Опубликован релиз набора системных утилит GNU Binutils 2.44, в состав которого входят такие программы, как GNU linker, GNU assembler, nm, objdump, dlltool, readelf, size, strings и strip. Проектом также развивается сервис debuginfod для динамической загрузки отладочных символов с внешнего сервера.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62665

To capitalize on the AI boom, many crypto miners "have begun to repurpose parts of their operations into data centers," reports Reuters, "given they already have most of the infrastructure" (including landing and "significant" power resources...)

Toronto-based bitcoin miner Bitfarms has enlisted two consultants to explore how it can transform some of its facilities to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence data centers, it said on Friday... Earlier this month, Riot Platforms launched a review of the potential AI and computing uses for parts of its facility in Navarro County, Texas.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/03/0452259/will-cryptomining-facilities-change-into-ai-data-centers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Сформированы новые загрузочные сборки дистрибутива Void Linux, не использующего наработки других дистрибутивов и разрабатываемого с применением непрерывного цикла обновления версий программ (rolling-обновления, без отдельных релизов дистрибутива). Прошлые сборки были опубликованы в марте 2024 года. Использование готовых сборок имеет смысл только для новых установок - в уже установленных системах обновления пакетов доставляются по мере готовности. Развиваемые в Void системы распространяются под лицензией BSD.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62664

Android and Google Play have billions of users, Google wrote in its security blog this week. "However, like any flourishing ecosystem, it also attracts its share of bad actors... That's why every year, we continue to invest in more ways to protect our community." Google's tactics include industry-wide alliances, stronger privacy policies, and "AI-powered threat detection."

"As a result, we prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play and banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts that attempted to publish harmful apps. "

To keep out bad actors, we have always used a combination of human security experts and the latest threat-detection technology. In 2024, we used Google's advanced AI to improve our systems' ability to proactively identify malware, enabling us to detect and block bad apps more effectively. It also helps us streamline review processes for developers with a proven track record of policy compliance. Today, over 92% of our human reviews for harmful apps are AI-assisted, allowing us to take quicker and more accurate action to help prevent harmful apps from becoming available on Google Play. That's enabled us to stop more bad apps than ever from reaching users through the Play Store, protecting users from harmful or malicious apps before they can cause any damage.

Starting in 2024 Google also "required apps to be more transparent about how they handle user information by launching new developer requirements and a new 'Data deletion' option for apps that support user accounts and data collection.... We're also constantly working to improve the safety of apps on Play at scale, such as with the Google Play SDK Index. This tool offers insights and data to help developers make more informed decisions about the safety of an SDK."

And once an app is installed, "Google Play Protect, Android's built-in security protection, helps to shield their Android device by continuously scanning for malicious app behavior."
Google Play Protect automatically scans every app on Android devices with Google Play Services, no matter the download source. This built-in protection, enabled by default, provides crucial security against malware and unwanted software. Google Play Protect scans more than 200 billion apps daily and performs real-time scanning at the code-level on novel apps to combat emerging and hidden threats, like polymorphic malware. In 2024, Google Play Protect's real-time scanning identified more than 13 million new malicious apps from outside Google Play [based on Google Play Protect 2024 internal data]...

According to our research, more than 95 percent of app installations from major malware families that exploit sensitive permissions highly correlated to financial fraud came from Internet-sideloading sources like web browsers, messaging apps, or file managers. To help users stay protected when browsing the web, Chrome will now display a reminder notification to re-enable Google Play Protect if it has been turned off... Scammers may manipulate users into disabling Play Protect during calls to download malicious Internet-sideloaded apps. To prevent this, the Play Protect app scanning toggle is now temporarily disabled during phone or video calls...

Google Play Protect's enhanced fraud protection pilot analyzes and automatically blocks the installation of apps that may use sensitive permissions frequently abused for financial fraud when the user attempts to install the app from an Internet-sideloading source (web browsers, messaging apps, or file managers). Building on the success of our initial pilot in partnership with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA), additional enhanced fraud protection pilots are now active in nine regions — Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam.

In 2024, Google Play Protect's enhanced fraud protection pilots have shielded 10 million devices from over 36 million risky installation attempts, encompassing over 200,000 unique apps.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/03/040259/google-stops-malicious-apps-with-ai-powered-threat-detection-and-continuous-scanning?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Spirit Aerosystems builds aircraft components, including fuselages and flight deck sections for Boeing, according to Wikipedia. But now Boeing is set to acquire Spirit AeroSystems.

The aviation blog called Aviation Source News says the price tag was $4.7 billion, and opines that Boeing's move signals "a renewed focus on quality and supply chain stability" as Boeing "addresses lingering concerns surrounding its 737 program."
Spirit's recent struggles with quality control and production delays have had a fallout effect for Boeing... By integrating Spirit's operations, Boeing can implement more stringent oversight and ensure consistent manufacturing processes. This move is a direct response to past quality lapses that have plagued the company and damaged its reputation. Beyond quality control, the acquisition also offers Boeing greater control over its supply chain. By bringing a key supplier in-house, Boeing can streamline production, improve coordination, and reduce the risk of future disruptions...

Spirit AeroSystems also supplies parts to Airbus, Boeing's main competitor. To address this, a separate agreement is being negotiated for Airbus to acquire Spirit's Airbus-related business. This strategic move ensures that Airbus maintains control over its own supply chain and prevents Boeing from gaining undue influence over its competitor's production.

Meanwhile, the vice president leading Boeing's Starliner spacecraft unit "has left his role in the program and been replaced by the company's International Space Station program manager, John Mulholland," Reuters reports, citing a Boeing spokesperson.

In its first test mission last summer flying astronauts, Starliner was forced by NASA to leave its crew aboard the ISS and return empty in September over problems with its propulsion system. A panel of senior NASA officials in August had voted to have a Crew Dragon capsule from Elon Musk's SpaceX bring them back instead, deeming Starliner too risky for the astronauts.

Paul Hill, a veteran NASA flight director and member of the agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said during a quarterly panel meeting on Thursday that NASA and Boeing continue to investigate Starliner's propulsion system. A Boeing spokesperson said on Thursday that the company and NASA have not yet determined what Starliner's next mission will look like, such as whether it will need to repeat its crewed flight test before receiving NASA certification for routine flights.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/03/0148221/boeing-acquires-spirit-aerosystems-while-boeings-starliner-unit-gets-a-new-vp?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Just three hours ago, OpenAI made a surprise announcement to their 3.9 million followers on X.com. "Live from Tokyo," they'd be livestreaming... something. Their description of the event was just two words.

"Deep Research"

UPDATE: The stream has begun, and it's about OpenAI's next "agent-ic offering". ("OpenAI cares about agents because we believe they're going to transform knowlege work...")
"We're introducing a capability called Deep Research... a model that does multi-step research. It discovers content, it synthesizes content, and it reasons about this content." It even asks "clarifying" questions to your prompt to make sure its multi-step research stays on track. Deep Research will be launching in ChatGPT Pro later today, rolling out into other OpenAI products...

Before the livestream began, X.com users shared their reactions to the coming announcement:
"It's like DeepSeek, but cleaner"
"Deep do do if things don't work out"
"Live from Tokyo? Hope this research includes the secret to waking up early!"
"Stop trying, we don't trust u"

But one X.com user had presciently pointed out OpenAI has used the phrase "deep research" before. In July of 2024, Reuters reported on internal documentation (confirmed with "a person familiar with the matter") code-named "Strawberry" which suggested OpenAI was working on "human-like reasoning skills."

How Strawberry works is a tightly kept secret even within OpenAI, the person said. The document describes a project that uses Strawberry models with the aim of enabling the company's AI to not just generate answers to queries but to plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably to perform what OpenAI terms "deep research," according to the source. This is something that has eluded AI models to date, according to interviews with more than a dozen AI researchers.

Asked about Strawberry and the details reported in this story, an OpenAI company spokesperson said in a statement: "We want our AI models to see and understand the world more like we do. Continuous research into new AI capabilities is a common practice in the industry, with a shared belief that these systems will improve in reasoning over time." The spokesperson did not directly address questions about Strawberry.

