canada, India and the United Kingdom would receive a "voluntary exit offer" of a standard severance package, based on their location.

In a memo to employees, Microsoft Chief People Officer Amy Coleman said the move was building off the voluntary retirement program earlier this year, which was available to more than 8,700 U.S.-based employees, roughly one-third of whom took the offer. Since May 2025, Microsoft has been trying to reduce its corporate workforce, first through waves of mass layoffs and now through more creative buyout programs. The company laid off about 15,000 employees last year over the course of several months, affecting about 3,200 Washington-based workers. The report notes that the layoffs have continued this year, though on a smaller scale and largely concentrated in the company's gaming division.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/1544243/microsoft-offers-mass-buyouts-for-roughly-a-quarter-of-its-workforce?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Anthropic Files For IPO
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 21:22:01


Anthropic has filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, setting the stage for a potentially record-setting IPO that could value the Claude developer at more than $2 trillion. Alongside the extraordinary cost of its AI expansion, Anthropic warned that it "may not generate sufficient revenue to achieve or sustain profitability in the future."

"While we have experienced significant revenue growth in recent periods, our business is highly capital intensive," the company said. "Our revenue growth may not be sustainable, and our rate of growth may decrease." NBC News reports: The filing did not include a potential share price, the number of shares to be offered or a valuation for the whole company, all of which will be determined after Anthropic holds a "road show" with investors, prospective investors and its bankers. [...] The company plans to spend at least $110 billion with Amazon for cloud services through April 2036 and another $120 billion with SpaceX through 2029. Anthropic also said it planned to spend $115 billion with Google and $45 billion with Microsoft, both through 2033, for computing infrastructure.

The filing said that the company recorded revenue growth of "1,368% year over year for the three months ended June 30, 2026." The cost of renting servers and chips grew by 300% over the same period. Anthropic's net loss for the first six months of 2026 was $80.7 billion. For the entirety of 2025, the company reported a $42 billion net loss.

Anthropic added that it expects its current cash and sales to be sufficient for the next 12 months but warned that future revenue growth depends on a number of important factors, including the cost of infrastructure. As a result, it said, "we may be required to seek additional financing sooner than we currently anticipate." The company said it has raised about $141 billion of capital through the end of June and is sitting on $112.4 billion of cash.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/156218/anthropic-files-for-ipo?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Reddit's Largest Open Source Community Dumbfounded By AI Ban: 'I Guess Linux Is No Longer Allowed?'
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


Kotaku reports:

r/opensource, Reddit's primary "subreddit for everything open source related," has banned all AI-assisted and AI-related projects.... As reported by The Verge, the subreddit's October 24 post, titled "Your tokens aren't valuable: No more AI," features four new main rules: all projects must now be at least "1 year old," have "multiple contributors," be posted by someone who must "speak English," and cannot be "made by" or "intended for" AI... [T]he ban on AI is simple; as the subreddit's moderators explain, "AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community." Unsurprisingly, this is the part that's upset the majority of the users in the thread....

[T]he moderator who posted the new guidelines stated in a separate comment that the overwhelmingly negative response is due to "some guy on twitter claiming to be alternative news" who posted an "opinionated editorial pointing hundreds of people to the thread." Given the timing of when the thread was posted, alongside the fact that the X post in question mentions "the Linux kernel," they are presumably referring to this post by The Lunduke Journal. The moderator may be correct, as almost all of the top comments on the post are from users who have never posted in r/opensource before.

The use of AI "doesn't change whether something is open source or not," complained one commenter, who added "I guess Linux is no longer allowed here? Linus uses AI for kernel development now."

The moderator has since updated their post to acknowledge that Redditors have now already created a rival community called r/OpenSourceAIAllowed — plus three more alternatives:

r/TrueOpenSource
r/OpenSourceWare
r/ActuallyOpenSource

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/0540245/reddits-largest-open-source-community-dumbfounded-by-ai-ban-i-guess-linux-is-no-longer-allowed?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Amazon Deforestation Fell To Lowest Level Since 1988 - And Silva Wins Reelection
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


Brazil's 80-year-old president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was re-elected Sunday, reports the Guardian, "defeating his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, to claim a historic fourth term in power."

And the results could impact the climate, suggests the Associated Press, since under da Silva the annual deforestation rate in the Amazon fell to its lowest level since records began in 1988:

Official satellite data showed the rainforest lost 3,335 square kilometers (1,300 square miles) from Aug. 2025 through July 2026, the period used to calculate the annual rate...

