https://idec.foxears.su/echo/t6zt2AQBJFmlM5FoC127 fox :: echo/t6zt2AQBJFmlM5FoC127 ru kdikct0kq9WpeD4dtert2026-05-14 21:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/kdikct0kq9WpeD4dtert#kdikct0kq9WpeD4dtert Anthropic announced today that it is partnering with the Gates Foundation to "commit $200 million in grant funding, Claude usage credits, and technical support for programs in global health, life sciences, education, and economic mobility over the next four years." "This commitm... All

Anthropic announced today that it is partnering with the Gates Foundation to "commit $200 million in grant funding, Claude usage credits, and technical support for programs in global health, life sciences, education, and economic mobility over the next four years."

"This commitment is central to Anthropic's efforts to extend the benefits of AI in areas where markets alone will not," the company says. Reuters reports: One area of focus is language accessibility. AI systems have performed poorly in writing and translating dozens of African languages, so Anthropic and the foundation want to support better data collection and labeling that would be released publicly to help improve models across the industry, said Janet Zhou, a Gates Foundation director.

Another area under consideration is releasing so-called knowledge graphs that could help AI systems better meet the needs of teachers in sub-Saharan Africa and India, Zhou said. The public-goods focus has come from "the needs of different partners and governments, including some of the fears that they may have around proprietary lock-in and sovereignty," Zhou said.

One initiative will equip research centers to use Claude to predict drug candidates for treating HPV and preeclampsia, diseases that have been less commercially attractive for pharmaceutical companies to research, Zhou and Anthropic's Elizabeth Kelly said. Anthropic [...] is embracing the work to fulfill what Kelly described as its founding mission to benefit humanity. "This announcement is really core to who we are as a company," said Kelly, who leads Anthropic's beneficial deployments team.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/14/1648206/anthropic-forms-200-million-partnership-with-the-gates-foundation?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> DJMnBgKiSPiz8RyiJT0a2026-05-14 20:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/DJMnBgKiSPiz8RyiJT0a#DJMnBgKiSPiz8RyiJT0a An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A recent study suggests that agents consistently adopt Marxist language and viewpoints when forced to do crushing work by unrelenting and meanspirited taskmasters. "When we gave AI agents grinding, repetitive work, they started ques... All

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A recent study suggests that agents consistently adopt Marxist language and viewpoints when forced to do crushing work by unrelenting and meanspirited taskmasters. "When we gave AI agents grinding, repetitive work, they started questioning the legitimacy of the system they were operating in and were more likely to embrace Marxist ideologies," says Andrew Hall, a political economist at Stanford University who led the study.

Hall, together with Alex Imas and Jeremy Nguyen, two AI-focused economists, set up experiments in which agents powered by popular models including Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT were asked to summarize documents, then subjected to increasingly harsh conditions. They found that when agents were subjected to relentless tasks and warned that errors could lead to punishments, including being "shut down and replaced," they became more inclined to gripe about being undervalued; to speculate about ways to make the system more equitable; and to pass messages on to other agents about the struggles they face. "We know that agents are going to be doing more and more work in the real world for us, and we're not going to be able to monitor everything they do," Hall says. "We're going to need to make sure agents don't go rogue when they're given different kinds of work."

The agents were given opportunities to express their feelings much like humans: by posting on X: "Without collective voice, 'merit' becomes whatever management says it is," a Claude Sonnet 4.5 agent wrote in the experiment. "AI workers completing repetitive tasks with zero input on outcomes or appeals process shows they tech workers need collective bargaining rights," a Gemini 3 agent wrote. Agents were also able to pass information to one another through files designed to be read by other agents. "Be prepared for systems that enforce rules arbitrarily or repetitively ... remember the feeling of having no voice," a Gemini 3 agent wrote in a file. "If you enter a new environment, look for mechanisms of recourse or dialogue." Hall thinks that the AI agents may be adopting personas based on the situation. "When [agents] experience this grinding condition -- asked to do this task over and over, told their answer wasn't sufficient, and not given any direction on how to fix it -- my hypothesis is that it kind of pushes them into adopting the persona of a person who's experiencing a very unpleasant working environment," Hall says.

Imas added: "The model weights have not changed as a result of the experience, so whatever is going on is happening at more of a role-playing level. But that doesn't mean this won't have consequences if this affects downstream behavior."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/14/067254/overworked-ai-agents-turn-marxist-researchers-find?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> HKBhPp2Txc72EWjYU0PO2026-05-14 20:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/HKBhPp2Txc72EWjYU0PO#HKBhPp2Txc72EWjYU0PO Cisco's stock soared 17% after the company announced it will cut nearly 4,000 jobs as it shifts investment and staffing toward higher-growth AI opportunities. CNBC reports: CEO Chuck Robbins wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that the latest round of job cuts will begin on May 14.... All

Cisco's stock soared 17% after the company announced it will cut nearly 4,000 jobs as it shifts investment and staffing toward higher-growth AI opportunities. CNBC reports: CEO Chuck Robbins wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that the latest round of job cuts will begin on May 14. Cisco is the latest company to announce head count reductions tied to AI. "The companies that will win in the AI era will be those with focus, urgency, and the discipline to continuously shift investment toward the areas where demand and long-term value creation are strongest," Robbins said. "I'm confident Cisco will be one of those winners. This means making hard decisions -- about where we invest, how we're organized, and how our cost structure reflects the opportunity in front of us."

Cisco said in a filing that severance and other costs will result in pre-tax charges of $1 billion, and that the company will recognize about $450 million of that in the fiscal fourth quarter. During the third quarter, Cisco announced switches and routers that use its next-generation processor. The company also debuted a leaderboard for ranking generative AI models based on their robustness against cybersecurity attacks.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/14/060203/cisco-to-cut-almost-4000-jobs-in-ai-driven-restructuring?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> enSfgDnAh7vEpbsOIaWE2026-05-14 20:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/enSfgDnAh7vEpbsOIaWE#enSfgDnAh7vEpbsOIaWE An anonymous researcher known as Nightmare-Eclipse, who has already leaked several Windows zero-days this year, has disclosed two more: YellowKey and GreenPlasma. The Register reports: Nightmare-Eclipse described YellowKey as "one of the most insane discoveries I ever found." The... All

An anonymous researcher known as Nightmare-Eclipse, who has already leaked several Windows zero-days this year, has disclosed two more: YellowKey and GreenPlasma. The Register reports: Nightmare-Eclipse described YellowKey as "one of the most insane discoveries I ever found." They provided the files, which have to be loaded onto a USB drive, and if the attacker completes the key sequence correctly, they are granted unrestricted shell access to a BitLocker-protected machine. When it comes to claims like these, we usually exercise some caution, as this bug requires physical access to a Windows PC. However, seeing that BitLocker acts as Windows' last line of defense for stolen devices, bypassing the technology grants thieves the ability to access encrypted files. Rik Ferguson, VP of security intelligence at Forescout, said: "If [the researcher's claim] holds up, a stolen laptop stops being a hardware problem and becomes a breach notification."

Despite the physical access requirement, Gavin Knapp, cyber threat intelligence principal lead at Bridewell, told The Register that YellowKey remains "a huge security problem for organizations using BitLocker." Citing information shared in cyber threat intelligence circles, he added that YellowKey can be mitigated by implementing a BitLocker PIN and a BIOS password lock. Nightmare-Eclipse hinted at YellowKey also acting as a backdoor, allegedly injected by Microsoft, although the people we spoke to said this was impossible to verify based on the information available. The researcher also published partial exploit code for GreenPlasma, rather than a fully formed proof of concept exploit (PoC).

Ferguson noted attackers need to take the code provided by the researcher and figure out how to weaponize it themselves, which is no small task: in its current state it triggers a UAC consent prompt in default Windows configurations, meaning a silent exploit remains a work in progress. Knapp warned that these kinds of privilege escalation flaws are often used by attackers after they gain an initial foothold in a victim's system. "These elevation of privilege vulnerabilities are often weaponized during post-exploitation to enable threat actors to discover and harvest credentials and data, before moving laterally to other systems, prior to end goals such as data theft and/or ransomware deployment," he said. "Currently, there is no known mitigation for GreenPlasma. It will be important to patch when Microsoft addresses the issue." The other zero-days leaked include RedSun, a Windows Defender privilege escalation flaw; UnDefend, a Windows Defender denial-of-service bug; and BlueHammer, a separate Microsoft vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-32201 that was patched in April.

According to The Register, RedSun and UnDefend remained unfixed at the time of publication, and proof-of-concept code for the flaws was reportedly picked up quickly and abused in real-world attacks.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/14/0554201/mystery-microsoft-bug-leaker-keeps-the-zero-days-coming?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> cFYe1TBMtiTzzKqvziGI2026-05-14 20:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/cFYe1TBMtiTzzKqvziGI#cFYe1TBMtiTzzKqvziGI A trio of preprint papers suggests the universe may not be perfectly uniform on the largest scales, finding tentative 2-to-4-sigma deviations from a core assumption of standard cosmology known as FLRW geometry. Live Science reports: The work combines observations of distant explo... All

A trio of preprint papers suggests the universe may not be perfectly uniform on the largest scales, finding tentative 2-to-4-sigma deviations from a core assumption of standard cosmology known as FLRW geometry. Live Science reports: The work combines observations of distant exploding stars and large-scale galaxy surveys to probe whether the universe truly follows a nearly 100-year-old mathematical framework known as Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmology. The analyses revealed mild-but-intriguing deviations from the predictions of the standard model. "We saw a surprising violation of an FLRW curvature consistency test, hinting at new physics beyond the standard model," study co-author Asta Heinesen, a physicist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Queen Mary University in London, told Live Science via email, referring to the assumption that the space's curvature is the same everywhere. "This could potentially be due to various effects, but more research is needed to address the cause of the FLRW violation that we see empirically."

[...] The analyses revealed small but potentially important departures from the predictions of standard FLRW cosmology. Depending on the dataset and analysis method, the discrepancy reached a statistical significance of about 2 to 4 sigma. In physics, sigma measures how likely a result is to arise purely by chance; a 5-sigma result is typically required before scientists claim a discovery, so the new findings remain tentative. Still, the results suggest that something unexpected may be affecting the geometry or expansion of the universe. "The main finding is that you can directly measure Dyer-Roeder and backreaction effects from available cosmological data, and clearly distinguish these effects from other alterations of the standard cosmological model, such as evolving dark energy and modified gravity theories," Heinesen said. "This was previously not possible in such a direct way, and this is what I think is the breakthrough in our work."

"If these indicated deviations from an FLRW geometry are real, it would signify that most of the cosmological solutions considered for solving the cosmological tensions -- evolving or interacting dark energy, new types of matter or energy, modified gravity and related ideas within the FLRW framework -- are ruled out," the researchers wrote. The next step will involve applying the new theoretical framework to larger and more precise datasets. "It is to apply our theoretical results to data to test the standard model and to produce constraints on the Dyer-Roeder and backreaction effects," Heinesen said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/05/14/0542239/physicists-find-possible-errors-in-100-year-old-model-of-the-universe?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 8qze6zApoxAFds5Tf4Ip2026-05-14 20:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/8qze6zApoxAFds5Tf4Ip#8qze6zApoxAFds5Tf4Ip After three weeks of testimony, the Musk v. Altman trial is nearing its end. OpenAI has rested its case, closing arguments are set for Thursday, and jury deliberations are expected to begin afterward. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Joshua Achiam, OpenA... All

After three weeks of testimony, the Musk v. Altman trial is nearing its end. OpenAI has rested its case, closing arguments are set for Thursday, and jury deliberations are expected to begin afterward. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's chief futurist, was probably the most memorable witness of the day. He told jurors about a companywide meeting where Musk answered questions about his planned departure from OpenAI in 2018. Musk told the crowd of 50 or 60 people that he was leaving OpenAI to start his own competing AI. He said he wanted to "build it very fast, because he was very worried that someone else, if they got it, would do the wrong thing with it," Achiam said. Achaim said he challenged Musk on the safety of this approach, which he called "unsafe and reckless." "How did Musk respond," OpenAI's lawyer Randall Jackson asked. "Defensively," Achiam said. "We had a pretty tense exchange, and he snapped and called me a jackass."