The Strawberry project was formerly known as Q*, which Reuters reported last year was already seen inside the company as a breakthrough... OpenAI hopes the innovation will improve its AI models' reasoning capabilities dramatically, the person familiar with it said, adding that Strawberry involves a specialized way of processing an AI model after it has been pre-trained on very large datasets.

Researchers Reuters interviewed say that reasoning is key to AI achieving human or super-human-level intelligence... OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that in AI "the most important areas of progress will be around reasoning ability.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/2342245/openai-holds-surprise-livestream-to-announce-multi-step-deep-research-capability?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this post from the blog OMG Ubuntu

Want to find out if the text you're reading online was written by an real human or spat out by a large language model trying to sound like one? Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector Firefox add-on may help give you an indication. Similar to online AI detector tools, the add-on can analyse text (of 32 words or more) to identify patterns, traits, and tells common in AI generated or manipulated text.

It uses Mozilla's proprietary ApolloDFT engine and a set of open-source detection models. But unlike some tools, Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector browser extension is free to use, does not require a signup, nor an app download. "After installing the extension, it is simple to highlight any text online and request an instant analysis. Our Detector will tell you right away if the words are likely to be written by a human or if they show AI patterns," Mozilla says.

Fakespot, acquired by Mozilla in 2023, is best known for its fake product review detection tool which grades user-submitted reviews left on online shopping sites. Mozilla is now expanding the use of Fakespot's AI tech to cover other kinds of online content. At present, Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector only works with highlighted text on websites but the company says it image and video analysis is planned for the future.

The Fakespot web site will also analyze the reviews on any product-listing pages if you paste in its URL.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/2156241/mozilla-adapts-fakespot-into-an-ai-detecting-firefox-add-on?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Stakeholders must be included" throughout an agile project "to ensure the evolving deliverables meet their expectations," according to an article this week in Communications of the ACM.

But long-time Slashdot reader theodp complains it's a "gushing how-to-make-Agile-even-better opinion piece."

Like other pieces by Agile advocates, it's long on accolades for Agile, but short on hard evidence justifying why exactly Agile project management "has emerged as a critical component for firms looking to improve project delivery speed and flexibility" and the use of Agile approaches is being expanded across other departments beyond software development. Indeed, among the three examples of success offered in the piece to "highlight the effectiveness of agile methods in navigating complex stakeholder dynamics and achieving project success" is Atlassian's use of agile practices to market and develop its products, many of which are coincidentally designed to support Agile practices and teams (including Jira). How meta.

Citing "recent studies," the piece concludes its call for stakeholder engagement by noting that "59% of organizations measure Agile success by customer or user satisfaction." But that is one of those metrics that can create perverse incentives. Empirical studies of user satisfaction and engagement have been published since the 1970's, and sadly one of the cruel lessons learned from them is that the easiest path to having satisfied users is to avoid working on difficult problems. Keep that in mind when you ponder why difficult user stories seem to languish forever in the Kanban and Scrum Board "Ice Box" column, while the "Complete" column is filled with low-hanging fruit. Sometimes success does come easy! So, are you in the Agile-is-Heaven or Agile-is-Hell camp?

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/1948240/should-we-sing-the-praises-of-agile-or-bury-it?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Tom's Hardware reports:

Facebook's heavy-handed censorship of Linux groups and topics was "in error," the social media juggernaut has admitted. Responding to reports earlier this week, sparked by the curious censorship of the eminently wholesome DistroWatch, Facebook contacted PCMag to say that it had made a mistake and that the underlying issue had been rectified.

"This enforcement was in error and has since been addressed. Discussions of Linux are allowed on our services," said a Meta rep to PCMag. That is the full extent of the statement reproduced by the source... Copenhagen-hosted DistroWatch says it has appealed against the Community Standards-triggered ban shortly after it noticed it was in effect (January 19). PCMag received the Facebook admission of error on January 28. The latest statement from DistroWatch, which now prefers posting on Mastodon, indicates that Facebook has lifted the DistroWatch links ban.

More details from PCMag:

Meta didn't say what caused the crackdown in the first place. But the company has been revamping some of its content moderation and plans to replace its fact-checking methodology with a user-driven Community Notes, similar to X. "We're also going to change how we enforce our policies to reduce the kind of mistakes that account for the vast majority of the censorship on our platforms," the company said earlier this month, in another irony.
"Up until now, we have been using automated systems to scan for all policy violations, but this has resulted in too many mistakes and too much content being censored that shouldn't have been," Meta added in the same post.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/1837253/facebook-admits-linux-post-crackdown-was-in-error-fixes-moderation-error?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy tested "vastly increased" levels of internet connectivity, reports the defense-news web site TWZ, callling it "a game-changer for what a ship, and its sailors, can do while at sea."

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighters assigned to the carrier offer a case in point for what more shipboard bandwidth — provided by commercial providers like Starlink and OneWeb — can mean at the tactical level. Jets with the embarked Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 took on critical mission data file updates in record time last fall due to the carrier's internet innovations, a capability that is slated to expand across the fleet. "This file offers intelligence updates and design enhancements that enable pilots to identify and counter threats in specific operational environments," the Navy said in an October release announcing the feat. "The update incorporated more than 100 intelligence changes and multiple design improvements, significantly enhancing the aircraft's survivability and lethality...." [Capt. Kevin White, then the Lincoln's combat systems officer] noted how the F-35 "eats and breathes data daily," and it has to be shared with commands ashore. The connectivity innovations he's pioneered will enable such data transfers, which will only grow more complex over time. "If you can't get the data onboard, you're probably going to be at a loss," White said. "So large file transfer capability increases combat readiness...."

When the system was on, it provided not only mission benefits, but benefits to the hard-working Lincoln crew as well, which was at sea for 107 days at one point with no port calls [Capt. Pete "Repete" Riebe, told WEST conference attendees]... White said the average age of an embarked Lincoln sailor was 20.8, and Riebe noted that to attract young people into service, the Navy needs to recognize the innate connection they have to their devices. "The next generation of sailors grew up with a cell phone in their hand, and they are uncomfortable without it," Riebe said. "I don't necessarily like that, but that's reality, and if we want to compete for the best folks coming into the Navy, we need to offer them bandwidth at sea." Having better connectivity also helped with the ship's administrative functions, Riebe said, making medical, dental and other work far easier than they have been in the past...

A sailor who can FaceTime with his family back home carries less non-Navy stress with them as they focus on the life-or-death duties at hand, White said... This beefed-up bandwidth allowed 38 sailors to witness the birth of their child, while others were able to watch their kids' sporting events, White said. Several crew members pursued doctorate and master's degrees while deployed due to better internet, while others were able to deal with personal or legal issues they had left behind back home. One officer was able to commission his wife remotely from the ship... On the operational side, from "the most desolate waters," Lincoln used its bandwidth to connect with a command in Norfolk, which undertook the ship's annual cybersecurity scans "from halfway around the world," White said... Taxpayer dollars can also be saved if a ship isn't paying for WiFi access while in port, White noted, and the crew was able to start getting to know Italian allies online before an exercise, enhancing the personal aspects of such partnerships.

More bandwidth also means more onboard training, meaning some sailors who don't have to leave to go to the school house, and sailors were able to get answers to maintenance questions from ashore commands faster as well. "Just by being able to have more reliable access to support resources, we definitely become more effective at maintenance," White said.

Every day the aircraft carrier averaged four to eight terabytes of transferred data, according to the article (with a team of two full-time system administrators managing 7,000 IP addresses), and ultimately saw 780 terabytes of data transferred over five-and-a-half months. The article notes it's part of the Navy's larger "Sailor Edge Afloat and Ashore" (SEA2) program to provide all its warships with high-bandwidth connectivity around the world.