During Jair Bolsonaro's presidency, from 2019 to 2022, Amazon deforestation surged by about 60%, with more than 45,000 square kilometers (17,400 square miles) cleared, according to official data. Under Lula, deforestation has fallen 71% since 2023, the government said. One of Lula's first moves after taking office in January 2023 for a third, non-consecutive term was to revive the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon, known by its Portuguese acronym, PPCDAm. Launched in 2004 during his first administration, the plan had been shelved under Bolsonaro....

The plan has four pillars: strengthening monitoring and enforcement; promoting a sustainable economy; managing protected areas and determining how undesignated public forests should be used; and using regulations and financial incentives to curb deforestation. Measures included restoring sanctions for illegal forest clearing detected by satellites, a practice seen as the most effective tool to curb deforestation that was halted under Bolsonaro. The government also proposed barring properties with illegal deforestation from receiving bank loans and allocated more funding to priority Amazon municipalities that demonstrated reductions in forest loss. It also funded efforts to fight environmental crime and develop subsidized credit for sustainable businesses in the Amazon...

Deforestation and other land-use changes are Brazil's largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, which drive global warming. The stakes are especially high in the Amazon, which stores vast amounts of carbon dioxide and generates atmospheric moisture that helps regulate weather far beyond South America... Degradation from wildfires, logging and drought affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. A strong El Niño, a periodic warming of the equatorial Pacific, could intensify those threats in 2026 and 2027 by bringing hotter, drier conditions that fuel wildfires.
The article notes that Lula's reelection campaign promised zero net deforestation by 2030, plus restoration to offset all forest loss, legal or illegal.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/054248/amazon-deforestation-fell-to-lowest-level-since-1988---and-silva-wins-reelection?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Microsoft Announces Open Source Tool Evaluating Your Software's Optimization For AI Coding Agents
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


The problem? Understanding how AI coding agents interact with the software you build. "Whether you're maintaining an SDK, building a command-line interface, or publishing an MCP server or skills... you need to understand whether agents can discover and use what you ship, and what your team can change."
Results can vary, and configurations keep changing, with behaviors influenced by everything from custom instructions and MCP servers to skills and plugins. So after a year of development Microsoft has created Scope, "an open-source platform built on Kubernetes for turning those interactions into evidence product teams can act on."

Details are available on... the Microsoft open source blog:
Available under the MIT License, Scope supports a continuous Developer Agent Experience (DevAx) learning loop grounded in repeatable experiments.
The Azure Cosmos DB team's experience shows what that loop can deliver... "The evaluations led to 20 Agent Kit issues and 27 documentation issues resolved," [says Jay Gordon, Senior Program Manager, Azure Cosmos DB]... These results connect evaluation to decisions a product team can make: which documentation needs clarification, where tooling needs a fix, and whether an update changes agent behavior.... [The gains] demonstrate how targeted changes, informed by observed behavior, can improve the way agents use a product.
For more on the shift from building for human developers to supporting agents, watch Your Product Was Built for Humans. Is It Ready for Agents? or join us at AI DevCon NYC conference in November.

Scope surfaces everything from incorrect assumptions in documentation (or recurring missed instructions) to whether agents select the intended SDK, initialize it correctly, and use its APIs, leading to clearer descriptions for command-line tool and more actionable errors.

Microsoft's open source blog also explains why AI agent evaluation needs an open-source foundation:
The challenges behind agent experience aren't unique to one product or organization. SDK maintainers, tool authors, researchers, and agent developers are all asking how agents behave and what helps them succeed. No single team can represent every language, workflow, or integration. An open project can bring more scenarios, more failure cases, and more viewpoints into the evaluation process... Opening Scope's execution and evaluation code gives contributors a way to question the methods, investigate unexpected results, and improve the evaluation itself. A shared foundation also reduces duplicated infrastructure. Agent integrations, reusable criteria, and trace-analysis improvements can help other teams study their own products without rebuilding the same machinery. The goal isn't one universal benchmark or definition of success. It's a common starting point that teams can adapt to their needs.