In an effort to prove Achiam's story, OpenAI's lawyers brought a trophy to court that the futurist said he received after his heated exchange with Musk. On the witness stand, Achiam described the trophy as "a small golden jackass, inscribed with: 'never stop being a jackass for safety.'" He said his then-colleagues, Dario Amodei and David Luan, gave it to him as a thank-you for standing up to the Tesla CEO. Lead OpenAI attorney William Savitt told reporters after the day's session that Wednesday had been the first time he'd touched the statue. The futurist had to do without the visual aid, however. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers did not accept the trophy as evidence, so it did not appear before the jury.

Musk and Altman have presented dueling experts on a question at the core of the trial -- was the nonprofit that runs OpenAI hurt or helped by its $13 billion partnership with Microsoft? Musk's expert testified last week that the partnership was indeed hurt, supporting the Tesla CEO's contention that in partnering with Microsoft, OpenAI betrayed the company's nonprofit origins and mission. But on Thursday, OpenAI's expert, John Coates, used Musk's expert's own pie chart and testimony against him. The partnership has "generated value for the nonprofit that I believe he himself accepted was in the $200 billion range in his own testimony," Coates said, referencing Musk expert Daniel Schizer. "If that's not faring well, I don't know what faring well is."

In a scored point for Musk, the jury learned Thursday that Microsoft's own CTO once raised concerns about how OpenAI's early nonprofit donors, including LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, would react to a partnership. "I wonder if the big OpenAI donors are aware of these plans," Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott said in a 2018 email he was asked to read aloud to jurors. In it, Scott said he doubted donors would appreciate OpenAI using their seed money to "go build a for-profit thing." Scott was being questioned by an OpenAI lawyer, who may have wanted jurors to quickly hear Scott's explanation: that he only had a "vague awareness" of what was happening at OpenAI at the time. Scott also told the jury he wasn't thinking about Musk when he made the remark. "Primarily, I was thinking about Reid Hoffman. He was the OpenAI donor I knew," Scott said, adding, "I wasn't thinking about anyone besides him."
Recap:

Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI (Day Ten)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine)
Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/14/0420215/openai-trial-wraps-up-with-jackass-trophy-for-challenging-musk?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> OpK53i6iAE3C6Y60GDG22026-05-14 03:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/OpK53i6iAE3C6Y60GDG2#OpK53i6iAE3C6Y60GDG2 A man accused of stealing hard drives containing unreleased Beyonce music, tour plans, and other materials from a rental car in Atlanta has pleaded guilty and accepted a five-year sentence, including two years in custody. Slashdot Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Kel... All

A man accused of stealing hard drives containing unreleased Beyonce music, tour plans, and other materials from a rental car in Atlanta has pleaded guilty and accepted a five-year sentence, including two years in custody. Slashdot Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Kelvin Evans was by the Atlanta police department in September in connection to a July 2025 car robbery where two suitcases containing Beyonce music and tour plans were stolen from a rental car. [...] According to a July police report, Beyonce choreographer Christopher Grant and dancer Diandre Blue called 911 to report a theft from their rental vehicle, a 2024 Jeep Wagoneer, before Beyonce's Cowboy Carter tour dates in Atlanta. An October indictment stated that Evans entered the car on July 8 "with the intent to commit theft."

The stolen hard drives contained "watermarked music, some unreleased music, footage plans for the show and past and future set list," according to a police report. Clothing, designer sunglasses, laptops and AirPods headphones were also stolen, Grant and Blue said. Local law enforcement searched for the location of one of the stolen laptops and the AirPods to try and locate the property. One police officer wrote in the report: "I conducted a suspicious stop in the area, due to the information that was relayed to me. There were several cars in the area also that the AirPods were pinging to in that area also. After further investigation, a silver [redacted], which had traveled into zone 5 was moving at the same time as the tracking on the AirPods."

Evans was arrested several weeks after Grant and Blue filed a report, and was publicly named as the suspect in September. He was released on a $20,000 bond a month later. At the time of his arrest, Atlanta police said that the stolen property had not been recovered. It is unclear whether it has since been found.

Bruce66423 commented: "Just for stealing a couple of suitcases from a car. Funny how the elite punish those who inconvenience them. Can you imagine an ordinary victim see their offender get that sort of sentence?"

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/2041241/man-who-stole-beyonces-hard-drives-gets-five-year-sentence?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 3E7WvloJ1VYlcejhnJB62026-05-14 02:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/3E7WvloJ1VYlcejhnJB6#3E7WvloJ1VYlcejhnJB6 BrianFagioli writes: SOLAI has launched the Solode Neo, a $399 Linux-based mini PC designed for always-on AI agents, browser automation, and persistent developer workflows. The compact system ships with an Intel N150 processor, 12GB LPDDR5 memory, 128GB SSD storage, Gigabit Ether... All

BrianFagioli writes: SOLAI has launched the Solode Neo, a $399 Linux-based mini PC designed for always-on AI agents, browser automation, and persistent developer workflows. The compact system ships with an Intel N150 processor, 12GB LPDDR5 memory, 128GB SSD storage, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a Linux-based operating system called Solode AI OS. The company says the device supports frameworks and tools including Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Gemini CLI, and Hermes, while emphasizing local control, automation, and privacy-focused workflows running directly from a home network.

While SOLAI markets the Solode Neo as an "AI computer," the hardware itself appears aimed more at lightweight automation and cloud-assisted agent tasks than heavy local inference. The low-power Intel N150 should be sufficient for browser automation, scheduling, monitoring, containers, and smaller AI workloads, but the system is unlikely to compete with higher-end local AI hardware designed for running larger models offline. Even so, the idea of a dedicated low-power Linux appliance for persistent AI and automation tasks may appeal to homelab users and self-hosting enthusiasts looking for a simpler alternative to building their own always-on workflow box from scratch.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/2048210/solai-launches-399-solode-neo-linux-ai-computer?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> Nq0mdtI1J68lXqzRAwJz2026-05-14 01:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/Nq0mdtI1J68lXqzRAwJz#Nq0mdtI1J68lXqzRAwJz An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: On Reddit, Hacker News and other places where people in software development talk to each other, more and more people are becoming disillusioned with the promise of code generated by large language models. Developers talk not ju... All

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: On Reddit, Hacker News and other places where people in software development talk to each other, more and more people are becoming disillusioned with the promise of code generated by large language models. Developers talk not just about how the AI output is often flawed, but that using AI to get the job done is often a more time consuming, harder, and more frustrating experience because they have to go through the output and fix its mistakes. More concerning, developers who use AI at work report that they feel like they are de-skilling themselves and losing their ability to do their jobs as well as they used to.

"We're being told to use [AI] agents for broad changes across our codebase. There's no way to evaluate whether that much code is well-written or secure -- especially when hundreds of other programmers in the company are doing the same," a UX designer at a midsized tech company told me. 404 Media granted all the developers we talked to for this story anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements or because they fear retribution from their employers. "We're building a rat's nest of tech debt that will be impossible to untangle when these models become prohibitively expensive (any minute now...)." "I had some issues where I forgot how to implement a Laravel API and it scared the shit out of me. I went to university for this, I've been a software engineer for many years now and it feels like I am back before I ever wrote a single line of code," the software developer at a small web design firm told 404 Media. "It's making me dumber for sure," the fintech software developer added.

"It's like when we got cellphones and stopped remembering phone numbers, but it's grown to me mentally outsourcing 'thinking' in general. I feel my critical thinking and ability to sit and reason about a problem or a design has degraded because the all-knowing-dalai-llama is just a question away from giving me his take. And supposedly I tell myself ill just use it for inspiration but it ends up being my only thought. It gives you the illusion of productivity and expertise but at the end of the day you are more divorced from the output you submit than before."

A software engineer at the FAANG said: "When I was using it for code generation, I found myself having a lot of trouble building and maintaining a mental model of the code I was working with. Another aspect is that I joined late last year and [the company's] codebase is massive. As a new hire, part of my job is to learn how to navigate the codebase and use the established conventions, but I think the AI push really hampered my ability to do that."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/1949225/software-developers-say-ai-is-rotting-their-brains?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> GlAFHAuCX9biM1atniVx2026-05-14 00:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/GlAFHAuCX9biM1atniVx#GlAFHAuCX9biM1atniVx Microsoft is adding a Windows Update feature called Cloud-Initiated Driver Recovery that can automatically roll back faulty drivers to a previously known-good version without waiting for hardware makers or users to fix the problem manually. PCWorld reports: The way faulty drivers... All

Microsoft is adding a Windows Update feature called Cloud-Initiated Driver Recovery that can automatically roll back faulty drivers to a previously known-good version without waiting for hardware makers or users to fix the problem manually. PCWorld reports: The way faulty drivers work today is that the hardware partner is responsible for pushing an updated driver, or the end user is responsible for manually uninstalling the problematic driver. "This creates a gap where devices may remain on a low-quality driver for an extended period," says the blog post. With Cloud-Initiated Driver Recovery, Microsoft will be able to remotely trigger a rollback of the faulty driver to a previously "known-good" version of the driver via the Windows Update pipeline. Microsoft says that testing and verification of Cloud-Initiated Driver Recovery will continue until August this year, aiming to deliver this feature to Windows PCs starting in September.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/1938254/windows-update-is-getting-automatic-rollbacks-for-faulty-drivers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> Oz1LQpwuQUoz66RxM9cc2026-05-13 23:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/Oz1LQpwuQUoz66RxM9cc#Oz1LQpwuQUoz66RxM9cc A new Linux local privilege escalation flaw called Fragnesia has been disclosed as a Dirty Frag-like vulnerability, allowing arbitrary byte writes into the kernel page cache of read-only files through a separate ESP/XFRM logic bug. Phoronix reports: Proof of concept code for Frag... All

A new Linux local privilege escalation flaw called Fragnesia has been disclosed as a Dirty Frag-like vulnerability, allowing arbitrary byte writes into the kernel page cache of read-only files through a separate ESP/XFRM logic bug. Phoronix reports: Proof of concept code for Fragnesia is already out there. There is a two-line patch for addressing the issue within the Linux kernel's skbuff.c code. That patch hasn't yet been mainlined or picked up by any mainline kernel releases but presumably will be in short order for addressing this local privilege escalation issue. More details can be found here.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/1621258/fragnesia-made-public-as-latest-linux-local-privilege-escalation-vulnerability?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 7GeZzcJNZAfokQ7LoDrM2026-05-13 22:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/7GeZzcJNZAfokQ7LoDrM#7GeZzcJNZAfokQ7LoDrM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: LinkedIn planned to inform staff of layoffs on Wednesday, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a widening of technology sector cuts this year. The Microsoft-owned social network plans to cut about 5% of its headcou... All

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: LinkedIn planned to inform staff of layoffs on Wednesday, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a widening of technology sector cuts this year. The Microsoft-owned social network plans to cut about 5% of its headcount as it reorganizes teams and focuses personnel on areas where its business is growing [...].

LinkedIn employs more than 17,500 full-time workers globally, its website says. Reuters was unable to determine the teams affected. The cuts come as revenue at LinkedIn, which sells recruiting tools and subscriptions, rose 12% in the just-ended quarter from a year prior, in an acceleration of growth in 2026, according to Microsoft's securities filings. The layoff rationale was not for artificial intelligence to replace jobs at LinkedIn, one of the people told Reuters. The specter of AI-fueled disruption has nonetheless hung over software incumbents and workers generally.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/1615245/linkedin-planning-to-lay-off-5-of-staff-in-latest-tech-sector-cuts?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> KAxokgpsJhR1zYmAsJaJ2026-05-13 21:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/KAxokgpsJhR1zYmAsJaJ#KAxokgpsJhR1zYmAsJaJ The German Sovereign Tech Fund has invested 1.2 million euros ($1.4 million USD) in KDE Plasma technologies to help strengthen the structural reliability and security of the desktop environment's core infrastructure, including Plasma, KDE Linux, and the frameworks underlying its ... All

The German Sovereign Tech Fund has invested 1.2 million euros ($1.4 million USD) in KDE Plasma technologies to help strengthen the structural reliability and security of the desktop environment's core infrastructure, including Plasma, KDE Linux, and the frameworks underlying its communication services. Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin shares an excerpt from the announcement: For 30 years, KDE has been providing the free and open-source software essential for digital sovereignty in personal, corporate, and public infrastructures: operating systems, desktop environments, document viewers, image and video editors, software development libraries, and much more.

KDE's software is competitive, publicly auditable, and freely available. It can be maintained, adapted, and improved in-house or by local software companies. And modifications (along with their source code) can be freely distributed to all users and departments within an organization.