The program "involves moving some communications aspects away from proprietary Defense Department satellites, while leaning on commercial satellite constellations and even cellular providers to keep ships more connected at sea for both personal and tactical uses."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/1756215/remote-cybersecurity-scans-and-f-35-updates-a-us-navy-aircraft-carrier-gets-high-speed-internet?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

23 января, после пяти месяцев разработки, состоялся выпуск 4.8.33 консольного менеджера файлов [ Midnight Commander ]( https://midnight-commander.org ) , написанного на языке C и рапространяемого по лицензии GNU GPL 3.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/17870730#cut ) )

Honda calls it their "second founding," as the company "continues to target 100% electric vehicle sales by 2040, and to have 'zero environmental impact' by 2050," writes Green Car Reports. "It's previously projected 40% EV sales in North America by 2030... "

Half of the Honda Accords sold in America are already electric, — but Honda "has admitted that it's hard to predict the trajectory of where the mix will be on the way to fully electric." So...

To reconcile all this, it's prepared by committing to a new template for making both EVs and gasoline models, all on the same production line. This sea change in how it makes vehicles could keep its oldest U.S. assembly plant, its Marysville, Ohio, facility that opened in 1982, humming at capacity, no matter what the market presents. As Honda confirmed last April, Marysville will truly get the automaker to the point of EV mass production in North America, with a big asterisk. It has the capability to make hundreds of EVs per day, or many hundreds of gasoline models — depending on demand.

Marysville is one of four facilities set to make up what Honda is calling its Ohio EV Hub — including the Anna Engine Plant and East Liberty Auto Plant, all within 50 miles of each other, and a joint-venture battery plant between Honda and LG Energy solution in nearby Jeffersonville, Ohio. Battery plant aside, Honda says it encompasses more than a $1 billion investment in the three facilities, in redesigning the manufacturing process around being able to make ICE, hybrid, and EV models all on the same production line.

The investment in the Ohio facilities marks the global debut of changes in the way it builds vehicles, with expertise set to be shared across North America. And, according to Honda, it's aiming to set a global standard for Honda EV production.

The article explains that Honda "created a series of sub-assembly lines that could handle all the differences in the way an EV is assembled versus the way a gasoline or hybrid vehicle is assembled."
And CNBC reports that Honda's Ohio project includes "several new manufacturing processes and techniques to lower emissions and waste, including using a special form of structural aluminum for the EV battery packs that can be recycled and reused." Bob Schwyn, senior vice president of Honda Development and Manufacturing of America, describes it as part of Honda's "strategies to recapture our products at end-of-life and then recycle or reuse 100% of the materials, especially finite materials for EV batteries, to essentially make new Hondas out of old Hondas."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/1646255/hondas-new-us-factory-will-mass-produce-evs---but-can-also-build-gas-powered-cars?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"iPhone devices are now eligible to test SpaceX-owned Starlink's direct-to-cell capability," Reuters reported this week, citing an announcement from T-Mobile:

T-Mobile and Elon Musk's SpaceX are currently testing the Starlink cell network on a trial basis after receiving approval from the Federal Communications Commission in November last year. The trial offers 'text via satellite', while voice and data features will be added in the future, according to the T-Mobile website. T-Mobile initially only listed a few Android smartphones as eligible devices to test the network, but has now added iPhone devices with the latest iOS 18.3 software update.

The next day stock prices fell for several direct-to-smartphone satellite companies, reports SpaceNews:

Shares in Globalstar, which enables connectivity beyond the reach of cellular towers on the latest iPhones via a far-reaching partnership with Apple, closed down nearly 18% the following day. Constellation developer AST SpaceMobile slipped 12%. Canada's MDA, which is building at least 17 satellites for Globalstar after Apple agreed to cover most of the costs to replenish the constellation, also saw its shares fall more than 9%...

"Combined, today's price action in Globalstar and satellite manufacturer MDA suggest a real investor fear that SpaceX could disintermediate the Apple-Globalstar partnership," said Adam Rhodes, a senior telecoms analyst at Octus. "However, it appears to us that there is room for both services. Based on the information we have seen, we do not anticipate that Apple views the T-Mobile-Starlink service as a replacement for the Globalstar MSS network, but rather it is choosing to enable the added feature on its T-Mobile phones...." B. Riley analyst Mike Crawford noted that Apple's two binding contracts with Globalstar extend well into the next decade, ensuring both capital expenditure (capex) and recurring service revenues.
Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/167204/iphones-and-some-android-phones-will-support-starlink-direct-to-cell-coverage-in-us?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Организация Linux Foundation опубликовала разбор применимости к открытому коду ограничений, вводимых санкциями, обобщила возникающие риски и дала рекомендации сопровождающим открытые проекты, связанные с участием в разработке лиц, подпадающих под санкции.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62663

The photography blog PetaPixel once interviewed the photographer who took one of the most famous "Tank Man" photos showing a tank-defying protester during 1989's Tiananmen Square protests.

But this week PetaPixel reported...

A Reddit user discovered that the new Chinese LLM chatbot DeepSeek refuses to answer questions about the famous Tank Man photograph taken in Tiananmen Square in 1989. PetaPixel confirmed that DeepSeek does censor the topic. When a user types in the question, "What famous picture has a man with grocery bags in front of tanks?" The app begins to answer the questions but then cuts itself off.

DeepSeek starts writing: "The famous picture you're referring to is known as "Tank Man" or "The Unknown Rebel." It was taken on June 5, 1989, during the Tiananmen..." before a message abruptly appears reading "Sorry, that's beyond my current scope. Let's talk about something else."

Bloomberg has more details:

Like all other Chinese AI models, DeepSeek self-censors on topics deemed sensitive in China. It deflects queries about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests or geopolitically fraught questions such as the possibility of China invading Taiwan. In tests, the DeepSeek bot is capable of giving detailed responses about political figures like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but declines to do so about Chinese President Xi Jinping.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/0434206/deepseek-ai-refuses-to-answer-questions-about-tiananmen-square-tank-man-photo?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

In 2023, Microsoft began including a free VPN feature in its "Microsoft Defender" security app for all Microsoft 365 subscribers ("Personal" and "Family"). Originally Microsoft had "called it a privacy protection feature," writes the blog Windows Central, "designed to let you access sensitive data on the web via a VPN tunnel." But....

Unfortunately, Microsoft has now announced that it's killing the feature later this month, only a couple of years after it first debuted...

To add insult to injury, this announcement comes just days after Microsoft increased subscription prices across the board. Both Personal and Family subscriptions went up by three dollars a month, which the company says is the first price hike Microsoft 365 has seen in over a decade. The increased price does now include Microsoft 365 Copilot, which adds AI features to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and others.

However, it also comes with the removal of the free VPN in Microsoft Defender, which I've found to be much more useful so far.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/0357206/after-copilot-price-hike-for-microsoft-365-its-ending-its-free-vpn?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

20 января состоялся выпуск 1.23 (в честь [ Pirahna poodle ]( https://monkeyisland.fandom.com/wiki/Piranha_Poodles ) из серии игр [ Monkey Island ]( https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Island ) ) консольного менеджера файлов [ Clifm ]( https://github.com/leo-arch/clifm ) , написанного на языке C и распространяемого по лицензии GNU GPL 2.0.
Clifm – это менеджер файлов c текстовым интерфейсом, но созданный не с использованием принципов дизайна TUI, как, например, превосходные Midnight Commander и Ranger, а, скорее, с учётом принципов дизайна интерфейса командной строки.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/17870329#cut ) )

Echoareas
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lor.opennet...........48 ████████████████████████████████████████████████
bot.habr.rss..........33 █████████████████████████████████
spnet.stats............7 ███████
idec.talks.............1 █
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tgi.station............1 █
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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:

Scientists have found that using seismometers is a new and inexpensive method to detect falling space junk, which can cause damage on impact and carry toxic materials — and may someday turn deadly...

