An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Boston Dynamics Wednesday announced a partnership designed to bring improved reinforcement learning to its electric Atlas humanoid robot. The tie-up is with the Robotics & AI Institute (RAI Institute), earlier known as The Boston Dynamics AI Institute. Both organizations were founded by Marc Raibert, a former MIT professor who served as Boston Dynamics' CEO for 30 years. The Institute, founded in 2022, allows Raibert to continue the research that served as the foundation for Boston Dynamics.

Both have ties to Hyundai. The Korean carmaker acquired Boston Dynamics back in 2021; Hyundai also funds the Institute, giving Raibert free rein to explore more experimental and bleeding-edge technologies than is possible in a commercial company. The Institute mirrors Toyota's creation of TRI, or Toyota Research Institute, which announced its own partnership with Boston Dynamics in October, focused on the use of large behavior models. (LBMs). The twin partnerships are designed to improve the way Boston Dynamics' electric Atlas humanoid learns new tasks. The Robotics & AI Institute deal is specifically focused on reinforcement learning, a method that operates through trial and error, similar to the way both humans and animals learn. Reinforcement learning has traditionally been extremely time-intensive, though the creation of effective simulation has allowed many processes to be carried out at once in a virtual setting.

The Boston Dynamics/RAI Institute union kicked off earlier this month in Massachusetts. It's the latest in a number of collaborations between the pair, including a joint effort to develop a reinforcement learning research kit for the quadrupedal Spot robot by Boston Dynamics (which is its familiar robot "dog"). The new work focuses on both transferring simulation-based learning to real-world settings and improving how the company's humanoid Atlas moves through and interacts with physical environments. Pertaining to the latter, Boston Dynamics points to "dynamic running and full-body manipulation of heavy objects." Both are examples of actions that require synchronization of the legs and arms. The humanoid's bipedal form factor presents a number of unique challenges -- and opportunities -- when compared with Spot. Every activity is also subject to a broad range of forces, including balance, force, resistance, and motion.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/06/2154234/boston-dynamics-joins-forces-with-its-former-ceo?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI is considering building large-scale data center campuses in 16 states as part of the Stargate initiative, a $100 billion joint venture with Oracle and SoftBank aimed at strengthening U.S. AI infrastructure. CNBC reports: On a call with reporters, OpenAI executives said it sent out a request for proposals (RFP) to states less than a week ago. "A project of this size represents an opportunity to both re-industrialize parts of the country, but also to help revitalize where the American Dream is going to go in this intelligence age," Chris Lehane, OpenAI's vice president of global policy, said on the call.

[...] The 16 states OpenAI is currently considering are Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia. Construction on the data centers in Abilene, Texas, is currently underway. In the coming months, OpenAI will begin announcing additional construction sites "on a rolling basis," according to the presentation. Each campus is designed to support about one gigawatt of power or more.

OpenAI is aiming to build five to 10 data center campuses total, although executives said that number could rise or fall depending on how much power each campus offers. The company also said it expects each data center campus to generate thousands of jobs. That includes construction and operational roles. But Stargate's first data center in Abilene could lead to the creation of just 57 jobs, according to recent reports.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/06/2210223/openai-considering-16-states-for-data-center-campuses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Senate Commerce Committee approved the Kids Off Social Media Act, banning children under 13 from social media and requiring federally funded schools to restrict access on networks and devices. Politico reports: The panel approved the Kids Off Social Media Act -- sponsored by the panel's chair, Texas Republican Ted Cruz, and a senior Democrat on the panel, Hawaii's Brian Schatz -- by voice vote, clearing the way for consideration by the full Senate. Only Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked to be recorded as a no on the bill. "When you've got Ted Cruz and myself in agreement on something, you've pretty much captured the ideological spectrum of the whole Congress," Sen. Schatz told POLITICO's Gabby Miller.

[...] "KOSMA comes from very good intentions of lawmakers, and establishing national screen time standards for schools is sensible. However, the bill's in-effect requirements on access to protected information jeopardize all Americans' digital privacy and endanger free speech online," said Amy Bos, NetChoice director of state and federal affairs. The trade association represents big tech firms including Meta and Google. Netchoice has been aggressive in combating social media legislation by arguing that these laws illegally restrict -- and in some cases compel -- speech. [...] A Commerce Committee aide told POLITICO that because social media platforms already voluntarily require users to be at least 13 years old, the bill does not restrict speech currently available to kids.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/06/2231208/bill-banning-social-media-for-youngsters-advances?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google has begun internal testing of a new "AI Mode" for its search engine, powered by its Gemini 2.0 AI model, according to a company email seen by technology news site 9to5Google. The feature, which appears alongside existing filters like Images and News, creates a chatbot-like interface for handling complex queries and follow-up questions.