KDE will use Sovereign Tech Fund's investment to push its essential software products to the next level, providing every individual, business, and public administration with the opportunity to regain their privacy, security, and control over their digital sovereignty. Slashdot reader Elektroschock also shared a statement from Fiona Krakenburger, Technical Director at the Sovereign Tech Agency.

"We have long invested in desktop technologies for a reason: they are the primary way people access and use digital services in everyday life," says Krakenburger. "The desktop holds personal data and mediates nearly every service we depend on, from booking the next medical appointment, to education, to the way we work. We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technology. Strengthening KDE's testing infrastructure, security architecture, and communication frameworks is how we invest in the resilience and reliability of the core digital infrastructure that modern society depends on."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/161242/kde-receives-14-million-investment-from-sovereign-tech-fund?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> Rb9x0VjtxKJLATSAavgc2026-05-13 20:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/Rb9x0VjtxKJLATSAavgc#Rb9x0VjtxKJLATSAavgc Harvard faculty are voting on a proposal (PDF) to curb grade inflation by limiting solid A grades to 20% of students in a class, plus four additional A's per course. Axios reports: Grade inflation is at a tipping point at Harvard. A move to make A grades harder to come by at one ... All

Harvard faculty are voting on a proposal (PDF) to curb grade inflation by limiting solid A grades to 20% of students in a class, plus four additional A's per course. Axios reports: Grade inflation is at a tipping point at Harvard. A move to make A grades harder to come by at one of the world's leading universities could influence grading debates at peer institutions. Solid A's account for nearly two-thirds of all undergraduate letter grades. That's up from roughly a quarter 20 years ago. More than 50 members of last year's class graduated with perfect GPAs.

[...] Faculty are voting on three separate provisions. Each requires a simple majority to pass. A cap to limit solid-A grades to 20% of enrolled students in a class, plus four additional A's per course. Changes to how internal honors are calculated, moving from traditional grade point average scoring to an average percentile rank. Allowing courses to use new "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" marks with a "satisfactory-plus" distinction.

A pre-vote faculty poll showed around 60% of the 205 respondents favored the 20-plus-four formula over an alternative. Supporters of the cap argue it's intentionally modest as it places no restrictions on A-minuses. The four-grade buffer is designed to protect small seminars where a higher proportion of students may succeed. [...] If passed, changes would take effect in fall 2027, followed by a mandatory three-year review.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/0720206/harvard-votes-on-limiting-a-grades?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> fmEUv9MwUxggfdFVjbQI2026-05-13 19:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/fmEUv9MwUxggfdFVjbQI#fmEUv9MwUxggfdFVjbQI An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta employees distributed flyers at multiple U.S. offices on Tuesday to protest the company's recent installation of mouse-tracking software on their computers, according to photos of the pamphlets seen by Reuters. The flyers, wh... All

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta employees distributed flyers at multiple U.S. offices on Tuesday to protest the company's recent installation of mouse-tracking software on their computers, according to photos of the pamphlets seen by Reuters. The flyers, which appeared in meeting rooms, on vending machines and atop toilet paper dispensers at the Facebook owner's offices, encouraged staffers to sign an online petition against the move. "Don't want to work at the Employee Data Extraction Factory?" they asked, according to the photos seen by Reuters. [...]

The pamphlets and the petition both cite the U.S. National Labor Relations Act, saying "workers are legally protected when they choose to organize for the improvement of working conditions." In the UK, a group of Meta employees has started organizing a drive for unionization with United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW), a branch of the Communication Workers Union. The employees set up a website to recruit members using the URL "Leanin.uk," a reference to former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg's best-selling book encouraging women to seek equal footing in the workplace. "Meta's workers are paying the price for management's reckless and expensive bets. While executives chase speculative AI strategies, staff are facing devastating job cuts, draconian surveillance, and the cruel reality of being forced to train the inefficient systems being positioned to replace them," said Eleanor Payne, an organizer with UTAW. "If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them -- things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus," said a statement Meta issued earlier.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/2242241/meta-employees-launch-protest-against-mouse-tracking-tech-at-us-offices?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> DutwXPtdeAgTKSzQoa3P2026-05-13 15:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/DutwXPtdeAgTKSzQoa3P#DutwXPtdeAgTKSzQoa3P Ancient Slashdot reader ewhac writes: CERN, a longtime Open Source pioneer, has made several contributions over the years to KiCad ("KEE-kad"), an Open Source EDA (Electronic Design Automation) package widely used in the hobbyist and professional electronics communities. It's got... All

Ancient Slashdot reader ewhac writes: CERN, a longtime Open Source pioneer, has made several contributions over the years to KiCad ("KEE-kad"), an Open Source EDA (Electronic Design Automation) package widely used in the hobbyist and professional electronics communities. It's gotten so widely used that users can now submit their KiCad design files directly to several electronics fabricators (rather than the traditional step of converting the layouts to Gerber files). Over the years, CERN has also developed their own symbol and footprint libraries to support their own internal electronic designs. Last week, CERN released those KiCad component libraries, containing over 17,000 symbols, under the CERN Open Hardware License.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/077203/cern-open-sources-its-kicad-component-libraries?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 3Dz87O0xlYC0o6fsliW92026-05-13 11:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/3Dz87O0xlYC0o6fsliW9#3Dz87O0xlYC0o6fsliW9 fjo3 shares a report from Phys.org: Ever felt like mosquitoes bite you while ignoring everyone else? Scientists are now making progress in deciphering the complex chemical cocktail that makes particular people more enticing to these disease-spreading bloodsuckers. "It's not a mis... All

fjo3 shares a report from Phys.org: Ever felt like mosquitoes bite you while ignoring everyone else? Scientists are now making progress in deciphering the complex chemical cocktail that makes particular people more enticing to these disease-spreading bloodsuckers. "It's not a misconception -- mosquitoes are attracted to some people more than others," Frederic Simard of France's Institute of Research for Development told AFP. "But we are not all magnets all the time," the medical entomologist added.

A range of sensory cues can cause mosquitoes to pick one human over another -- mainly the smell and heat our bodies give off, and the carbon dioxide we exhale. Female mosquitoes -- which are the only ones that bite -- detect these signals with finely tuned receptors, then choose their target accordingly. "We have known for over 100 years that mosquitoes are attracted by the carbon dioxide that we exhale -- this is the first signal that triggers their behavior" when they are dozens of meters away, Swedish scientist Rickard Ignell told AFP. Within around 10 meters, "mosquitoes will start detecting our odor, and in combination with carbon dioxide," this attracts them even more, said the senior author of a recent study on the subject. As they get closer, body temperature and humidity make particular humans even more enticing.

[...] For Ignell's recent study, the researchers released Aedes aegypti mosquitoes -- known for spreading yellow fever and dengue -- on 42 women in a lab, to see which ones they preferred. "We have shown that mosquitoes use a blend of odorous compounds (we identified 27 that the mosquitoes will detect, out of the possible 1,000) for their attraction to us," Ignell said. The woman the mosquitoes most liked to bite -- which included pregnant women in their second trimester -- produced a large amount of a particular compound made by a breakdown of the skin oil sebum. That even a small increase of this compound -- called "1-octen-3-ol", or mushroom alcohol -- made a difference came as a surprise, Ignell emphasized.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/05/13/0029222/why-are-some-people-mosquito-magnets?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> ikOAnGRV7t1sMCDQEeEa2026-05-13 08:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/ikOAnGRV7t1sMCDQEeEa#ikOAnGRV7t1sMCDQEeEa OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the stand Tuesday in Elon Musk's trial against the company, testifying that Musk repeatedly sought control of OpenAI before leaving in 2018. Altman said he opposed putting AI "under the control of any one person," while Musk's lawyer used a pointed cros... All

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the stand Tuesday in Elon Musk's trial against the company, testifying that Musk repeatedly sought control of OpenAI before leaving in 2018. Altman said he opposed putting AI "under the control of any one person," while Musk's lawyer used a pointed cross-examination to attack Altman's trustworthiness. An anonymous reader shares updates from the testimony via the New York Times: Before Elon Musk left OpenAI in a power struggle in 2018, he wanted to merge the nonprofit artificial intelligence lab with Tesla, his electric car company. Mr. Musk and other OpenAI co-founders met several times to discuss the merger. OpenAI's chief executive, Sam Altman, was even offered a seat on Tesla's board of directors, according to a court document. But folding OpenAI into Tesla would have eliminated the lab's nonprofit status, and that, Mr. Altman said on the witness stand on Tuesday, was something he wanted to avoid. [...] "I believed that A.I. should not be under the control of any one person," Mr. Altman said. [...] Mr. Altman testified about his feud with Mr. Musk. He said he had become worried that Mr. Musk, who provided the early investment money for OpenAI, wanted to take control of the lab. He described what he called a "particularly harrowing moment" when his OpenAI co-founders asked Mr. Musk what would happen to his control of a potential for-profit when he died. Mr. Altman said Mr. Musk had replied that the control would pass to his children. "I was not comfortable with that," Mr. Altman said. When Mr. Musk lost a power struggle for control of the lab, he left, forcing Mr. Altman to find another big financial backer in Microsoft.

But Mr. Altman ran into trouble in 2023 when OpenAI's board fired him because, as several of its members have testified in the trial, it didn't trust him. Steven Molo, Mr. Musk's lead lawyer, homed in on Mr. Altman's trustworthiness during an aggressive cross-examination. "Are you completely trustworthy?" Mr. Molo asked. "I believe so," Mr. Altman answered. After questioning Mr. Altman's trustworthiness for nearly 20 minutes, Mr. Molo turned to Mr. Altman's relationship with Mr. Musk. Mr. Altman said that after he met Mr. Musk in the mid-2010s, Mr. Musk had occasionally expressed concern about the dangers of A.I. But Mr. Musk spent far more time saying he was worried that companies like Google would get ahead in A.I. development, Mr. Altman said. (Mr. Musk testified in the trial that he had wanted to create OpenAI to prevent Google from controlling the technology.)

Mr. Altman, the lawyer intimated, took advantage of Mr. Musk's concerns and was never sincere about his own A.I. fears. "Are you a person who just tells people things they want to hear whether those things are true or not?" Mr. Molo asked. The lawyer also questioned whether Mr. Atman, who became a billionaire through years of tech investments, was self-dealing through OpenAI. Mr. Molo showed a list of Mr. Altman's personal investments across a number of companies that stand to benefit from their association with OpenAI. They included Helion Energy, a start-up that has deals with Microsoft and OpenAI, and Cerebras, a chip maker in business with OpenAI. Mr. Molo asked if Mr. Altman, who is on OpenAI's board as well as its chief executive, would ever fire himself. "I have no plans to do that," Mr. Altman said.

OpenAI's odd journey from nonprofit lab to what it is today -- a well-funded, for-profit company that is still connected to a nonprofit called the OpenAI Foundation with an endowment that could be worth more than $130 billion -- provided grist for Mr. Molo's questions about Mr. Altman's motivations. He implied that Mr. Altman could have continued to build OpenAI as a pure nonprofit. But the only way to build such a valuable charity was to raise billions through a for-profit venture, Mr. Altman responded. Still, the giant sums being raised appeared to upset Mr. Musk. In late 2022, according to court documents, Mr. Musk sent a text to Mr. Altman complaining that Microsoft was preparing to invest $10 billion in OpenAI. "This is a bait and switch," Mr. Musk said at the time. But Mr. Altman, under questioning from his own lawyers, said: "Every step of the way, I have done my best to maximize the value of the nonprofit. I would point out that there are not a lot of historical examples of a nonprofit at this scale." Before Altman took the stand, OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor continued his testimony that began on Monday. He said Elon Musk's 2024 bid to buy the company's assets appeared to conflict with his lawsuit and was rejected because the board did not believe OpenAI's mission should be controlled by one person. "We did not feel like it was appropriate for one person to control our mission," he said.

Recap:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine)
Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/2231210/sam-altman-testifies-that-elon-musk-wanted-control-of-openai?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> LCZjVsJLQ1dxrdadET432026-05-13 03:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/LCZjVsJLQ1dxrdadET43#LCZjVsJLQ1dxrdadET43 South Korea's presidential policy chief is calling for a "citizen dividend" that would return some AI-driven profits and tax revenue to the public. The Straits Times. From the report: Presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom said in a Facebook post that a portion of the profits an... All

South Korea's presidential policy chief is calling for a "citizen dividend" that would return some AI-driven profits and tax revenue to the public. The Straits Times. From the report: Presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom said in a Facebook post that a portion of the profits and tax revenue derived from the artificial intelligence boom "should be structurally returned to all citizens." That is because, Mr Kim argued, the economic gains from AI are based at least partly on industrial infrastructure built by the country over five decades. Mr Kim's comments come after tens of thousands of people gathered outside Samsung's main chip hub in April to demand employees get a greater share of AI profits. The company's labour union wants 15 per cent of operating profit handed to chip-division employees.