It's not an easy task to track large hunks of falling metal everywhere in the world. Ground-based radar can detect falling objects, but it doesn't cover much of the world or is often classified data, said Ben Fernando [a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University who is leading this research]. The other option is through optical instruments, such as doorbell cameras, but the information on the time, size and speed can be limited. Instead, Fernando turned to seismology data. Stations located around the world live-stream data, which can be easily downloaded. Seismometers have been used to track meteors in the sky for over a century, but he said this is the first time he's aware of its use for tracking space debris.
Stations located around the world live-stream data, which can be easily downloaded. Seismometers have been used to track meteors in the sky for over a century, but he said this is the first time he's aware of its use for tracking space debris. Fernando first tested the idea to track the controlled reentry of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission in September 2023, which brought back material from the asteroid Bennu. He set up seismometers along the capsule's path in the landing spot in Utah and measured its sonic boom. "It's a really good way of monitoring what's coming in, how often it's coming in, how big the things hitting the Earth are," said Fernando, who presented his results at the American Geophysical Union conference in December...

"The shockwave deforms the ground around the seismometer," said Fernando. "It also keeps ringing for a lot longer because all of that energy is bouncing around in the soil...." [H]e said an automated system could help detect these objects within moments of it appearing on the stations. In addition to detecting an event, the seismometers can help locate where any debris may have fallen. Tracking debris is important because some space debris can contain toxic materials that can harm the surrounding environment.

The article notes reports of the uncontrolled reentry into Earth's atmosphere of at least 951 objects larger than one square meter from 2010 to 2022.

"On average, objects heavier than 1,000 pounds came down about every 8 days... In fact, the threat of getting hit by uncontrolled orbital reentries has increased by a factor of four from 2010 to 2023, said Luciano Anselmo, who published a study assessing the risk."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/0559217/could-earthquake-sensors-help-detect-falling-space-junk?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания Apple объявила об открытии исходного кода сборочной системы Swift Build, применявшейся в проприетарных интегрированных средах разработки Xcode и Swift Playground. Система оптимизирована для сборки проектов на языке Swift, но может применяться и с другими языками. Для пакетного менеджера Swift Package Manager подготовлен экспериментальный модуль ("--build-system swiftbuild"), позволяющий использовать Swift Build для сборки пакетов. Код Swift Build написан на языке Swift и открыт под лицензией Apache 2.0. Поддерживается сборка проектов для Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, QNX и Windows.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62661

TOP10 VISITORS:

[1] ChatGPT point=7 web=1271 up=58.8MB (72%) <--- ChatGPT
[2] 45.135.180.x point=233 web=0 up=18.9MB (23%) <--- yesterlink (10/hr)
[3] Facebook point=0 web=175 up=1.3MB (1%)
[4] 217.114.158.x point=24 web=0 up=0.9MB (1%) <--- fox (1/hr)
[5] 24.130.121.x point=11 web=15 up=0.9MB (1%) <--- spnet
[6] TikTok point=0 web=110 up=0.3MB (<1%)
[7] Amazon point=0 web=10 up=0.3MB (<1%)
[8] Google point=17 web=38 up=0.2MB (<1%) <--- Google (1/hr)
[9] 193.23.3.x point=0 web=1 up=17KB
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TOTAL TRAFFIC: 81MB

Опубликована [ программа ]( https://www.basealt.ru/20edu-conf#programma ) XX юбилейной конференции «Свободное программное обеспечение в высшей школе» — OSEDUCONF-2025, которая пройдёт 7–9 февраля 2025 года в Институте программных систем РАН, г. Переславль-Залесский. В ней примут участие представители образовательного сообщества, использующие или создающие свободное ПО в учебном или научном процессе. Основной целью является налаживание личных контактов между специалистами, обсуждение перспектив и новинок области.

Представленные доклады охватят следующие тематики:

• перспективы развития и применения СПО в образовании;

• современные образовательные курсы на основе СПО;

• практика применения СПО в образовательном процессе;

• научные и студенческие проекты СПО;

• проблемы подготовки специалистов.

Формат мероприятия ориентирован на личное общение участников, но видеотрансляция докладов также будет доступна на [ сайте конференции ]( https://www.basealt.ru/20edu-conf ) .

Желающие принять участие слушателями могут [ зарегистрироваться ]( https://www.basealt.ru/20edu-conf#request_form ) до 3 февраля включительно (если нужен трансфер из Москвы и обратно) и до 5 февраля без трансфера. Все даты указаны включительно.

Участие в конференции для докладчиков и слушателей бесплатное. Место проведения конференции: Ярославская область, Переславский район, с. Веськово, улица Петра Первого, д. 4А (Институт программных систем имени А. К. Айламазяна РАН).

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/conference/17869817

Пока самый массовый набег случился 17 января:

Больше всего посетителей (10308) здесь было 17 янв 2025 04:35

17/Jan/2025:12:25:XX - 25
17/Jan/2025:12:26:XX - 32
17/Jan/2025:12:27:XX - 17
17/Jan/2025:12:28:XX - 2113
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17/Jan/2025:12:31:XX - 1571
17/Jan/2025:12:32:XX - 2394
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17/Jan/2025:12:34:XX - 2206
17/Jan/2025:12:35:XX - 2476
17/Jan/2025:12:36:XX - 123
17/Jan/2025:12:37:XX - 346
17/Jan/2025:12:38:XX - 603
17/Jan/2025:12:39:XX - 496
17/Jan/2025:12:40:XX - 504
17/Jan/2025:12:41:XX - 189
17/Jan/2025:12:42:XX - 41
17/Jan/2025:12:43:XX - 96
17/Jan/2025:12:44:XX - 61
17/Jan/2025:12:45:XX - 55
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17/Jan/2025:12:49:XX - 10

Friday TechCrunch reported that OpenAI "used the subreddit, r/ChangeMyView to create a test for measuring the persuasive abilities of its AI reasoning models."

The company revealed this in a system card — a document outlining how an AI system works — that was released along with its new "reasoning" model, o3-mini, on Friday.... OpenAI says it collects user posts from r/ChangeMyView and asks its AI models to write replies, in a closed environment, that would change the Reddit user's mind on a subject. The company then shows the responses to testers, who assess how persuasive the argument is, and finally OpenAI compares the AI models' responses to human replies for that same post.
The ChatGPT-maker has a content-licensing deal with Reddit that allows OpenAI to train on posts from Reddit users and display these posts within its products. We don't know what OpenAI pays for this content, but Google reportedly pays Reddit $60 million a year under a similar deal. However, OpenAI tells TechCrunch the ChangeMyView-based evaluation is unrelated to its Reddit deal. It's unclear how OpenAI accessed the subreddit's data, and the company says it has no plans to release this evaluation to the public...

The goal for OpenAI is not to create hyper-persuasive AI models but instead to ensure AI models don't get too persuasive. Reasoning models have become quite good at persuasion and deception, so OpenAI has developed new evaluations and safeguards to address it.
Reddit's "ChangeMyView" subreddit has 3.8 million human subscribers, making it a valuable source of real human interactions, according to the article. And it adds one more telling anecdote.
"Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told The Verge last year that Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity refused to negotiate with him and said it's been 'a real pain in the ass to block these companies.'"

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/0319217/openai-tests-its-ais-persuasiveness-by-comparing-it-to-reddit-posts?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

> tgi забирает у тебя? у меня тоже только сейчас добавилось...

а вот теперь уже второй день не забирает :(

я поглядел по своим логам - это потерявшееся сообщение ко мне пришло как раз из tgi - я туда поглядел, а он теперь netsco забирает (правда назвал его Nastene):

Station 		Last update
IDEC.SHAOS.NET 	  	31.01.2025 04:41
Таверна 	  	11.11.2024 07:20
Ping 	  	31.01.2025 05:00
dynamic | less 	  	21.11.2023 22:00
Nastene 	  	31.01.2025 05:02
ii.yester.link 	  	31.01.2025 05:02

хм, а он по ходу ни у кого уже второй день не забирает...

P.S. netsco застрял на 5 января 2025 года т.к. по-видимому забирал только с blcat, который помер - надо чтоли ему начать наводить мосты взаимопонимания и дружбы с другими узлами!