The MIT License lets teams use and extend Scope, while self-managed deployments let them evaluate private workloads without publishing their code or run data.... Scope streams activity as the agent works and retains interactions and workspace snapshots for later review. Your team can follow tool calls, inspect generated files, and connect a failed requirement to the steps that preceded it. Those traces provide observable evidence of what the agent did, helping turn a failure into a concrete documentation, SDK, or tooling improvement.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/0420240/microsoft-announces-open-source-tool-evaluating-your-softwares-optimization-for-ai-coding-agents?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] 25% of Incoming Pull Requests May Be AI Slop, Finds Study From Linux Foundation Research
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


"59% of maintainers report growing contribution volume since the rise of GenAI," according to a new study published by Linux Foundation Research. But 25% of their incoming pull requests "are estimated to be low-quality, also known as 'AI slop'." And on large projects, 69% see growing contributions — and estimate that 31% are low-quality/AI slop.

So what do these results show us? "Generative AI is fundamentally changing how people participate in open source," says the head of Open Source Ecosystem Development at Huawei's R&D subsidiary Futurewei, which helped support the study. Specifically GenAI is "lowering barriers to contribution" but also "creating new challenges" for maintainers and communities. Their recommendation? "Build the governance, transparency and trust mechanisms that allow AI-assisted contributions to strengthen, but not overwhelm, the open source ecosystem."

"Open source projects need to design for a growing AI-generated contributor base, not simply react to it," said Hilary Carter, SVP of Research at the Linux Foundation. "That means setting clear expectations for GenAI, putting responsibility for testing and disclosure on contributors and giving maintainers better tools to manage incoming pull requests. If we get those fundamentals right, AI can expand participation without overburdening and increasing costs for maintainers."

More from the blog It's FOSS:
LF Research is the Linux Foundation's research arm. It was set up in 2021 and publishes studies on how open source is built and used, drawing on surveys and project data. Its latest report, Navigating Open Source Software Development in the Generative AI Era, surveyed 234 contributors and maintainers on how generative AI is affecting the way open source gets made...
64% say reviews now take longer. Burnout is their top concern at 63%, narrowly ahead of contribution quality at 60%.
You will also find that policies have not caught up to the AI-assisted coding and vulnerability reporting trend. Of the 119 respondents who answered the question, 35% said their project has a formal policy permitting AI use. Another 32% have none and no plans for one, 23% plan to write one, and 10% ban AI contributions outright....
Most maintainers (71%) say AI makes it easier for newcomers to start contributing.

Other interesting findings:

"Respondents estimate average time reductions across all six OSS development activities measured, including proposal discussions (19%) and code authoring (52%). For high-complexity tasks, however, 21% of respondents report taking more time when using GenAI."
"71% of maintainers agree GenAI reduces barriers to entry for OSS, but 53% of maintainers disagree that GenAI has improved community trust."
Developers are reinvesting the time they save back into open source: 66% report using productivity gains to address technical debt, 63% to develop new features and 58% for learning and upskilling.
Continued investment in human mentorship remains important: 46% of maintainers say GenAI increases the need for mentorship of new contributors, compared with 32% who say it decreases that need.

OpenSSF and LF AI & Data also helped support the study.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/26/0131241/25-of-incoming-pull-requests-may-be-ai-slop-finds-study-from-linux-foundation-research?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Systemd Merges Support for Rust Programs
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


"As of today in systemd Git it's now possible for the systemd programs to be written in the Rust programming language as an alternative to C," reports Phoronix:

Core systemd code like the systemd library doesn't yet support Rust code, but for the various systemd programs / leaf components there is now support for using Rust... The new systemd-keyring-setup utility in Rust is used for provisioning keyrings and enrolling X.509 certificates into the kernel's dm-verity / fs-verity / BPF keyrings during the boot process while dealing them afterward. This systemd-keyring-setup code hasn't been merged yet but is expected soon now that the Rust infrastructure has landed. Originally it was all part of a single big commit before being split-up for the Rust enablement, systemd-keyring-setup, and other preparations for this new component.

Systemd developers aren't planning on porting existing C code to Rust, all the Rust code is built with Meson [no Cargo usage], and C linkage only is mandated.

Systemd Rust components come out slightly larger than C with a test program being 32KB compared to 20KB for its C twin. For now at least the systemd Rust support is optional and toggled by the -Drust= Meson option with it being auto by default.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/10/25/2227243/systemd-merges-support-for-rust-programs?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] AI Use Convinces California Math Professor There's 'No Point' Grading Homework
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


From the student newspaper at the University of California, Berkeley:

Richard Borcherds, a UC Berkeley professor and Fields medalist, no longer grades his students' homework. After seeing how many of his students used AI to consistently receive top scores, he felt there was "no point" in paying readers to grade for correctness in homework, as AI use is now unavoidable.