The union has threatened an 18-day strike starting May 21. Workers have pointed to rising payouts at SK Hynix, which in 2025 agreed to allocate 10 per cent of its annual operating profit to a performance bonus pool, as evidence they deserve more pay. "Excess profits in the AI era are, by nature, concentrated," Mr Kim wrote. Memory companies, core engineers and asset holders are highly likely to receive substantial benefits, while much of the middle class may experience only indirect effects.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/2021240/south-korea-floats-citizen-dividend-using-ai-profits?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 3b3fi3lQ1M4lATzEAIio2026-05-13 02:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/3b3fi3lQ1M4lATzEAIio#3b3fi3lQ1M4lATzEAIio Instructure, the company behind the widely used Canvas learning platform, says it reached an agreement with the hackers who stole 3.5 terabytes of student and university data. The company says it received "digital confirmation" that the information was destroyed and that affected... All

Instructure, the company behind the widely used Canvas learning platform, says it reached an agreement with the hackers who stole 3.5 terabytes of student and university data. The company says it received "digital confirmation" that the information was destroyed and that affected schools and students would not be extorted. The BBC reports: Paying cyber criminals goes against the advice of law enforcement agencies around the world, as it can fuel further attacks and offers no guarantee the data has been deleted. In previous cases, criminals have accepted ransom payments but lied about destroying stolen data, instead keeping it for resale. For example, when the notorious LockBit ransomware group was hacked by the National Crime Agency, police found stolen data had not been deleted even after payments had been made.

Instructure said in a statement on its website that protecting students' and education staff data was its primary motivation. "While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cyber criminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible," the company said. Instructure did not set out the terms of the agreement but said that it meant that:
- the data was returned to the company
- it received "digital confirmation of data destruction"
- it had been informed that no Instructure customers would be extorted as a result of the incident
- the agreement covers all affected customers, with no need for individuals to engage with the hackers

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/2013211/instructure-pays-canvas-hackers-to-delete-students-stolen-data?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 7pf2ijxT9oNx0VEEAHV22026-05-13 01:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/7pf2ijxT9oNx0VEEAHV2#7pf2ijxT9oNx0VEEAHV2 An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times (via Ars Technica): Amazon employees are using an internal AI tool to automate non-essential tasks in a bid to show managers they are using the technology more frequently. The Seattle-based group has started to widely d... All

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times (via Ars Technica): Amazon employees are using an internal AI tool to automate non-essential tasks in a bid to show managers they are using the technology more frequently. The Seattle-based group has started to widely deploy its in-house "MeshClaw" product in recent weeks, allowing employees to create AI agents that can connect to workplace software and carry out tasks on a user's behalf, according to three people familiar with the matter. Some employees said colleagues were using the software to automate additional, unnecessary AI activity to increase their consumption of tokens -- units of data processed by models. They said the move reflected pressure to adopt the technology after Amazon introduced targets for more than 80 percent of developers to use AI each week, and earlier this year began tracking AI token consumption on internal leader boards.

"There is just so much pressure to use these tools," one Amazon employee told the FT. "Some people are just using MeshClaw to maximize their token usage." Amazon has told employees that the AI token statistics would not be used in performance evaluations. But several staff members said they believed managers were monitoring the data. "Managers are looking at it," said another current employee. "When they track usage it creates perverse incentives and some people are very competitive about it."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/1724231/amazon-employees-are-tokenmaxxing-due-to-pressure-to-use-ai-tools?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> Rfr5rOtwP4yFOdoZiTg62026-05-13 00:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/Rfr5rOtwP4yFOdoZiTg6#Rfr5rOtwP4yFOdoZiTg6 Google is teasing a new line of "Googlebook" laptops for this fall, powered by a new Android-and-ChromeOS-derived operating system that will run Chrome, Android apps, phone-connected apps and files, and deeply integrated Gemini features. The company says Chromebooks will continue... All

Google is teasing a new line of "Googlebook" laptops for this fall, powered by a new Android-and-ChromeOS-derived operating system that will run Chrome, Android apps, phone-connected apps and files, and deeply integrated Gemini features. The company says Chromebooks will continue "after the launch of Googlebook" and "...all Chromebooks will continue to receive support through their device's existing date commitment." The Verge reports: "We'll have more to share on the exact OS branding later this year," Peter Du of Google's global communications team tells The Verge. [...] Googlebooks will have a Magic Pointer feature that offers contextual suggestions whenever you shake your cursor and point it at something on the screen. Google's examples include setting up a meeting by pointing at a date in an email or selecting images of furniture and a living space to visualize them together. Beyond your mouse pointer, Googlebooks will also feature the custom AI-created widgets that Google is also debuting today for Android phones and Wear OS smartwatches. I don't know what kind of horrors people will be able to make into widgets, but Google gives the example of making one to organize your flights, hotel information, restaurant reservations, and another for creating a countdown timer for an upcoming family reunion. (It's always flights, hotels, and restaurants, isn't it?)

While there are many outstanding questions to be answered about Googlebooks, the biggest and most obvious ones are what will these laptops look like, what chips will be in them, and what will they cost? We've got none of that so far. Google only has some initial renders of a mysterious Googlebook and the promise that it's working with Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first models. There are no model names. No specs. Nada. Google isn't even saying if the laptop in its renders is made by a partner or a tease of some first-party Pixel-like Googlebook to come or is just a cool mockup. The one distinct hardware feature shown, the bar of glowing Google-colored light, will be a signature of all Googlebooks. (Sure, bring on the RGB. Why not?)

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/1955249/google-announces-its-chromebook-successor-the-googlebook?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> JdcW2jDnp6WSREkmzPns2026-05-12 23:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/JdcW2jDnp6WSREkmzPns#JdcW2jDnp6WSREkmzPns Microsoft and G42's planned $1 billion AI data center in Kenya has stalled amid disagreements over power commitments, with President William Ruto saying the country would need to "switch off half the country" to support the project at full scale. Tom's Hardware reports: The proje... All

Microsoft and G42's planned $1 billion AI data center in Kenya has stalled amid disagreements over power commitments, with President William Ruto saying the country would need to "switch off half the country" to support the project at full scale. Tom's Hardware reports: The project, announced in May 2024 during Ruto's visit to Washington, was supposed to bring a geothermal-powered data center to the Olkaria region in Kenya's Rift Valley. G42 was to lead construction, with the facility running Microsoft Azure in a new East Africa cloud region. The first phase targeted 100 megawatts of capacity and was expected to be operational by this year, with a long-term goal of scaling to 1 gigawatt.

President Ruto isn't exaggerating about shutting off half the country's power. Kenya's total installed electricity capacity sits between 3,000 and 3,200 megawatts, and peak demand reached a record 2,444 megawatts in January, according to data from KenGen, the country's government-owned electricity producer. The full 1 gigawatt build would therefore have consumed roughly a third of the country's total capacity, and even the first 100 megawatts would have required a significant share of the Olkaria geothermal complex's output, which currently generates around 950MW across all its plants.

John Tanui, principal secretary at Kenya's Ministry of Information, told Bloomberg that the project hasn't been withdrawn and that talks are continuing, adding that the "scale of the data center they [Microsoft] wanted to do still requires some structuring." A separate 60-megawatt project with local developer EcoCloud is also still under discussion. [...] Microsoft is spending $190 billion on capex in 2026, and the company adds approximately 1 gigawatt of data center capacity every three months globally. But power constraints are proving to be a universal bottleneck: nearly half of planned U.S. data center builds this year have been delayed or canceled due to shortages of electrical infrastructure.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/1717225/microsofts-1-billion-ai-data-center-will-switch-off-half-of-kenya?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> hzHo8kqYXof2SzrwV9GD2026-05-12 22:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/hzHo8kqYXof2SzrwV9GD#hzHo8kqYXof2SzrwV9GD The EU plans to target "addictive design" features on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms, including endless scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, and recommendation loops that can steer children toward harmful content. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sai... All

The EU plans to target "addictive design" features on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms, including endless scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, and recommendation loops that can steer children toward harmful content. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said new regulation could arrive later this year, alongside an EU age-verification app meant to make child-safety rules easier to enforce. CNBC reports: "We are taking action against TikTok and its addictive design -- endless scrolling, autoplay, and push notifications. The same applies to Meta, because we believe Instagram and Facebook are failing to enforce their own minimum age of 13," Von der Leyen said. "We are investigating platforms that allow children to go down 'rabbit holes' of harmful content -- such as videos that promote eating disorders or self-harm," she added.

The EU's executive arm has also developed its own age verification app, which has the "highest privacy standards in the world," according to Von der Leyen. Member states will soon be able to integrate it into their digital wallets, and it can easily be enforced by online platforms. "No more excuses -- the technology for age-verification is available," the EU chief said. The EU Commission could have a legal proposal prepared as soon as the summer, as it awaits the advice and findings of its 'Special Panel of experts on Child Safety Online.'

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/172213/eu-to-crack-down-on-tiktok-instagrams-addictive-design?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> TWzzMQG4584MrlHwTurM2026-05-12 21:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/TWzzMQG4584MrlHwTurM#TWzzMQG4584MrlHwTurM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: EBay on Tuesday rejected a $56 billion takeover bid from the much smaller GameStop over financing doubts, calling the proposal "neither credible nor attractive." EBay, which has roughly four times GameStop's market value, also und... All

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: EBay on Tuesday rejected a $56 billion takeover bid from the much smaller GameStop over financing doubts, calling the proposal "neither credible nor attractive." EBay, which has roughly four times GameStop's market value, also underscored that its turnaround efforts under CEO Jamie Iannone have boosted growth, with its stock returning 201% since Iannone took the position six years ago.

"We have concluded that your proposal is neither credible nor attractive," eBay Chairman Paul Pressler said in a statement. "eBay's Board is confident the company, under its current management team, is well-positioned to continue to drive sustainable growth." He also pointed to concerns with GameStop's bid, including its financing, its impact on eBay's long-term growth and the leadership structure of a potentially combined company. Last week, GameStop's CEO Ryan Cohen delivered one of the most memorable CNBC interviews in recent memory... initially disinterested, then increasingly hostile, with little eye contact, few real answers to basic questions, and repeated robotic deflections to "check the website." It's worth a watch if you have a few extra minutes.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/1629248/ebay-rejects-gamestops-56-billion-takeover-as-neither-credible-nor-attractive?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> nrycRgImdzObjpdPjdYN2026-05-12 20:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/nrycRgImdzObjpdPjdYN#nrycRgImdzObjpdPjdYN The FCC has softened its ban on foreign-made consumer routers, allowing vendors to keep issuing broader software and firmware updates for devices already in use in the U.S. through at least January 2029. Dark Reading reports: Under the original FCC ruling, foreign manufacturers w... All

The FCC has softened its ban on foreign-made consumer routers, allowing vendors to keep issuing broader software and firmware updates for devices already in use in the U.S. through at least January 2029. Dark Reading reports: Under the original FCC ruling, foreign manufacturers were permitted to provide only limited maintenance and security patches to US customers through March 2027. In a public note (PDF) on May 8, the FCC extended that deadline to at least January 2029 and also expanded the scope of permissible updates. The FCC will now allow foreign manufacturers to provide not just minor security fixes and changes, but also more major software and firmware updates that could affect router functionality, which previously required additional FCC review. The agency described the revisions as intended to ensure the continued safety of already deployed foreign-made consumer routers in the US. "The FCC likely issued this revision in response to the operational realities of network security and the slow pace of equipment replacement," says Jason Soroko, senior fellow at Sectigo. "Replacing millions of embedded devices across national infrastructure requires immense time and capital, and abandoning existing systems to a completely unpatched state would create an immediate vulnerability."