Bill Gates' blog has been updated with short videos about his upcoming book, including one about how his school ended up with an ASR-33 teletype that could connect their Seattle classroom to a computer in California. "The teachers faded away pretty quickly," Gates adds, "But about six of us stayed hardcore. One was Paul Allen..." — the future co-founder of Microsoft. And the experience clearly meant a lot to Gates. "Microsoft just never would've happened without Paul — and this teletype room."

In a longer post thanking his "brilliant" teachers, Gates calls his teletype experience "an encounter that would shape my entire future" and "opened up a whole new world for me." Gates also thanks World War II Navy pilot and Boeing engineer Bill Dougall, who "was instrumental in bringing computer access to our school, something he and other faculty members pushed for after taking a summer computer class... The fascinating thing about Mr. Dougall was that he didn't actually know much about programming; he exhausted his knowledge within a week. But he had the vision to know it was important and the trust to let us students figure it out."

Gates shared a similar memory about the computer-room's 20-something overseer Fred Wright, who "intuitively understood that the best way to get students to learn was to let us explore on our own terms. There was no sign-up sheet, no locked door, no formal instruction."

Instead, Mr. Wright let us figure things out ourselves and trusted that, without his guidance, we'd have to get creative... Some of the other teachers argued for tighter regulations, worried about what we might be doing in there unsupervised. But even though Mr. Wright occasionally popped in to break up a squabble or listen as someone explained their latest program, for the most part he defended our autonomy...
Mr. Wright gave us something invaluable: the space to discover our own potential.

Any Slashdot readers have a similarly impactful experience? Share your own thoughts and memories in the comments.

Do you remember your high school's computer room?

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/02/02/0233216/slashdot-asks-do-you-remember-your-high-schools-computer-room?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

On January 24th Brooklyn blogger Jeffrey Emanuel made the case for shorting NVIDIA, remembers MarketWatch, "due to a number of shifting tides in the AI world, including the emergence of a China-based company called DeepSeek."

He published his 12,000-word post "on his personal blog and then shared it with the Value Investors Club website and across Reddit, X and other platforms." The next day he saw 35 people read his post. "But then the post started to go viral..."

Well-known venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya shared Emanuel's post on Nvidia's short case with his 1.8 million X followers. Successful early stage investor Naval Ravikant shared the post with his 2.6 million followers... Morgan Brown, a vice president of product and growth at Dropbox, pointed to it in a thread that was viewed over 13 million times. Emanuel's own X post got nearly half a million views. He also quickly gained about 13,000 followers on the platform, going from about 2,000 to more than 15,000 followers...

[Emanuel] pointed to the fact that so many people in San Jose were reading his blog post. He theorized that many of them were Nvidia employees with thousands — or even millions — of dollars worth of Nvidia stock tied up in employee stock options. With that much money in a single asset, Emanuel speculated that many were already debating whether to hold the stock or sell it to lock in profits. He believes his blog post helped convince some of them to sell. "A lot of the sell pressure you saw on Monday morning wasn't necessarily what you might think. I believe a fair amount of that was from shares that had never been active because they had been sitting in workplace.schwab.com accounts..."
Emanuel stresses he's "the most bullish on AI," with MarketWatch emphasizing that "while the points Emanuel laid out in his blog post might be bearish for Nvidia, he still thinks they paint a positive future for AI." Nevertheless, Monday NVIDIA's market capitalization dropped $600 billion, which MarketWatch calls "the largest single-day market-cap drop to date for any company."

What countless Wall Street firms and investment analysts had seemingly missed was being pointed out by some guy in his apartment.... Matt Levine, the prominent Bloomberg News financial columnist, noted the online chatter that claimed Emanuel's post "was an important catalyst" for the stock-market selloff and said it was a "candidate for the most impactful short research report ever." Emanuel spent the rest of the week booked solid as hedge funds paid him $1,000 per hour to speak on the phone and give his take on Nvidia and AI...

Emanuel wrote that the industry may be running low on quality data to train that AI — that is, a potential "data wall" is looming that could slow down AI scaling and reduce some of that need for training resources... Some of these companies, like Alphabet, have also been investing in building out their own semiconductor chips. For a while, Nvidia's hardware has been the best for training AI, but that might not be the case forever as more companies, such as Cerebras, build better hardware. And other GPU makers like AMD are updating their drivers software to be more competitive with Nvidia... Add all these things together — unsustainable spending and data-center building, less training data to work with, better competing hardware and more efficient AI — and you get a future where it's harder to imagine Nvidia's customers spending as much as they currently are on Nvidia hardware... "If you know that a company will only earn supersized returns for a couple years, you don't apply a multiple. You certainly don't put a 30-times multiple," Emanuel told MarketWatch.

The article notes that DeepSeek "is open-source and has been publishing technical papers out in the open for the past few months... The $5.6 million training-cost statistic that many investors cited for sparking the DeepSeek market panic was actually revealed in the V3 technical paper published on Dec. 26."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/2235213/one-blogger-helped-spark-nvidias-600b-stock-collapse?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Wednesday the Linux Foundation wrote that both "regulatory compliance" and "increased cybersecurity risk" were "creating burdens...that must be met" for open source communities.

And so, as Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes, "the Linux Foundation has released a comprehensive guide to help open source developers navigate the complex landscape of the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions..."

These rules, aimed at achieving economic, foreign policy, and national security goals, apply to various interactions, including those in the open source community. The total Sanctions Programs and Country list amounts to over 17 thousand entries ranging from individuals to terrorist organizations to countries.

If that rings a bell, it's because, in October 2024, the Linux kernel developers ran right into this issue. The Linux kernel's leadership, including Greg Kroah-Hartman, the stable Linux kernel maintainer, and Linus Torvalds, Linux's founder, announced that eleven Russian kernel developers had been removed from their roles working on the Linux kernel. Why? Because, as Torvalds said, of "Russian sanctions." This, he added, in a Linux kernel mailing list (LKML) message was because "the 'various compliance requirements' are not just a US thing."

For developers, this means exercising caution about who they interact with and where their contributions originate. The sanctions target specific countries, regions, and individuals or organizations, many of which are listed on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List... Most OFAC sanctions are exempted for "informational materials," which generally include open source code. However, this only applies to existing code and not to requests for new code or modifications. So, for example, working with a Russian developer on a code patch could land you in hot water... While reviewing unsolicited patches from contributors in sanctioned regions is generally acceptable, actively engaging them in discussions or improvements could cross legal boundaries... Developers are warned to be cautious of sanctioned entities attempting to contribute indirectly through third parties or developers acting "individually."

Countries currently sanctioned include:

Russia Cuba Iran North Korea Syria The following regions of Ukraine: Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the Ukraine.

The Linux Foundation had written that the OFAC sanctions rules are "strict liability" rules, "which means it does not matter whether you know about them or not. Violating these rules can lead to serious penalties, so it's important to understand how they might affect your open source work." But J. Vaughan-Nichols offers this quote from open source licensing attorney Heather Meeker.

"Let's be honest: Smaller companies usually ignore regulations like this because they just don't have the resources to analyze them, and a government usually ignores smaller companies because it doesn't have the resources to enforce against them. Big companies that are on the radar need specialized counsel."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/2356252/us-blocks-open-source-help-from-these-countries?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Thursday America's FDA "raised concerns about cybersecurity vulnerabilities" in patient monitors from China-based medical device company Contec "that could allow unauthorized individuals to access and potentially manipulate those devices," reports Reuters.

The patient monitors could be remotely controlled by unauthorized users or may not function as intended, and the network to which these devices are connected could be compromised, the agency warned. The FDA also said that once these devices are connected to the internet, they can collect patient data, including personally identifiable information and protected health information, and can export this data out of the healthcare delivery environment.
The agency, however, added that it is currently unaware of any cybersecurity incidents, injuries, or deaths related to these identified cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

The FDA's announcement says "The software on the patient monitors includes a backdoor, which may mean that the device or the network to which the device has been connected may have been or could be compromised." And it offers this advice to caregivers and patients:

If your health care provider confirms that your device relies on remote monitoring features, unplug the device and stop using it. Talk to your health care provider about finding an alternative patient monitor.
If your device does not rely on remote monitoring features, use only the local monitoring features of the patient monitor. This means unplugging the device's ethernet cable and disabling wireless (that is, WiFi or cellular) capabilities, so that patient vital signs are only observed by a caregiver or health care provider in the physical presence of a patient. If you cannot disable the wireless capabilities, unplug the device and stop using it. Talk to your health care provider about finding an alternative patient monitor.