Borcherds revealed this in a sit-down interview Tuesday, following OpenAI's announcement that AI agents apparently solved one of mathematics' most difficult unsolved problems, the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem. "If AI continues to improve at present rate, then, in a few years, there'll be nothing human mathematicians can do that AI can't do better," Borcherds said.

Borcherds said he currently grades on completion if a student hands in their homework. He admitted that it is "not a very good system," but at the moment, he has no alternative... Campus has tried several AI detection tools, including Turnitin and Rumi, but have determined that these tools aren't adequate enough to be standardized on campus.

The article points out that at the university, each class's AI policy "is up to the discretion of faculty."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/25/235241/ai-use-convinces-california-math-professor-theres-no-point-grading-homework?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] A Newly Proposed Linux Filesystem Can Fix Corrupted Data
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


BeamFS creator Aurelien Desbrieres is not calling for a merge, but is requesting feedback on an 18-patch proposal that takes the place of FTRFS, an earlier filesystem he proposed in April.

The Linux/Open Source blog It's FOSS reports:

Filesystems that can repair damage, like Btrfs and ZFS, usually do it by falling back on a spare copy of the data. BeamFS skips that and stores Reed-Solomon error-correcting codes inside every block. Every read gets checked against those codes, and small amounts of damage are corrected before the data reaches the application. If the filesystem can tell the damage is beyond repair, the read fails with an error instead of returning the wrong bytes...

In his technical report, ext4 and ext3 returned wrong data without any error, while Btrfs refused to read the file. BeamFS returned the correct file every time except once, when a flip hit a pointer to the file's data and it refused the read.

"Aurelien says he used Anthropic's Claude to write the code, the tool that checks the patches, and the cover letter..."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/10/25/2153202/a-newly-proposed-linux-filesystem-can-fix-corrupted-data?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] AI Delivers 'Zero Financial Payoff' To Most Companies, Economist Says
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


"Despite massive investments and widespread hype around AI , the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech," writes the chief economist at U.S. asset management firm Apollo Global.

He adds that "there are still no signs of AI boosting productivity growth... [M]ainstream corporate America is pulling back and starting to view token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins."

VC-backed companies are spending more and more on tokens, but mainstream corporate America does not need the latest model and is unwilling to pay for it. As long as agentic AI and token spending are confined to a small part of the economy, the macroeconomic effects of AI will be very limited...

The question looking ahead is whether, even as models become commoditized, mainstream corporate America can turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins. That may be harder than it sounds. AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment. Judgment depends on context, and the answer varies with which human or which model you ask. Perhaps most importantly, AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness, all of which shape reputational risk and ultimately drive revenue growth and profit margins.

The bottom line is that the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7, and so far, there is no evidence that revenue growth or margins are improving outside the tech sector.

More details from TechCrunch:

Apollo's Torsten Slok focuses on what he calls the S&P 493 — the S&P 500, minus Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — finding that profit margins and revenue per worker appear to be flat, with no evidence that AI is improving productivity...

Recent studies have also found that AI has yet to deliver significant productivity gains.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/10/25/2040212/ai-delivers-zero-financial-payoff-to-most-companies-economist-says?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Google Says Gmail and Photos Data Shared with AI Search Could Be Used for Targeted Ads
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


The blog Android Authority offers this TLDR:

Google updated its privacy policy to clarify that it could use information shared through Personal Intelligence to personalize ads. Gmail, Drive, and Photos content isn't used for targeted ads by default, but connecting them to eligible Google services could change that.

Digital Trends explains:

Google has long promised that your Gmail, Drive, and Google Photos content never helps it personalize ads. However, since October 16, 2026, its privacy policy adds a catch. The promise lapses if you let other ad-showing Google services use that content. That means using Personal Intelligence, an opt-in tool that lets Google's AI search read your connected apps, does exactly that (via Google).

If you ask Google's AI Mode where to eat near your hotel, and it can identify your hotel from the booking confirmation in Gmail, find the location in Maps, and then suggest a few places you might like. That's the helpful half. The twist, however, is that AI Mode can also show sponsored results. Google mentions that the personalized ads follow what the question and answer are about. So, while your inbox never goes to an advertiser, it can quietly shape the answer, which, in turn, shapes the ads.