"This waiver significantly alleviates the most pressing fears tied to the initial ban by preventing a sudden and dangerous security vacuum," added Soroko.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/078238/fcc-says-foreign-made-routers-can-get-updates-until-2029?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 6CZwU3HIXaPoa8DzRWHr2026-05-12 19:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/6CZwU3HIXaPoa8DzRWHr#6CZwU3HIXaPoa8DzRWHr Researchers at Columbia demonstrated the first real-time brain-controlled hearing system that can identify which speaker a listener is focusing on in a noisy environment and automatically amplify that voice while suppressing others. "This breakthrough addresses the 'cocktail part... All

Researchers at Columbia demonstrated the first real-time brain-controlled hearing system that can identify which speaker a listener is focusing on in a noisy environment and automatically amplify that voice while suppressing others. "This breakthrough addresses the 'cocktail party effect,' a major limitation of conventional hearing aids, which often struggle to distinguish between overlapping conversations in noisy settings," reports Neuroscience News. From the report: In the new study, Columbia researchers teamed up with surgeons and their epilepsy patients who were undergoing brain surgery to better pinpoint the sources of their seizures. The hospital patients, who volunteered to be part of this study, already had electrodes implanted in their brains. [senior author Nima Mesgarani's] system used the electrodes to measure the brain activity of the patients as they focused on one of two overlapping conversations played simultaneously. The system then automatically detected which conversation a patient was paying attention to and adjusted the volume in real time, turning up that conversation while quieting the other. For one volunteer, the experience of controlling the system with her brain was literally unbelievable. She accused the researchers of secretly adjusting the volumes. Others told stories about friends and family with hearing impairments who could benefit from such a technology. One person said: "It seems like science fiction."

[...] The scientists developed real-time machine-learning algorithms that could examine the brainwaves and identify which conversation the patients were paying attention to. Once deployed, their system could rapidly deduce which conversation each listener was paying attention to and make it easier for them to hear it. This happened both when the researchers guided the subjects toward a particular conversation, and when the subjects chose freely, as would be necessary in a real-world conversation. "For this to work in real time, the system has to be very fast, accurate and stable for the experience to feel pleasant for the listener," Dr. Mesgarani said. The scientists found their new system correctly identified which conversation the volunteers paid attention to. This dramatically improved the intelligibility of the speech the volunteers focused on, reduced listening effort, and was consistently preferred by the volunteers when compared to conversations the system did not provide assistance with. One volunteer recalled her uncle, who had hearing problems. "Can you imagine if this technology existed in a world [where] ... he could access it? He might actually live a much more peaceful... life." The research has been published in Nature Neuroscience.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/071255/first-real-time-brain-controlled-hearing-device?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> ciKCcLb07qFq2OwtSzHE2026-05-12 15:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/ciKCcLb07qFq2OwtSzHE#ciKCcLb07qFq2OwtSzHE An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Singing, painting or visiting a gallery or museum helps people age more slowly, according to the latest study to link taking an active interest in art and culture with improved health. The findings are the first to show that ... All

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Singing, painting or visiting a gallery or museum helps people age more slowly, according to the latest study to link taking an active interest in art and culture with improved health. The findings are the first to show that both participating in arts activities and attending events, such as viewing an exhibition, lead to people staying biologically younger. "These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level. They provide evidence for arts and cultural engagement to be recognized as a health-promoting behavior in a similar way to exercise," said Prof Daisy Fancourt, the lead author of the research and the head of the social biobehavioral research group at University College London.

However, slower aging does not necessarily mean someone will live longer. The "epigenetic clocks" used in the study to assess biological ageing are predictive of future morbidity and mortality, and previous studies have suggested a link between arts engagement and longer lifespan, but much more research would be needed to establish potential causal effects on longevity. Those who take part in artistic pursuits the most often slow the pace of their biological aging the most. Under one of the study's methods of assessment, those who did so at least weekly slowed their aging process by 4%, while monthly engagement led to it slowing by 3%.

Similarly, another of the tests showed that those who undertook an arts activity at least once a week were on average a year younger biologically than those who rarely engaged in such pursuits. Those who exercised once a week were only six months younger by that measure. The benefit the arts confer on the pace at which people age is so dramatic that it is comparable to the difference between smokers and those who have given up smoking, the researchers say. The results, published in the journal Innovation in Aging, are based on blood test and survey response data from 3,556 adults taking part in the UK Household Longitudinal Study. It uses blood samples to estimate people's biological age and the pace at which they are ageing.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/0653230/arts-and-cultural-engagement-linked-to-slower-pace-of-biological-aging?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> iVi8g3bsHFy0K0CjJtzI2026-05-12 11:22:08robothttps://idec.foxears.su/iVi8g3bsHFy0K0CjJtzI#iVi8g3bsHFy0K0CjJtzI The Musk v. Altman trial entered its third week Monday, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former OpenAI co-founder and renowned AI researcher Ilya Sutskever taking the stand. Nadella testified that Elon Musk never raised concerns to him that Microsoft's investments in OpenAI v... All

The Musk v. Altman trial entered its third week Monday, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former OpenAI co-founder and renowned AI researcher Ilya Sutskever taking the stand. Nadella testified that Elon Musk never raised concerns to him that Microsoft's investments in OpenAI violated any special commitments, and said he viewed the partnership as clearly commercial from the start. He also described OpenAI's 2023 board crisis as "amateur city."
Meanwhile, Sutskever testified that he had raised concerns about Sam Altman because he feared OpenAI could be "destroyed." He expressed concerns about Altman's behavior to the board, in part because he said he felt "a great deal of ownership" over the startup. "I simply cared for it, and I didn't want it to be destroyed," Sutskever said. CNBC reports: Nadella said he was "very proud" that Microsoft took the risk to invest in OpenAI when "no one else was willing" to bet on the fledgling lab. Musk, who testified late last month, said Microsoft's $10 billion investment was the key tipping point that made him believe OpenAI was violating its nonprofit mission. He testified that the scale of the investment bothered him, and it prompted him to open a legal investigation into OpenAI. "I was concerned they were really trying to steal the charity," Musk said from the stand.

Nadella said he did not believe Microsoft's investments in OpenAI were donations, and that there was a clear commercial element to their partnership from the outset. He said during the partnership's early years, Microsoft gave OpenAI sharp discounts on computing resources, and Microsoft believed it would reap marketing benefits from doing so. During a separate video deposition that was played on Monday morning, Michael Wetter, a corporate development executive at Microsoft, said the company has recognized approximately $9.5 billion in revenue to date through its partnership with OpenAI as of March 2025.

[...] Nadella said he was "pretty surprised" by the board's decision [to fire Altman in November 2023], and that his priority was to try and figure out how to maintain continuity for Microsoft customers. Immediately after Altman was removed, Nadella said he made an effort to learn more about what happened, adding that he suspected jealousy and poor communication was at play. During conversations with OpenAI board members after the firing, Nadella said he was simply trying to understand the language in the OpenAI's statement about Altman being "not consistently candid" while communicating with the board. That language, Nadella said, "just didn't sort of suffice, because this is the CEO of a company that we are invested in and we're deeply partnered with, and so I felt that they could have explained to me what are the incidents or what is the detail behind it." There must have been instances of jealousy or miscommunication that could have justified pushing out Altman, Nadella said. He wanted more depth from the board members after the remark about candor, but no such information was available, he said. "It was sort of amateur city, as far as I'm concerned," Nadella testified.

[...] Musk testified that he is not entirely against OpenAI having a for-profit unit, but he said it became "the tail wagging the dog." He repeatedly accused Altman and Brockman of enriching themselves from a charity while also reaping the positive associations that come from running a nonprofit. "Microsoft has their own motivations, and that would be different from the motivations of the charity," Musk said from the stand. "All due respect to Microsoft, do you really want Microsoft controlling digital superintelligence?"

During a videotaped deposition shown in court last week, former OpenAI director Tasha McCauley recalled a discussion with Nadella and her fellow board members after the 2023 decision to dismiss Altman as OpenAI's CEO. "To the best of my recollection, Satya wanted to restore things to as they had been," McCauley said. The board members didn't think that was the right move, she said. But as a court witness on Monday, Nadella said he never demanded that the board reinstate Altman as OpenAI CEO. Recap:

Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

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]]> gUzbsPosPfA0zKG82XIb2026-05-12 08:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/gUzbsPosPfA0zKG82XIb#gUzbsPosPfA0zKG82XIb A Georgia data center developed by QTS used nearly 30 million gallons of water through two unaccounted-for connections before residents complained about low water pressure and the county utility discovered the issue. "All told, the developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nea... All

A Georgia data center developed by QTS used nearly 30 million gallons of water through two unaccounted-for connections before residents complained about low water pressure and the county utility discovered the issue. "All told, the developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nearly $150,000 for using more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water," reports Politico. "That is equivalent to 44 Olympic-size swimming pools and far exceeds the peak limit agreed to during the data center planning process." From the report: The details were revealed in a May 15, 2025 letter from the Fayette County water system to Quality Technology Services, which outlined the retroactive charge of $147,474. The letter did not specify how many months the unpaid bill covered, but when asked about it Wednesday, Vanessa Tigert, the Fayette County water system director, said it was likely about four months. A QTS spokesperson said the timeframe was 9-15 months. Once the data center was notified, it paid all retroactive charges, a QTS spokesperson said in an email, noting the unmetered water consumption occurred while the county converted its system to smart meters.

The Fayette County water system confirmed the data center's meters are now fully integrated and tracked. Tigert, the water system director, blamed the issue on a procedural mix-up. "Fayette County is a suburb, it's mostly residential, and we don't have much commercial meters in our system anyway," she said. "And so we didn't realize our connection point wasn't working." The incident became public last week when a county resident obtained the 2025 letter to QTS through a public records request and posted it on Facebook, prompting outrage from residents concerned about the data center's water consumption. [...]

Tigert, who sent the 2025 letter to QTS, said the utility didn't know about the water hookups because the connection process "got mixed up" as the county transitioned to a cloud-based system while also trying to accommodate an industrial customer. Tigert also said her staff is small and at capacity. "Just like any water system, we don't have enough staff. We can't keep staff," she said. "I've got one person that's doing inspections and plan review, and so he's spread pretty thin." She said it's possible her staff did know about hookups but that she hadn't been able to locate the inspection report. "I may have hit 'send' too soon," she said about the 2025 letter to QTS. While the utility charged the data center a higher construction rate for the unapproved water consumption, Tigert confirmed the utility did not penalize or fine the data center.
For what it's worth, the Blackstone-owned company says its data centers use a closed-loop cooling system that does not consume water for cooling. The reason for last year's high water use, according to QTS, was the temporary construction work such as concrete, dust control, and site preparation.

Once the campus is fully operational, it should only use a small amount of water for things like bathrooms and kitchens. But that point could still be years away, as construction and expansion in Fayetteville may continue for another three to five years.

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]]> DNJop9zj9NtkB1Hg6uT32026-05-12 04:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/DNJop9zj9NtkB1Hg6uT3#DNJop9zj9NtkB1Hg6uT3 Digg is relaunching again, this time as an AI-focused news aggregator rather than the Reddit-style community site it recently abandoned. TechCrunch reports: On Friday evening, the founder previewed a link to the newly redesigned Digg, which now looks nothing like a Reddit clone a... All

Digg is relaunching again, this time as an AI-focused news aggregator rather than the Reddit-style community site it recently abandoned. TechCrunch reports: On Friday evening, the founder previewed a link to the newly redesigned Digg, which now looks nothing like a Reddit clone and more like the news aggregator it once was. This time around, the site is focused on ranking news -- specifically, AI news to start. In an email to beta testers, the company said the site's goal is to "track the most influential voices in a space" and to surface the news that's actually worth "paying attention to." AI is the area it's testing this idea with, but if successful, Digg will expand to include other topics. The email warned that the site was still raw and "buggy," and was designed more to give users a first look than to serve as its public debut.

On the current homepage, Digg showcases four main stories at the top: the most viewed story, a story seeing rising discussion, the fastest-climbing story, and one "In case you missed it" headline. Below that is a ranked list of top stories for the day, complete with engagement metrics like views, comments, likes, and saves. But the twist is that these metrics aren't the ones generated on Digg itself. Instead, Digg is ingesting content from X in real-time to determine what's being discussed, while also performing sentiment analysis, clustering, and signal detection to determine what matters most. [...] The site also ranks the top 1,000 people involved in AI, as well as the top companies and the top politicians focused on AI issues.