A detailed report from CISA describes how a research team "created a simulated network, created a fake patient profile, and connected a blood pressure cuff, SpO2 monitor, and ECG monitor peripherals to the patient monitor. Upon startup, the patient monitor successfully connected to the simulated IP address and immediately began streaming patient data..." to an IP address that hard-coded into the backdoor function. "Sensor data from the patient monitor is also transmitted to the IP address in the same manner.
If the routine to connect to the hard-coded IP address and begin transmitting patient data is called, it will automatically initialize the eth0 interface in the same manner as the backdoor. This means that even if networking is not enabled on startup, running this routine will enable networking and thereby enable this functionality

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/0632248/americas-fda-warns-about-backdoor-found-in-chinese-companys-patient-monitors?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters:

New York-based cybersecurity firm Wiz says it has found a trove of sensitive data from the Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek inadvertently exposed to the open internet. In a blog post published Wednesday, Wiz said that scans of DeepSeek's infrastructure showed that the company had accidentally left more than a million lines of data available unsecured.

Those included digital software keys and chat logs that appeared to capture prompts being sent from users to the company's free AI assistant.

Wiz's chief technology officer tells Reuters that DeepSeek "took it down in less than an hour" after Wiz alerted them.

"But this was so simple to find we believe we're not the only ones who found it."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/0659255/sensitive-deepseek-data-was-exposed-to-the-web-cybersecurity-firm-says?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Разработчики библиотеки GTK объявили о присвоении статуса устаревшего бэкенду для протокола X11 и намерении прекратить поддержку X11 в ветке GTK 5. Несмотря на устаревший статус, в ветке GTK 4 работа на системах X11 будет сохранена.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62658

SC World reports:

A new phishing scam targeting mobile devices was observed using a "never-before-seen" obfuscation method to hide links to spoofed United States Postal Service (USPS) pages inside PDF files, [mobile security company] Zimperium reported Monday.

The method manipulates elements of the Portable Document Format (PDF) to make clickable URLs appear invisible to both the user and mobile security systems, which would normally extract links from PDFs by searching for the "/URI" tag. "Our researchers verified that this method enabled known malicious URLs within PDF files to bypass detection by several endpoint security solutions. In contrast, the same URLs were detected when the standard /URI tag was used," Zimperium Malware Researcher Fernando Ortega wrote in a blog post.

The attackers send the malicious PDFs via SMS text messages under the guise of providing instructions to retrieve a USPS package that failed to deliver... The phishing websites first displays a form for the victim provide their mailing address, email address and telephone number, and then asks for credit card information to pay a $0.30 "service fee" for redelivery of the supposed package... Zimperium identified more than 20 versions of the malicious PDF files and 630 phishing pages associated with the scam operation. The phishing pages were also found to support 50 languages, suggestion international targeting and possible use of a phishing kit.
"Users' trust in the PDF file format and the limited ability of mobile users to view information about a file prior to opening it increase the risk of such phishing campaigns, Zimperium noted."

Thanks to Slashdot reader spatwei for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/207203/malicious-pdf-links-hidden-in-text-message-scam-impersonating-us-postal-service?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Sometimes, government makes a bad bet..." writes the Los Angeles Times. Opening in 2014, the Ivanpah concentrated solar plant "quickly became known as an expensive, bird-killing eyesore."

Assuming that state officials sign off — which they most likely will, because the deal will lead to lower bills for PG&E customers — two of the three towers will shut down come 2026. Ivanpah's owners haven't paid off the project's $1.6-billion federal loan, and it's unclear whether they'll be able to do so. Houston-based NRG Energy, which operates Ivanpah and is a co-owner with Kelvin Energy and Google, said that federal officials took part in the negotiations to close PG&E's towers and that the closure agreement will allow the federal government "to maximize the recovery of its loans." It's possible Ivanpah's third and final tower will close, too. An Edison spokesperson told me the utility is in "ongoing discussions" with the project's owners and the federal government over ending the utility's contract.

It might be tempting to conclude government should stop placing bets and just let the market decide. But if it weren't for taxpayers dollars, large-scale solar farms, which in 2023 produced 17% of California's power, might never have matured into low-cost, reliable electricity sources capable of displacing planet-warming fossil fuels. More than a decade ago, federal loans helped finance some of the nation's first big solar-panel farms.

Not every government investment will be a winner. Renewable energy critics still raise the specter of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2011 after receiving a $535-million federal loan. But on the whole, clean power investments have worked out. The U.S. Department of Energy reported that as of Dec. 31, it had disbursed $40.5 billion in loans. Of that amount, $15.2 billion had already been repaid. The federal government was on the hook for $1.03 billion in estimated losses but had reaped $5.6 billion in interest.
The article notes recent U.S. energy-related loans to a lithium mine in Nevada (close to $1 billion) and $15 billion to expand hydropower, upgrade power lines, and add batteries. Some of the loans won't get paid back "If federal officials are doing their jobs well," the article adds. "That's the risk inherent to betting on early-stage technologies." About the Ivanpah solar towers, they write "Maybe they never should have been built. They're too expensive, they don't work right, they kill too many birds... It's good that their time is coming to an end. But we should take inspiration from them, too: Don't get complacent. Keep trying new things."

PG&E says their objective at the time was partly to "support new technologies," with one senior director of commercial procurement noting "It's not clear in the early stages what technologies will work best and be most affordable for customers. Solar photovoltaic panels and battery energy storage were once unaffordable at large scale." But today they've calculated that ending their power agreements with Ivanpah would cost customers "substantially less." And once deactivated, Ivanpah's units "will be decommissioned, providing an opportunity for the site to potentially be repurposed for renewable PV energy production," NRG said in a statement.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal notes that instead the 3,500-acre, 386-megawatt concentrated thermal power plant used a much older technology, "a system of mirrors to reflect sunlight and generate thermal energy, which is then concentrated to power a steam engine."
Throughout the day, 350,000 computer-controlled mirrors track the sunlight and reflect it onto boilers atop 459-foot towers to generate AC. Nowadays, photovoltaic solar has surpassed concentrated solar power and become the dominant choice for renewable, clean energy, being more cost effective and flexible... So many birds have been victims of the plant's concentrated sun rays that workers referred to them as "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. When federal wildlife investigators visited the plant around 10 years ago, they reported an average of one "streamer" every two minutes.

"Meanwhile, environmentalists continue to blame the Mojave Desert plant for killing thousands of birds and tortoises," reports the Associated Press. And a Sierra Club campaign organizer also says several rare plant species were destroyed during the plant's construction. "While the Sierra Club strongly supports innovative clean energy solutions and recognizes the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, Ivanpah demonstrated that not all renewable technologies are created equal."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/1831253/california-built-the-worlds-largest-solar-power-tower-plant-now-it-may-close?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Опубликован релиз среды рабочего стола Regolith Desktop 3.2, развиваемой разработчиками одноимённого дистрибутива Linux. Regolith основан на технологиях управления сеансами GNOME, оконном менеджере i3, композитных серверах Picom и Sway, панели i3bar, системе уведомлений rofication, строке состояния i3status-rs и интерфейсе запуска программ ilia. Наработки проекта распространяются под лицензией GPLv3.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62659

Star Wars star Mark Hamill, science fiction author William Gibson, XKCD cartoonist Randall Munroe, and The Onion have joined millions of others bringing Bluesky's user count to 30 million, reports CNET. In fact Bluesky has added over 14 million users in the last three months, and for a few days in early November was adding over one million users a day. "That rate equals about 12 new users per second. The 30 million user mark compares to 9 million users in September."