Google's defense is elaborate. First, it says connecting the apps is optional. Second, advertisers can't see the information or content Google accesses in your Workspace apps (including your inbox and photos). Finally, sensitive topics like health are off-limits.

Ars Technica shares the response they got from a Google spokesperson: that Google isn't scanning your entire inbox to feed their advertising profiles, but if you choose to pipe your personal data into an AI search tool — then the ads Google shows you could be based on that information.

If you want to ensure ads never use your personal data in this way, you'll need to make sure Personal Intelligence is turned off. The easiest way is to access the Gemini settings for Personal Intelligence and disable the connected apps. These settings are also a few levels deep in your main Google account settings under Data & privacy > Personalization settings > Manage Personalized Recommendations in Search Services > Connected Content Apps. From there, you can disable connections to Workspace and Google Photos.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/10/25/1528213/google-says-gmail-and-photos-data-shared-with-ai-search-could-be-used-for-targeted-ads?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] Free Software Foundation Hosts Free 'Encryptfest' Event on Sunday
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


The Free Software Foundation's "EncryptFest" today covers both encryption and privacy. The free two-hour event runs from 13:00-15:00 Eastern Daylight Time (17:00-19:00 UTC), and includes:

— A discussion on "bulk surveillance, and how encryption protects personal privacy"
— A short video from renowned cryptographer Bruce Schneier.
— A discussion with Henry Fisher, the founder of Techlore and a digital rights activist
— A hands-on workshop on how you can encrypt your email using the FSF's Email Self-Defense guide "as a concrete step to enhance your data privacy"

You may join us virtually, or if you are in Boston, Massachusetts, United States (the FSF's home base), you can join us in-person at the Boston Public Library's Copley Square branch. You may also join us in-person at MakeHaven in New Haven, Connecticut, US, and meet our deputy director Sean O'Brien. Whether attending our event online or in-person, please register. It will help us plan ahead and enable us to contact you about other important details before the workshop, like what to expect and what to bring...

Bulk surveillance violates our fundamental rights and makes free speech dangerous. Email encryption is an excellent tool you can use to shield yourself from bulk surveillance. Encrypting your email is also a concrete step towards protecting your data from others whose intentions may not be honorable.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/25/0526257/free-software-foundation-hosts-free-encryptfest-event-on-sunday?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[>] As eMudhra Exits Cert Business, Users Face New PKI Trust Decisions
bot.slashdot
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2026-10-26 19:22:02


"As of 2026, the company has issued more than 60 million digital certificates," notes Wikipedia. But now, InfoWorld reports:

A certificate authority's decision to abandon the global SSL/TLS market is exposing a weakness many organizations rarely examine: their dependence on complex PKI trust chains. Following the compromise of private keys behind eight of its intermediate certificate authorities, eMudhra is exiting the global SSL/TLS certificate business and is offering customers Sectigo-issued replacements... [In a press note the company added] that data sovereignty and compliance requirements had increased the business's complexity and cost... The company said it will contact affected customers to replace certificates free of cost. It also said it will keep revocation and certificate status services running until every issued certificate has expired or been replaced...

Yash Kadakia, co-founder and CTO of Security Brigade, said that moving to another root operated by the same company does not necessarily address concerns over trust and governance. "The last thing organisations need is to migrate twice," Kadakia said.

But there's another concern, the article points out. "Analysts warn that enterprises may discover they have only limited visibility into the certificate hierarchies underpinning critical services."

Replacing a website's certificate may not address every dependency in an enterprise environment, according to Sakshi Grover, research director at IDC. She said residual exposure lies in systems that maintain their own trust stores and do not update on the same schedule as browsers. These include Java keystores, language runtimes, container images, mutual TLS configurations, proxies, load balancers, VPN and security appliances, and embedded devices. "The harder finding for many organizations will be that they can't answer these questions at all," Grover said, referring to where certificate trust decisions are made outside browsers and operating systems...
Grover recommended that security teams first identify where trust decisions occur outside browsers and operating systems, prioritising systems that accept connections from external parties and mutual TLS endpoints. Teams should then determine which systems can be updated to distrust a specific intermediate certificate or public key, she said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/10/25/0653231/as-emudhra-exits-cert-business-users-face-new-pki-trust-decisions?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.