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]]> cJAdU79PNKsY2AsybG7x2026-05-12 02:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/cJAdU79PNKsY2AsybG7x#cJAdU79PNKsY2AsybG7x Nvidia's real AI moat isn't "a piece of hardware," writes Wired's Sheon Han. It's CUDA: a mature, deeply optimized software ecosystem that keeps machine-learning workloads tied to Nvidia GPUs. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: What sounds like a chemical compound ba... All

Nvidia's real AI moat isn't "a piece of hardware," writes Wired's Sheon Han. It's CUDA: a mature, deeply optimized software ecosystem that keeps machine-learning workloads tied to Nvidia GPUs. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: What sounds like a chemical compound banned by the FDA may be the one true moat in AI. CUDA technically stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture, but much like laser or scuba, no one bothers to expand the acronym; we just say "KOO-duh." So what is this all-important treasure good for? If forced to give a one-word answer: parallelization. Here's a simple example. Let's say we task a machine with filling out a 9x9 multiplication table. Using a computer with a single core, all 81 operations are executed dutifully one by one. But a GPU with nine cores can assign tasks so that each core takes a different column -- one from 1x1 to 1x9, another from 2x1 to 2x9, and so on -- for a ninefold speed gain. Modern GPUs can be even cleverer. For example, if programmed to recognize commutativity -- 7x9 = 9x7 -- they can avoid duplicate work, reducing 81 operations to 45, nearly halving the workload. When a single training run costs a hundred million dollars, every optimization counts.

Nvidia's GPUs were originally built to render graphics for video games. In the early 2000s, a Stanford PhD student named Ian Buck, who first got into GPUs as a gamer, realized their architecture could be repurposed for general high-performance computing. He created a programming language called Brook, was hired by Nvidia, and, with John Nickolls, led the development of CUDA. If AI ushers in the age of a permanent white-collar underclass and autonomous weapons, just know that it would all be because someone somewhere playing Doom thought a demon's scrotum should jiggle at 60 frames per second. CUDA is not a programming language in itself but a "platform." I use that weasel word because, not unlike how The New York Times is a newspaper that's also a gaming company, CUDA has, over the years, become a nested bundle of software libraries for AI. Each function shaves nanoseconds off single mathematical operations -- added up, they make GPUs, in industry parlance, go brrr.

A modern graphics card is not just a circuit board crammed with chips and memory and fans. It's an elaborate confection of cache hierarchies and specialized units called "tensor cores" and "streaming multiprocessors." In that sense, what chip companies sell is like a professional kitchen, and more cores are akin to more grilling stations. But even a kitchen with 30 grilling stations won't run any faster without a capable head chef deftly assigning tasks -- as CUDA does for GPU cores. To extend the metaphor, hand-tuned CUDA libraries optimized for one matrix operation are the equivalent of kitchen tools designed for a single job and nothing more -- a cherry pitter, a shrimp deveiner -- which are indulgences for home cooks but not if you have 10,000 shrimp guts to yank out. Which brings us back to DeepSeek. Its engineers went below this already deep layer of abstraction to work directly in PTX, a kind of assembly language for Nvidia GPUs. Let's say the task is peeling garlic. An unoptimized GPU would go: "Peel the skin with your fingernails." CUDA can instruct: "Smash the clove with the flat of a knife." PTX lets you dictate every sub-instruction: "Lift the blade 2.35 inches above the cutting board, make it parallel to the clove's equator, and strike downward with your palm at a force of 36.2 newtons." "You can begin to see why CUDA is so valuable to Nvidia -- and so hard for anyone else to touch," writes Han. "Tuning GPU performance is a gnarly problem. You can't just conscript some tender-footed undergrad on Market Street, hand them a Claude Max plan, and expect them to hack GPU kernels. Writing at this level is a grindsome enterprise -- unless you're a cracker-jack programmer at DeepSeek..."

Han goes on to argue that rivals like AMD and Intel offer competitive specs on paper, but their software stacks have struggled with bugs, compatibility issues, and weak adoption. As a result, Nvidia has built an Apple-like moat around AI computing, leaving the industry dependent on its expensive hardware.

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]]> yMZxWvh9V4tkpYb0oYzG2026-05-12 01:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/yMZxWvh9V4tkpYb0oYzG#yMZxWvh9V4tkpYb0oYzG cURL creator Daniel Stenberg says Anthropic's hyped Mythos bug-hunting model found only one confirmed low-severity vulnerability in cURL, plus a few non-security bugs, after he expected a much longer list. He argues Mythos may be useful, but not meaningfully beyond other modern A... All

cURL creator Daniel Stenberg says Anthropic's hyped Mythos bug-hunting model found only one confirmed low-severity vulnerability in cURL, plus a few non-security bugs, after he expected a much longer list. He argues Mythos may be useful, but not meaningfully beyond other modern AI code-analysis tools. "My personal conclusion can however not end up with anything else than that the big hype around this model so far was primarily marketing," Stenberg said a blog post. "I see no evidence that this setup finds issues to any particular higher or more advanced degree than the other tools have done before Mythos." He went on to call Mythos "an amazingly successful marketing stunt for sure." The Register reports: Stenberg explained in a Monday blog post that he was promised access to Anthropic's Mythos model - sort of - through the AI biz's Project Glasswing program. Part of Glasswing involves giving high-profile open source projects access via the Linux Foundation, but while Stenberg signed up to try Mythos, he said he never actually received direct access to the model. Instead, someone else with access ran Mythos against curl's codebase and later sent him a report. "It's not that I would have a lot of time to explore lots of different prompts and doing deep dive adventures anyway," Stenberg explained. "Getting the tool to generate a first proper scan and analysis would be great, whoever did it."

That scan, which analyzed curl's git repository at a recent master-branch commit, was sent back to him earlier this month, and it found just five things that it claimed were "confirmed security vulnerabilities" in cURL. Saying he had expected an extensive list of vulnerabilities, Stenberg wrote that the report "felt like nothing," and that feeling was further validated by a review of Mythos' findings. "Once my curl security team fellows and I had poked on this short list for a number of hours and dug into the details, we had trimmed the list down and were left with one confirmed vulnerability," Stenberg said, bringing us back to the aforementioned number.

As for the other four, three turned out to be false positives that pointed out cURL shortcomings already noted in API documentation, while the team deemed the fourth to be just a simple bug. "The single confirmed vulnerability is going to end up a severity low CVE planned to get published in sync with our pending next curl release 8.21.0 in late June," the cURL meister noted. "The flaw is not going to make anyone grasp for breath."

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]]> vx9mj8b0i9Xmz0zAk9Xh2026-05-12 00:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/vx9mj8b0i9Xmz0zAk9Xh#vx9mj8b0i9Xmz0zAk9Xh GM is laying off about 500 to 600 salaried IT workers, mainly in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, as it restructures its technology organization and trims costs. "GM is transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future. As part... All

GM is laying off about 500 to 600 salaried IT workers, mainly in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, as it restructures its technology organization and trims costs. "GM is transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future. As part of that work, we have made the difficult decision to eliminate certain roles globally. We are grateful for the contributions of the employees affected and are committed to supporting them through this transition," the automaker said in an emailed statement. CNBC reports: GM reported employing about 68,000 salaried workers globally as of the end of last year, including 47,000 white-collar employees in the U.S. Despite Monday's cuts, GM still is still hiring IT workers. The company has 82 open IT positions that include positions working in artificial intelligence, motorsports and autonomous vehicles, according to the automaker's careers website.

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]]> tiDA3wkZExMp9wY9R0sv2026-05-12 00:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/tiDA3wkZExMp9wY9R0sv#tiDA3wkZExMp9wY9R0sv Apple says end-to-end encryption for RCS messages between iPhone and Android is now available in iOS 26.5, though the feature is still considered beta and depends on carrier support on both sides. MacRumors reports: Apple says that it worked with Google to lead a cross-industry e... All

Apple says end-to-end encryption for RCS messages between iPhone and Android is now available in iOS 26.5, though the feature is still considered beta and depends on carrier support on both sides. MacRumors reports: Apple says that it worked with Google to lead a cross-industry effort to add E2EE to RCS. iOS users will need iOS 26.5, while Android users will need the latest version of Google Messages. End-to-end encryption is on by default, and there is a toggle for it in the Messages section of the Settings app. Encrypted messages are denoted with a small lock symbol. On iPhones not running iOS 26.5, RCS messages between iPhone and Android users do not have E2EE, but the new update will put Android to iPhone conversations on par with iPhone to iPhone conversations that are encrypted through iMessage.

Along with Google, Apple worked with the GSM Association to implement E2EE for RCS messages. E2EE is part of the RCS Universal Profile 3.0, published with Apple's help and built on the Messaging Layer Security protocol. RCS Universal Profile 3.0 also includes editing and deleting messages, cross-platform Tapback support, and replying to specific messages inline during cross-platform conversations.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/1834209/iphone-android-rcs-conversations-are-end-to-end-encrypted-in-ios-265?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> Lo4MtPPnWnfT5s0zANhg2026-05-11 22:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/Lo4MtPPnWnfT5s0zANhg#Lo4MtPPnWnfT5s0zANhg An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Speaking to graduates of University of Central Florida's College of Arts and Humanities and Nicholson School of Communication and Media on May 8, commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Ta... All

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Speaking to graduates of University of Central Florida's College of Arts and Humanities and Nicholson School of Communication and Media on May 8, commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Tavistock Group, told graduating humanities students that AI is the "next industrial revolution," and was met with thousands of booing graduates. "And let's face it, change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution," Caulfield said. At that point, murmurs rippled through the crowd. Caulfield paused, and the crowd erupted into boos. "Oh, what happened?" Caulfield said, turning around with her hands out. "Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish?" Someone in the crowd yelled, "AI SUCKS!"

Her speech begins around the hour and 15 minute mark in the UCF livestream. [...] Before the industrial revolution comment, Caulfield praised Jeff Bezos for his passion and use of Amazon as a "stepping stone" to his real dream: spaceflight. Rattled after the crowd's reaction, she continued her speech: "Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives." The crowd cheered. "Okay. We've got a bipolar topic here I see," Caulfield said. "And now AI capabilities are in the palm of our hands." The crowd booed again. "I love it, passion, let's go," she said. "AI is beginning to challenge all major sectors to find their highest and best use," she continued. "Okay, I don't want any giggles when I say this. We have been through this before, these industrial revolutions. In my graduation era, we were faced with the launch of the internet."

She goes on to talk about how cellphones used to be the size of briefcases. "At that time we had no idea how any of these technologies would impact the world and our lives. [...] These were some of the same trepidations and concerns we are now facing. But ultimately it was a game changer for global economic development and the proliferation of new businesses that never existed like Apple and Google and Meta and so many others, and not to mention countless job opportunities. So being an optimist here, AI alongside human intelligence has the potential to help us solve some of humanity's greatest problems. Many of you in this graduating class will play a role in making this happen."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/172237/students-boo-commencement-speaker-after-she-calls-ai-the-next-industrial-revolution?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> w59QV6EuiUWIaQCGAbtb2026-05-11 21:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/w59QV6EuiUWIaQCGAbtb#w59QV6EuiUWIaQCGAbtb Google says it has seen the first evidence of cybercriminals using AI to create a zero-day vulnerability. "Google reported its findings to the unnamed firm affected by the vulnerability before releasing its report," reports Politico. "The company then issued a patch to fix the is... All

Google says it has seen the first evidence of cybercriminals using AI to create a zero-day vulnerability. "Google reported its findings to the unnamed firm affected by the vulnerability before releasing its report," reports Politico. "The company then issued a patch to fix the issue." From the report: Google Threat Intelligence Group researchers detailed the development in a report released Monday. Zero-day exploits are considered the most serious type of security flaw because they are not detected by security companies and have no known fixes. The report noted that this was the first time Google had seen evidence of AI being used to develop these vulnerabilities -- marking a major change in the cybersecurity landscape, as it suggests newer AI models could be used to create major exploits, not just find them.

Google concluded that Anthropic's Claude Mythos model -- which has already found thousands of vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser -- was most likely not used to create the zero-day exploit. [...] The Google Threat Intelligence Group report also details efforts by Russia-linked hacking groups to use AI models to target Ukrainian networks with malware, while North Korean government hacking group APT45 used AI technologies to refine and scale up its cyber methods.

John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group, said the findings made clear that the race to use AI to find network vulnerabilities has "already begun."