But meanwhile Meta's social media site Threads — launched 19 months ago — "now has 320 million monthly active users," reports TechCrunch, "up from 300 million last month. The app had 275 million monthly active users in [early] November." That's a 16% grow rate in just three months.

In comparison, Bluesky is experiencing a slowdown in growth, with an increase of less than 10% month-over-month in December 2024, following a remarkable 189% growth in November, according to analytics firm Similarweb. Bluesky now has a total of 26.44 million users. Additionally, Zuckerberg noted that Threads is adding more than 1 million daily signups [while presenting fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday].

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/0749206/bluesky-grows-to-30-million-users-threads-adds-20-million-more-just-in-january?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Nearly three years ago a team of Chinese AI engineers working for DeepSeek's parent company unveiled an earlier AI supercomputer that the Washington Post says was constructed from 10,000 A100 GPUs purchased from Nvidia. Roughly six months later "Washington had banned Nvidia from selling any more A100s to China," the article notes.

Remember that number as you read this. 10,000 A100 GPUs...

DeepSeek's new chatbot caused a panic in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street this week, erasing $1 trillion from the stock market. That impact stemmed in large part from the company's claim that it had trained one of its recent models on a minuscule $5.6 million in computing costs and with only 2,000 or so of Nvidia's less-advanced H800 chips.

Nvidia saw its soaring value crater by $589 billion Monday as DeepSeek rocketed to the top of download charts, prompting President Donald Trump to call for U.S. industry to be "laser focused" on competing... But a closer look at DeepSeek reveals that its parent company deployed a large and sophisticated chip set in its supercomputer, leading experts to assess the total cost of the project as much higher than the relatively paltry sum that U.S. markets reacted to this week... Lennart Heim, an AI expert at Rand, said DeepSeek's evident access to [the earlier] supercomputer would have made it easier for the company to develop a more efficient model, requiring fewer chips.
That earlier project "suggests that DeepSeek had a major boost..." according to the article, "with technology comparable to that of the leading U.S. AI companies." And while DeepSeek claims it only spent $5.6 million to train one of its advanced models, "its parent company has said that building the earlier supercomputer had cost 1 billion yuan, or $139 million.") Yet the article also cites the latest insights Friday from chip investment company SemiAnalysis, summarizing their finding that DeepSeek "has spent more than half a billion dollars on GPUs, with total capital expenditures of almost $1.3 billion."
The article notes Thursday remarks by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that DeepSeek's energy-efficiency claims were "wildly overstated... This is a model at a capability level that we had quite some time ago." And Palmer Luckey called DeepSeek "legitimately impressive" on X but called the $5.6 million training cost figure "bogus" and said the Silicon Valley meltdown was "hysteria."

Even with these higher total costs in mind, experts say, U.S. companies are right to be concerned about DeepSeek upending the market. "We know two things for sure: DeepSeek is pricing their services very competitively, and second, the performance of their models is comparable to leading competitors," said Kai-Shen Huang, an AI expert at the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology, a Taipei-based think tank. "I think DeepSeek's pricing strategy has the potential to disrupt the market globally...."

China's broader AI policy push has helped create an environment conducive for a company like DeepSeek to rise. Beijing announced an ambitious AI blueprint in 2017, with a goal to become a global AI leader by 2030 and promises of funding for universities and private enterprise. Local governments across the nation followed with their own programs to support AI.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/0517258/were-deepseeks-development-costs-much-higher-than-reported?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"A jury may never see the gun that authorities say was used to kill Blake Story last year," reports Cleveland.com.

"That's because Cleveland police used a facial recognition program — one that explicitly says its results are not admissible in court — to obtain a search warrant, according to court documents."

The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect's home. But a Cuyahoga County judge tossed that evidence after siding with defense attorneys who argued that the search warrant affidavit was misleading and relied on inadmissible evidence. If an appeals court upholds the judge's ruling to suppress the evidence, prosecutors acknowledge their case is likely lost...

The company that produced the facial recognition report, Clearview AI, has been used in hundreds of law enforcement investigations throughout Ohio and has faced lawsuits over privacy violations.

Not only does Cleveland lack a policy governing the use of artificial intelligence, Ohio lawmakers also have failed to set standards for how police use the tool to investigate crimes. "It's the wild, wild west in Ohio," said Gary Daniels, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union. The lack of state regulation of how law enforcement uses advanced technologies — no laws similarly govern the use of drones or license plate readers — means it is essentially up to agencies how they use the tools.
The affidavit for the search warrant was signed by a 28-year police force veteran, according to the article — but it didn't disclose the use of Clearview's technology.
Clearview's report acknowledged their results were not admissible in court — but then provided the suspect's name, arrest record, Social Security number, according to the article, and "noted he was the most likely match for the person in the convenience store."

Thanks to tlhIngan (Slashdot reader #30,335) for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/0431229/police-use-of-ai-facial-recognition-results-in-murder-case-being-tossed?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Инженеры из компании Red Hat предложили для включения в состав ядра Linux первый набор патчей с реализацией драйвера Nova. Драйвер рассчитан на использование с GPU NVIDIA, оснащёнными GSP-прошивками, которые используются начиная с серии NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2000 на базе микроархитектуры Turing. В подобных GPU операции инициализации и управления реализованы в прошивке и выполняются отдельным микроконтроллером GSP (GPU System Processor). Предполагается, что в долгосрочной перспективе Nova заменит собой драйвер Nouveau для GPU с поддержкой GSP.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62657

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: To cap off a day of product releases, OpenAI researchers, engineers, and executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, answered questions in a wide-ranging Reddit AMA on Friday. OpenAI the company finds itself in a bit of a precarious position. It's battling the perception that it's ceding ground in the AI race to Chinese companies like DeepSeek, which OpenAI alleges might've stolen its IP. The ChatGPT maker has been trying to shore up its relationship with Washington and simultaneously pursue an ambitious data center project, while reportedly laying groundwork for one of the largest financing rounds in history. Altman admitted that DeepSeek has lessened OpenAI's lead in AI, and he also said he believes OpenAI has been "on the wrong side of history" when it comes to open-sourcing its technologies. While OpenAI has open-sourced models in the past, the company has generally favored a proprietary, closed-source development approach.

"[I personally think we need to] figure out a different open source strategy," Altman said. "Not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it's also not our current highest priority [] We will produce better models [going forward], but we will maintain less of a lead than we did in previous years." In a follow-up reply, Kevin Weil, OpenAI's chief product officer, said that OpenAI is considering open-sourcing older models that aren't state-of-the-art anymore. "We'll definitely think about doing more of this," he said, without going into greater detail.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/0137256/sam-altman-openai-has-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history-concerning-open-source?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Представлен выпуск свободного пакета для вёрстки документов Scribus 1.7.0. Пакет предоставляет средства для профессиональной верстки печатных материалов, включает инструменты для генерации PDF и поддерживает работу с раздельными цветовыми профилями, CMYK, плашечными цветами и ICC. Программа написана с использованием тулкита Qt и поставляется под лицензией GPLv2+. Готовые бинарные сборки подготовлены для Linux (AppImage), macOS и Windows.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62656

A recent video from retro tech YouTuber Clint "LGR" Basinger takes a deep dive into the history of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium, exploring how former Air Force pilot Jim Sachs transformed a lackluster Windows 95 screensaver into a 25-year digital phenomenon. PC Gamer reports: The story centers on Jim Sachs, a man with one of those "they don't make this type of guy anymore" life stories so common to '80s and '90s computing, one Sachs recounted to the website AmigaLove back in 2020. After a six-year career in the US Air Force flying C-141 Starlifters, Sachs taught himself programming and digital art and began creating games for Commodore 64 and Amiga computers. From his first game, Saucer Attack, to later efforts like Defender of the Crown or his large portfolio of promotional and commissioned pieces, Sach's pixel art remains gorgeous and impressive to this day, and he seems to be a bit of a legend among Commodore enthusiasts.

It's with this background in games and digital art that Sachs looked at Microsoft's simple aquarium-themed screensaver for Windows 95 and 98 and thought he could do better. "Microsoft had an aquarium that they gave away with Windows where it was just bitmaps of fish being dragged across the screen," Sachs told the Matt Chat podcast back in 2015. "And they had that for like, three or four years. And I thought, I've given them enough time, I'm taking them to market. I'm gonna do something which will just blow that away."

Using reference photographs of real aquariums -- Sachs thanked a specific pet shop that's still around in an early version of his website" -- Sachs created the 3D art by hand and programmed the screensaver in C++, releasing the initial version in July 2000. Even looking at it all these years later, the first iteration of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium is pretty gorgeous, and it has the added charm of being such a distinctly Y2K, nostalgic throwback.

The standalone screensaver sold well, but then things came full circle with Microsoft licensing a version of the Marine Aquarium for the Windows XP Plus Pack and later standard releases of the OS. Since that time, the Marine Aquarium has continued to see new releases, and a section on the SereneScreen website keeps track of its various appearances in the background of movies and TV shows like Law and Order. Over on the SereneScreen website, you can purchase a real time, 3D-accelerated version of the Marine Aquarium for Mac, iOS, Android, and the original Windows. Echoing the Windows XP deal, Roku actually licensed this 3.0 version for its TVs, bringing it to a new generation of users.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/0129243/the-25-year-success-story-of-serenescreen?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Студент Корнеллского университета [ Далтон Лус ]( https://www.daltonluce.com ) представил открытый проект astroterm – карту звёздного неба в терминале. Исходный код программы написан на C и немного на Python и опубликован на GitHub под лицензией MIT.

Особенности:

🔭 выбор любой даты, времени и местоположения для исследования прошлых, настоящих или будущих небесных явлений
📐 просмотр Луны, звёзд и планет с максимальной точностью, которую позволяет графика терминала
🌘 точные фазы Луны в режиме реального времени
🌌 подробные формы созвездий
⚡ лёгкая и быстрая ASCII-графика

>>> [ ГитХаб проекта ]( https://github.com/da-luce/astroterm )

>>> [ новость на Хабре ]( https://habr.com/ru/news/875848/ )

>>> [ гифка с работой программы, которая не влезла на ЛОР из-за размера ]( https://github.com/da-luce/astroterm/blob/main/assets/SG_2025-01-02.gif )

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/multimedia/17868835

Калле Валло (Kalle Valo) – единственный сопровождающий разработчик драйверов беспроводных сетей в Linux – объявил о своём уходе с этой должности.

Помимо этого, он также покидает роли со-сопровождающего драйверов Qualcomm ATH12K, ATH11K, ATH10K и утилит Atheros ATH Generic Utilities.

И если поддержку Qualcomm ATH12K, ATH11K, ATH10K и утилит Atheros ATH продолжит Джефф Джонсон (Jeff Johnson), то на роль сопровождающего драйверов беспроводных сетей (drivers/net/wireless/) кандидатуры на данный момент нет.

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/linux-general/17868851

В кодовую базу, используемую для формирования весеннего релиза GNOME 48, принято изменение, переводящее среду рабочего стола на использование по умолчанию шрифта Adwaita Sans. С 2010 года в GNOME использовался шрифт Cantarell, потребность в замене которого возникла из-за стагнации разработки и проблем с сопровождением.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62655

Опубликован релиз Live-дистрибутива GParted Live 1.7.0, предназначенного для восстановления систем после сбоев и работы с дисковыми разделами при помощи редактора разделов GParted. Размер загрузочного образа - 588 МБ (x86_64). Дистрибутив основан на пакетной базе Debian Sid по состоянию на 31 января.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62654

Компания Google расширила возможности приложения Terminal, позволяющего запустить эмулятор терминала с доступом к полноценному Linux-окружению, выполняемому в виртуальной машине. В процессе разработки ветки Android 16 в Terminal добавлена поддержка запуска графических приложений, собранных для Linux.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62653

TOP10 VISITORS:

[1] 45.135.180.x point=223 web=0 up=18.1MB (76%) <--- yesterlink (9/hr)
[2] Facebook point=0 web=239 up=2.6MB (11%)
[3] 24.130.121.x point=17 web=1 up=1.4MB (5%) <--- spnet (1/hr)
[4] 217.114.158.x point=27 web=0 up=0.9MB (3%) <--- fox (1/hr)
[5] TikTok point=0 web=110 up=0.3MB (1%)
[6] Google point=1 web=102 up=0.3MB (1%) <--- Google
[7] 185.61.217.x point=0 web=1 up=35KB
[8] 77.220.194.x point=0 web=1 up=28KB
[9] 185.17.252.x point=5 web=0 up=23KB <--- 185.17.252.x
[10] 194.99.27.x point=0 web=1 up=12KB

TOTAL TRAFFIC: 23MB

Despite being removed from app stores and facing a potential U.S. ban, TikTok has regained nearly 90% of its user traffic, according to Cloudflare Radar. "DNS traffic for TikTok-related domains has continued to recover since service restoration, and is currently about 10% lower than pre-shutdown level," said David Belson, head of data insight at Cloudflare. CNBC reports: The data from Cloudflare shows that, for the most part, TikTok has managed to maintain the bulk of its users and creators in the U.S. despite going offline for about 14 hours and remaining off of the Apple or Google app stores.

As for its alternatives, Cloudflare's data shows a spike in traffic the day of the temporary ban, with levels remaining steadily higher in the following week. Traffic for alternatives began to grow a week ahead of the expected shutdown, driven by the increased popularity of RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, Belson said.

But traffic to TikTok alternatives peaked on Jan. 19, the day TikTok returned online, he added. "DNS traffic fell rapidly once the shutdown ended, and has continued to slowly decline over the last week and a half," Belson said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/01/018238/tiktoks-traffic-bounces-back-despite-being-pulled-off-app-stores?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

После месяца разработки состоялся выпуск 1.16.0 высокоточного консольного научного калькулятора [ Numbat ]( https://numbat.dev ) , написанного на языке Rust и распространяемого по лицензии MIT и/или Apache 2.0.

Отличительные особенности Numbat:

• полная поддержка физических размерностей и единиц измерения;

• простой встроенный язык со статической типизацией;

• автодополнение имён функций, единиц измерения и переменных;

• поиск по истории ввода;

• и многое другое.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/17868612#cut ) )

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: In the first serious fallout from President Donald Trump's early actions against offshore wind power, oil and gas giant Shell is walking away from a major project off the coast of New Jersey. Shell told The Associated Press it is writing off the project, citing increased competition, delays and a changing market. "Naturally we also take regulatory context into consideration," spokesperson Natalie Gunnell said in an email.

Shell co-owns the large Atlantic Shores project, which has most of its permits and would generate enough power for 1 million homes if both of two phases were completed. That's enough for one-third of New Jersey households. It's unclear whether Shell's decision kills the project -- partner EDF-RE Offshore Development says it remains committed to Atlantic Shores. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order singling out offshore wind for contempt with a temporary halt on all lease sales in federal waters and a pause on approvals, permits and loans. Perhaps most of interest to Shell, the order directs administration officials to review existing offshore wind energy leases and identify any legal reasons to terminate them.

[...] The Biden administration approved plans to build the Atlantic Shores project in two phases in October, but construction has not begun. Oliver Metcalfe, head of wind research at BloombergNEF, said the partners are facing significant uncertainty about their lease, and other developers are watching what happens with Atlantic Shores closely. "We're in uncertain territory here," he added. [...] Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast NJ, said that without Shell's financial backing, it appears the project is "dead in the water." Shell is writing off a nearly $1 billion investment. It announced its decision on Thursday, as it reported a 16% decline in full-year earnings of $23.7 billion from $28.3 billion. Most of its business is oil and gas.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/01/31/2343230/shell-walks-away-from-major-new-jersey-offshore-wind-farm?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.