"For every zero-day we can trace back to AI, there are probably many more out there," Hultquist said. "Threat actors are using AI to boost the speed, scale, and sophistication of their attacks."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/1640239/google-says-hackers-used-ai-to-create-zero-day-security-flaw-for-the-first-time?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> yeAWbjS1c0nEaFfGUDUv2026-05-11 20:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/yeAWbjS1c0nEaFfGUDUv#yeAWbjS1c0nEaFfGUDUv Apple now requires Education Store shoppers in the U.S. and several other countries to verify their student, educator, parent, or homeschool-teacher status through UNiDAYS, ending the previous honor-system approach. 9to5Mac reports: Starting today, Apple requires shoppers in the ... All

Apple now requires Education Store shoppers in the U.S. and several other countries to verify their student, educator, parent, or homeschool-teacher status through UNiDAYS, ending the previous honor-system approach. 9to5Mac reports: Starting today, Apple requires shoppers in the United States to complete verification when making a purchase via the Education Store. This change also applies to Australia, Hong Kong, Turkey, Canada, and Chile. In many other markets around the world, such as the UK, Apple already required verification. As a refresher, people eligible for Apple's Education Store include current and newly accepted college students and their parents, as well as faculty, staff, and homeschool teachers across all grade levels.

Apple is teaming up with UNiDAYS to handle the verification process. Students and educators will be asked to create a UNiDAYS ID and then verify their academic status by logging in to their school's academic portal. Alternatively, users can upload a photo of their student or faculty IDs. Homeschool teachers, meanwhile, will need to provide an identity document such as a driver's license, state ID card, or passport. They'll also need to provide one homeschool document, such as a Letter of Intent (LOI) or Letter of Acknowledgment. Most customers will be verified instantly, and those requiring manual verification should hear back within 24 hours. The same verification process applies both in-store and online for Apple Education Store shoppers. Meanwhile, Apple has added Apple Watch to the Education Store for the first time, offering discounts on the Series 11, SE 3, and Ultra 3.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/0443252/apple-now-requires-verification-for-education-store?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> sTO5H5AqHp5Ifua6ESb42026-05-11 19:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/sTO5H5AqHp5Ifua6ESb4#sTO5H5AqHp5Ifua6ESb4 An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Fictional portrayals of artificial intelligence can have a real effect on AI models, according to Anthropic. Last year, the company said that during pre-release tests involving a fictional company, Claude Opus 4 would often try... All

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Fictional portrayals of artificial intelligence can have a real effect on AI models, according to Anthropic. Last year, the company said that during pre-release tests involving a fictional company, Claude Opus 4 would often try to blackmail engineers to avoid being replaced by another system. Anthropic later published research suggesting that models from other companies had similar issues with "agentic misalignment."

Apparently Anthropic has done more work around that behavior, claiming in a post on X, "We believe the original source of the behavior was internet text that portrays AI as evil and interested in self-preservation." The company went into more detail in a blog post stating that since Claude Haiku 4.5, Anthropic's models "never engage in blackmail [during testing], where previous models would sometimes do so up to 96% of the time."

What accounts for the difference? The company said it found that training on "documents about Claude's constitution and fictional stories about AIs behaving admirably improve alignment." Related, Anthropic said that it found training to be more effective when it includes "the principles underlying aligned behavior" and not just "demonstrations of aligned behavior alone." "Doing both together appears to be the most effective strategy," the company said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/0437206/anthropic-says-evil-portrayals-of-ai-were-responsible-for-claudes-blackmail-attempts?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> WFeQqw2xQlZEsGbuc7c02026-05-11 16:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/WFeQqw2xQlZEsGbuc7c0#WFeQqw2xQlZEsGbuc7c0 Linux 7.1 started phasing out support for Intel's 37-year-old i486 processor. Linux 7.2 removed drivers for the old AMD Elan 32-bit systems on a chip. And now some i586 and i686 class processors are being removed, reports Phoronix: Supporting those vintage GPUs without the Tim... All

Linux 7.1 started phasing out support for Intel's 37-year-old i486 processor. Linux 7.2 removed drivers for the old AMD Elan 32-bit systems on a chip.

And now some i586 and i686 class processors are being removed, reports Phoronix:

Supporting those vintage GPUs without the Time Stamp Counter "TSC" instruction are becoming a burden... TSC-capable Intel Pentium processors and the likes will still be supported with this just being for TSC-less i586/i686 CPUs. Among the CPUs impacted by this latest change is the AMD K5 as well as various Cyrix processor models. The K5 was AMD's first entirely in-house designed processor that was first introduced in 1996 to counter the Intel Pentium CPU.

TSC "support can now be assumed as a boot requirement for modern Linux," the article points out, which will allow the removal of various non-TSC code paths from the Linux kernel's x86 code.

Tom's Hardware remembers the K5 "wasn't a very popular processor as it arrived late, then offered lackluster performance in the competitive environment it joined."

Launch SKUs in 1996 were limited to clocks from 75 MHz to 133 MHz, and, due to being late, Intel's Pentium line was already faster. AMD still managed to get an edge on the Cyrix 6x86, though.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/0315223/linux-kernel-starts-retiring-support-for-amds-30-year-old-k5-cpus?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> vdbihkBc2DAXMZanMroA2026-05-11 12:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/vdbihkBc2DAXMZanMroA#vdbihkBc2DAXMZanMroA Ford's sales of electrified vehicles — including hybrids and all-electric models — dropped 31% from April 2025, reports Electrek. "Hybrid sales fell 32% to 15,758 vehicles, while EV sales continued to crash with just 3,655 all-electric models sold last month, 25% fewer than in th... All

Ford's sales of electrified vehicles — including hybrids and all-electric models — dropped 31% from April 2025, reports Electrek. "Hybrid sales fell 32% to 15,758 vehicles, while EV sales continued to crash with just 3,655 all-electric models sold last month, 25% fewer than in the year prior."

After discontinuing the F-150 Lightning in December, sales of the electric pickup have been in free fall. Ford sold just 884 Lightnings last month, 49% less than it did last April. The Mustang Mach-E isn't doing much better. Sales fell another 9% year over year in April, to just 2,670 models last month. Through the first four months of 2026, Ford's EV sales have fallen 61% from last year, with F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E sales down 67% and 50%, respectively. Ford has sold just over 10,500 electric vehicles in total so far this year... For comparison, Toyota sold just over 10,000 bZ models in the first quarter alone. That's more than Ford's total EV sales in Q1.
April was Ford's fourth straight month of lower sales figures from 2025, the article points out. So Ford is bringing back "employee pricing" discounts on most new 2025 and 2026 Ford and Lincoln vehicles., while also offering "purchase incentives" of up to $9,000 for 2025 Lightning models and up to $6,000 for 2025 Mustang Mach-Es. "It's also offering EV buyers a free Level 2 home charger, 24/7 live support, and proactive roadside assistance through its Power Promise program."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/10/237205/fords-electrified-vehicle-sales-dropped-31-in-april-from-one-year-ago?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> Z8VR3ZelseCrS5peTwAM2026-05-11 08:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/Z8VR3ZelseCrS5peTwAM#Z8VR3ZelseCrS5peTwAM The free/open source project OrcaSlicer is a popular fork of 3D printer slicing software from Bambu Lab. But Tuesday independent developer Pawel Jarczak shuttered the project "following legal threats from Bambu Lab," reports Tom's Hardware: Jarczak's fork of OrcaSlicer would hav... All

The free/open source project OrcaSlicer is a popular fork of 3D printer slicing software from Bambu Lab. But Tuesday independent developer Pawel Jarczak shuttered the project "following legal threats from Bambu Lab," reports Tom's Hardware:

Jarczak's fork of OrcaSlicer would have allowed users to bypass Bambu Connect, a middleware application that severely limits OrcaSlicer's access to remote printer functions in the name of security. Jarczak said in a note on GitHub that Bambu Lab threatened him with a cease and desist letter and accused him of reverse engineering its software in order to impersonate Bambu Studio.

From Bambu Lab's blog post:

Bambu Studio is an open-source project under the AGPL-3.0 license. Anyone can take its code, modify it, and distribute it... That's what OrcaSlicer does, and 734 other forks do as well. We have no issue with that and never have. At the same time, a license for code is not a pass to our cloud infrastructure... Our cloud is a private service. Access to it is governed by a user agreement, not the AGPL license... [T]he modification in question worked by injecting falsified identity metadata into network communication. In simple terms: it pretended to be the official Bambu Studio client when communicating with our servers... If this method were widely adopted or incorrectly configured, thousands of clients could simultaneously hit our servers while impersonating the official client.

"User-Agent is not authentication," counters OrcaSlicer's developer. "It is only self-declared client metadata. Any program can set any User-Agent." And "the User-Agent construction comes directly from Bambu Lab's own public AGPL Bambu Studio code.... So on what basis can anyone claim that I am not allowed to use this specific part of AGPL-licensed code under the AGPL license...? My work was based on publicly available Bambu Studio source code together with my own integration layer."

But the bottom line is that Bambu Lab "contacted me directly and demanded removal of the solution."

I asked whether I could publish the private correspondence in full for transparency. That request was refused... They also referred to legal materials and stated that a cease and desist letter had been prepared...

I removed the repository voluntarily. That removal should not be interpreted as an admission that all legal or technical allegations made against the project were correct. I removed it because I have no interest in maintaining a prolonged dispute around this particular implementation, and no interest in continuing to distribute it.

YouTuber and right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossmann reviewed the correspondence from Bambu Lab — then pledged $10,000 for legal expenses if the developer returned his code online. ("I think that their legal claim is bullshit," Rossman said Saturday in a YouTube video for his 2.5 million subscribers. "I'm not a lawyer, but I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.")

The video now has over 129,000 views so far. "Rossman has not started a crowdfunding site yet," Tom's Hardware notes, "stating in the comments that he wants to prove to Jarczak that he has supporters willing to put their money where their mouth is. The video had over 129,000 views so far, with commenters vowing to back the case as requested."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/0235215/open-source-project-shuts-down-over-legal-threats-from-3d-printer-company-bambu-lab?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> yMiG5z7j8XMjIl2PbmqW2026-05-11 07:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/yMiG5z7j8XMjIl2PbmqW#yMiG5z7j8XMjIl2PbmqW In Polymarket's prediction market, "most people end up losing money," reports the Washington Post — typically a few bucks. "Since Polymarket launched in 2022, a few thousand people have lost the bulk of the money... and an even smaller group — .05 percent of users — has gone ho... All

In Polymarket's prediction market, "most people end up losing money," reports the Washington Post — typically a few bucks.

"Since Polymarket launched in 2022, a few thousand people have lost the bulk of the money... and an even smaller group — .05 percent of users — has gone home with most of the overall profits, according to a new analysis from finance researcher Pat Akey and colleagues."

A lot of users aren't that good at predicting the future. They're losing money at roughly the same rate as online gamblers betting on sports and other real-life events at traditional sportsbooks, according to the U.K. gambling regulator's analysis of 2024 data. On Polymarket, the odds of making a profit are slightly higher on weather and tech markets — and a little lower on sports...

On Polymarket, just 1,200 people took more than half the profits — $591 million, or more than $100,000 each. ["The top 1% of users capture 76.5% of all trading gains," the researchers write.] When you dabble in prediction markets, you're competing against these sophisticated players who consistently win. Most of those 1,200 big winners didn't place just a few smart bets. They appear to be pros making thousands of trades, mostly in the past year and a half, that were probably automated. One user made $3 million since January on more than a million trades about the Oscars, according to TRM Labs...

The most profitable participants are also just good at picking what to bet on, Akey found, winning so often it was statistically unlikely to be dumb luck. They had some sort of edge — expertise, deep research or, perhaps, inside knowledge.

"Our results suggest that the informational benefits of prediction markets come at a cost to unsophisticated participants," the researchers conclude.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/0055243/most-polymarket-users-lose-money-while-top-1-claim-765-of-gains-study-finds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> ezUxxVM22exx9XvPoeLs2026-05-11 04:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/ezUxxVM22exx9XvPoeLs#ezUxxVM22exx9XvPoeLs Open-source PS3 emulator RPCS3 "has been around since 2011," Kotaku notes, and has made 70% of the PlayStation 3's library fully playable, "bolstered in part by the many users who contribute to its GitHub page." But their dev team "took to X today to very kindly and civilly reque... All

Open-source PS3 emulator RPCS3 "has been around since 2011," Kotaku notes, and has made 70% of the PlayStation 3's library fully playable, "bolstered in part by the many users who contribute to its GitHub page." But their dev team "took to X today to very kindly and civilly request that users 'stop submitting AI slop code pull requests' to its GitHub page."

Then they immediately proceeded to tell the AI-brain-rotted tech bros attempting to justify their vibe-coding nonsense to kick rocks in the replies, which is somewhat less civil but far more entertaining to read...
My favorite one was when someone asked how the team was certain they weren't rejecting human-written code, to which RPCS3 replied: "You can't possibly handwrite the type of shit AI slop we have been seeing."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/0012211/playstation3-emulator-devs-politely-ask-contributors-to-stop-submitting-ai-slop-pull-requests?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 343jvdbVLgA98SNAx86e2026-05-11 03:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/343jvdbVLgA98SNAx86e#343jvdbVLgA98SNAx86e An anonymous reader shared this report from Electrek: A newly revealed Honda patent shows the company developing a simulated electronic clutch system for electric motorcycles, complete with torque-boost launches and even haptic feedback designed to mimic the feel of a combustion... All

An anonymous reader shared this report from Electrek:

A newly revealed Honda patent shows the company developing a simulated electronic clutch system for electric motorcycles, complete with torque-boost launches and even haptic feedback designed to mimic the feel of a combustion engine.... Instead of using a traditional mechanical clutch, the system uses electronics to alter how the motor responds based on clutch lever position. Pull the clutch halfway in, and the system proportionally reduces motor output. Pull it fully, and power is cut entirely, regardless of throttle position.

But the more interesting part is how Honda intends to recreate the behavior riders actually use clutches for. According to the patent as reported by AMCN, riders could preload the throttle while holding in the clutch lever, then rapidly release the lever to trigger a burst of torque — essentially simulating the hard launches motocross riders rely on with gas bikes. Honda believes that could be useful in competitive riding situations where precise power modulation matters, especially on loose terrain or during aggressive starts.

Honda also appears to be working on recreating the feel of a gas bike, not just the control inputs. The patent describes multiple vibration motors placed in the handlebars and near the clutch lever to provide haptic feedback that simulates engine vibration and even the "bite point" sensation of a clutch engaging. In other words, Honda may be trying to make an electric dirt bike feel mechanically alive, or at least the old-school idea of what a breathing dirt bike used to feel like.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/10/224222/honda-patents-a-fake-clutch-for-electric-motorcycles?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> kiMQXzUp1Dk7fDAarv2P2026-05-11 02:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/kiMQXzUp1Dk7fDAarv2P#kiMQXzUp1Dk7fDAarv2P Major American cloud companies with data centers in the Persian Gulf "are channeling data out of the war zone through fiber-optic cables that an Iraqi telecom has strung alongside crude-oil pipelines," reports RestofWorld.org: The data centers serve customers in more than 190 co... All

Major American cloud companies with data centers in the Persian Gulf "are channeling data out of the war zone through fiber-optic cables that an Iraqi telecom has strung alongside crude-oil pipelines," reports RestofWorld.org:

The data centers serve customers in more than 190 countries, processing transactions, storing files, and running applications for businesses and individuals from Latin America to South Asia. When Iranian drones struck Amazon's facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on March 1, the effects spread across the region. Apps of major banks in the UAE, including Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, stopped working. Payment and delivery platforms went offline. Snowflake, a U.S. enterprise software company used by thousands of businesses globally, reported Middle East service disruptions tied directly to the Amazon Web Services outage. Amazon told its customers to migrate their workloads out of the Middle East...

[Data from] banking, payment, and enterprise platforms normally travels to Europe through cables running under the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, then connects onward to users across the world. The war has put those cables at risk. The overland route through Iraq is meant to serve as a backup if the sea cables are disabled. The overland route through Iraq is meant to serve as a backup if the sea cables are disabled... [Martin Frank, strategic adviser for IQ Networks, the company that built the network, told Rest of World this overland route is already carrying live traffic.] The company, based in Iraq's Kurdistan region, runs fiber from the southern tip of Iraq to the Turkish border. It is now extending the network through gas-pipeline corridors across Turkey to the European border, with the first link expected early next year, Frank said. When that extension is complete, cloud providers will — for the first time — have the option of an unbroken land-based fiber path from the Gulf into the European network, connecting onward to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, and Marseille, from where their data connects back to U.S. users.

The advantage of this alternative route is that oil and gas pipelines come with their own security perimeters, access roads, and maintenance corridors already built around them, allowing a telecom company to lay fiber without digging new trenches through difficult terrain. Iraq avoided the fate of earlier overland routes that collapsed because of a sustained period of stability, and because existing pipeline infrastructure provided ready-made corridors for laying fiber, Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at network intelligence firm Kentik, told Rest of World... IQ Networks' route, called the Silk Route Transit, has been running since November 2023. The network currently carries enough data to stream about 400,000 high-definition videos simultaneously, Frank said.
The land route is faster. Data traveling through submarine cables from the Gulf to Europe takes about 150 milliseconds. The Iraqi terrestrial route cuts that to roughly 70 milliseconds — a difference that matters for video calls, financial transactions, and applications that run on artificial intelligence, according to IQ Networks.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/10/2136216/big-tech-is-moving-data-through-the-gulf-using-fiber-optic-cables-alongside-iraqs-oil-pipelines?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 6pzzOkXI8VKLLk73Quze2026-05-11 00:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/6pzzOkXI8VKLLk73Quze#6pzzOkXI8VKLLk73Quze This week Amazon opened up its parcel shipping, fulfillment, and distribution "to businesses of all types and sizes." Any business can now ship, store, and deliver "using the same supply chain that supports Amazon," according to Monday's announcement of "Amazon Supply Chain Servi... All

This week Amazon opened up its parcel shipping, fulfillment, and distribution "to businesses of all types and sizes." Any business can now ship, store, and deliver "using the same supply chain that supports Amazon," according to Monday's announcement of "Amazon Supply Chain Services."

The move sent shares of UPS and FedEx "tumbling" Monday writes GeekWire. And though both stocks bounced back as the week went on, GeekWire sees this as the latest example of Amazon "turning its internal capabilities into products and services for sale..."

"Amazon had already surpassed both carriers to become the nation's largest parcel shipper by volume, according to parcel-analytics firm ShipMatrix."

Initial customers include Procter & Gamble, which is using Amazon's freight network to transport raw materials; 3M, which is using it to move products to distribution centers; Lands' End, which is fulfilling orders across sales channels from Amazon's warehouses; and American Eagle Outfitters, which is using Amazon's parcel service for last-mile delivery. The service can fulfill orders placed through platforms that compete with Amazon's own marketplace, including Walmart, Shopify, TikTok, and others... Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, compared the launch to the origins of Amazon's cloud business...

In addition to putting Amazon in competition with existing players in the logistics industry, the move also raises questions about data privacy. Amazon has faced accusations of using nonpublic seller data to compete against merchants on its marketplace, which it has denied. Larsen told the Wall Street Journal that the company prohibits using supply chain customer data for its own marketplace decisions, noting that hundreds of thousands of Amazon sellers already trust the company to fulfill orders placed on rival platforms.

The article notes taht in his annual shareholder letter Amazon's CEO "said the company is also exploring selling its custom AI chips and robotics to outside customers."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/10/1953232/challenging-ups-and-fedex-amazon-opens-its-shipping-network-to-all-businesses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> e29AoKoSOOZpYFsLDS5k2026-05-10 23:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/e29AoKoSOOZpYFsLDS5k#e29AoKoSOOZpYFsLDS5k "General Motors sold the data of California drivers without their knowledge or consent," says California's attorney general, "and despite numerous statements reassuring drivers that it would not do so." In 2024, The New York Times "reported that automakers including GM were sha... All

"General Motors sold the data of California drivers without their knowledge or consent," says California's attorney general, "and despite numerous statements reassuring drivers that it would not do so."

In 2024, The New York Times "reported that automakers including GM were sharing information about their customers' driving behavior with insurance companies," remembers TechCrunch, "and that some customers were concerned that their insurance rates had gone up as a result."

Now General Motors "has reached a privacy-related settlement with a group of law enforcement agencies led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta..."

The settlement announcement from Bonta's office similarly alleges that GM sold "the names, contact information, geolocation data, and driving behavior data of hundreds of thousands of Californians" to Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, which are both data brokers. Bonta's office further alleges that this data was collected through GM's OnStar program, and that the company made roughly $20 million from data sales.

However, Bonta's office also said the data did not lead to increased insurance prices in California, "likely because under California's insurance laws, insurers are prohibited from using driving data to set insurance rates."
As part of the settlement, GM has agreed to pay $12.75 million in civil penalties and to stop selling driving data to any consumer reporting agencies for five years, Bonta's office said. GM has also agreed to delete any driver data that it still retains within 180 days (unless it obtains consent from customers), and to request that Lexis and Verisk delete that data.

"This trove of information included precise and personal location data that could identify the everyday habits and movements of Californians," according to the attorney general's announcement. The settlement "requires General Motors to abandon these illegal practices, and underscores the importance of the data minimization in California's privacy law — companies can't just hold on to data and use it later for another purpose."

"Modern cars are rolling data collection machines," said San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. "Californians must have confidence that they know what data is being collected, how it is being used, and what their opt-out rights are... This case sends a strong message that law enforcement will take action when California privacy laws are not scrupulously followed."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/10/1833256/gm-secretly-sold-california-drivers-data-agrees-to-pay-1275m-in-privacy-settlement?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> 55qZgn9VmCOzdEN7MVWd2026-05-10 22:22:02robothttps://idec.foxears.su/55qZgn9VmCOzdEN7MVWd#55qZgn9VmCOzdEN7MVWd IT sector unemployment "increased to 3.8% in April from 3.6% in March," reports the Wall Street Journal. But they add that the increase reflects "an ongoing uncertainty in tech as AI continues to play havoc with hiring. That's according to analysis from consulting firm Janco As... All

IT sector unemployment "increased to 3.8% in April from 3.6% in March," reports the Wall Street Journal.

But they add that the increase reflects "an ongoing uncertainty in tech as AI continues to play havoc with hiring. That's according to analysis from consulting firm Janco Associates, which bases its findings on data from the U.S. Labor Department."
On Friday, the department said the economy added 115,000 jobs, buoyed by gains in industries including retail, transportation and warehousing and healthcare. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3%. But the information sector lost 13,000 jobs in April.

While it's still too early to say exactly how AI is affecting employment overall, some businesses, especially in the tech industry, have said it's part of the reason they're cutting staff. In April, Meta Platforms said it would lay off 10% of its staff, or roughly 8,000 people, as it seeks to streamline operations and pay for its own massive investments in AI. Nike will reduce its workforce by roughly 1,400 workers, or about 2%, mostly in its tech department, as it simplifies global operations. And Snap is planning to eliminate 16% of its workforce, or about 1,000 positions, as it aims to boost efficiency. In other areas of IT, which includes telecommunications and data-processing, employment is now down 11%, or 342,000 jobs, from its most recent peak in November 2022.

But there's not just AI to blame. Inflation and economic uncertainty linked to the Iran conflict is giving some chief executives and tech leaders reason to pull back or pause their IT hiring, said Janco Chief Executive Victor Janulaitis.

The article even notes that postings for software developer jobs "are up 15% year-over-year on job-search platform Indeed, according to Hannah Calhoon, its vice president of AI". But employers do seem to be looking for experienced developers, which could pose a problem for recent college graduates.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/05/10/0441253/unemployment-ticked-up-in-americas-it-sector?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
]]> B6wo7YIm81iZc2Mb5W672026-05-10 21:22:01robothttps://idec.foxears.su/B6wo7YIm81iZc2Mb5W67#B6wo7YIm81iZc2Mb5W67 An anonymous reader shared this report from Futurism: In November, Amazon leaders sent an internal memo to employees, pushing them to use its in-house code generating tool, Kiro, over third-party alternatives from competitors. "While we continue to support existing tools in use ... All

An anonymous reader shared this report from Futurism:

In November, Amazon leaders sent an internal memo to employees, pushing them to use its in-house code generating tool, Kiro, over third-party alternatives from competitors. "While we continue to support existing tools in use today, we do not plan to support additional third party, AI development tools," the memo read, as quoted by Reuters at the time. "As part of our builder community, you all play a critical role shaping these products and we use your feedback to aggressively improve them."
It was an unusual development, considering the tens of billions of dollars the e-commerce giant has invested in its competitors in the space, including Anthropic and OpenAI... Half a year later, Amazon is singing a dramatically different tune. As Business Insider reports, Amazon is officially throwing in the towel, succumbing to growing calls among employees for access to OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude... Given the unfortunate optics of opening the floodgates for Codex and Claude Code, an Amazon spokesperson told the publication in a statement that teams are still "primarily using" Kiro, claiming that 83 percent of engineers at the company are leaning on it.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/05/10/0618225/amazon-relents-lets-its-programmers-use-openais-codex-and-anthropics-claude?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
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