It generates detailed responses with web links displayed in a card format on the right side of the screen. AI Mode targets exploratory searches such as product comparisons and how-to questions that traditional search results may not effectively address. The company is currently testing the feature with U.S.-based employees, with CEO Sundar Pichai indicating a possible launch this year.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/06/2354244/google-tests-ai-powered-search-mode-with-employees?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Apple plans to unveil a long-anticipated overhaul of the iPhone SE in the coming days, a move that will modernize its lower-cost model in a bid to spur growth and entice consumers to switch from other brands. Bloomberg: The company expects to announce the device as early as next week, ahead of it going on sale later in the month, according to people with knowledge of the matter. [...] The new device, code-named V59, also will be Apple's first with an in-house cellular modem, replacing a component from Qualcomm, Bloomberg News has reported. It will have a larger screen with Face ID and also include a speedier A18 chip, which will help support Apple Intelligence. The removal of the home button from the iPhone SE means that Apple will have fully phased out the iconic interface, which debuted on the first iPhone in 2007.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/0013232/apples-long-awaited-overhaul-of-iphone-se-nears-release?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Arm has dropped its attempt to terminate Qualcomm's Architecture License Agreement (ALA), allowing Qualcomm to continue developing and producing Arm-compatible chips for PCs, smartphones, and servers. "The Brit biz had sought to end that license in a lawsuit it brought against Qualcomm in 2022," notes The Register. "That suit is rooted in Qualcomm's 2021 acquisition of a startup called Nuvia, which was co-founded by the brains behind Apple's custom processors and had signed an architecture license agreement (ALA) with Arm that allowed it to design its own Arm-compatible CPU cores." From the report: On Wednesday, Qualcomm's latest quarterly financial report [PDF] revealed Arm had indicated on January 8, 2025 it was no longer seeking to kill off Qualcomm's ALA. During Qualcomm's Q1 2025 earnings conference call with Wall Street, CEO Cristiano Amon confirmed Arm "has no current plan to terminate the Qualcomm Architecture License Agreement. We're excited to continue to develop performance leading, world-class products that benefit consumers worldwide that include our incredible Oryon custom CPUs." [...]

On the other side of the fence, Arm noted in a regulatory filing [PDF] that post-trial motions had been filed on both sides to clarify the legal situation following the jury's verdicts, and a new trial may be sought. On its own latest quarterly earnings call, which like Qualcomm's took place on Wednesday, Arm's CFO Jason Child was asked about the impact of the case. He said Arm's revenue forecasts assumed the biz was "not going to prevail in that lawsuit," and that it expected to continue receiving payments from Qualcomm, which licenses various technologies from Arm and doesn't just hold an ALA.

"The primary reason for the lawsuit very much was around defending our IP and that's important," Child said. "But from a financial perspective, we had assumed that we'll continue to be receiving royalties at basically the same rates that they've been paying for in the past and will continue to pay." Qualcomm continues to pursue another case against Arm, alleging the UK outfit didn't honor some of its contractual obligations. Arm reckons that matter will reach the courts in the first half of 2026.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/0026240/arm-ends-legal-efforts-to-terminate-qualcomms-license?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CyberScoop: Ransomware payments saw a dramatic 35% drop last year compared to 2023, even as the overall frequency of ransomware attacks increased, according to a new report released by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. The considerable decline in extortion payments is somewhat surprising, given that other cybersecurity firms have claimed that 2024 saw the most ransomware activity to date. Chainalysis itself warned in its mid-year report that 2024's activity was on pace to reach new heights, but attacks in the second half of the year tailed off. The total amount in payments that Chainalysis tracked in 2024 was $812.55 million, down from 2023's mark of $1.25 billion.

The disruption of major ransomware groups, such as LockBit and ALPHV/BlackCat, were key to the reduction in ransomware payments. Operations spearheaded by agencies like the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) caused significant declines in LockBit activity, while ALPHV/BlackCat essentially rug-pulled its affiliates and disappeared after its attack on Change Healthcare. [...] Additionally, [Chainalysis] says more organizations have become stronger against attacks, with many choosing not to pay a ransom and instead using better cybersecurity practices and backups to recover from these incidents. [...] Chainalysis also says ransomware operators are letting funds sit in wallets, refraining from moving any money out of fear they are being watched by law enforcement.

You can read the full report here.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/0049222/ransomware-payments-dropped-35-in-2024?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

NASA is planning to host a live Twitch stream next week from the International Space Station (ISS). "The stream, which takes place on February 12th at 11:45AM ET on NASA's Twitch channel, will feature Don Pettit, an astronaut currently on the ISS, and Matt Dominick, who returned to Earth from the ISS in October," reports The Verge. From the report: The astronauts will discuss "daily life aboard the space station and the research conducted in microgravity" and viewers will be able to ask them questions, according to a blog post.

"This Twitch event from space is the first of many," Brittany Brown, director of the Office of Communications Digital and Technology Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, says in the post. "We spoke with digital creators at TwitchCon about their desire for streams designed with their communities in mind, and we listened. In addition to our spacewalks, launches, and landings, we'll host more Twitch-exclusive streams like this one."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/0052210/nasa-plans-twitch-stream-from-iss?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

6 февраля 2025 года команда разработчиков Tails объявила о выпуске новой версии своего дистрибутива, ориентированного на конфиденциальность, Tails 6.12. В этой версии были исправлены критические уязвимости безопасности и добавлены новые функциональные обновления.

Напомним, что дистрибутив основан на Debian GNU/Linux, предназначен для установку на флешку, включает в себя инструменты для обеспечения цифровой безопасности и ориентирован на защиту от слежки и цензуры, обеспечение приватности и анонимности.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/security/17875369#cut ) )

Кристоф Хелвиг (Christoph Hellwig), мэйнейнер подсистем DMA, KVM, Slab Allocator и архитектуры PowerPC в ядре Linux, в своё время входивший в управляющий технический комитет организации Linux Foundation и выступавший истцом в связанном с GPL судебном разбирательстве с VMware, отказался подтверждать пачти, связанные с поддержкой разработки драйверов на языке Rust. Предложенный патчи добавляли обвязки над несколькими функциями подсистемы DMA, позволяющие использовать DMA в драйверах на языке Rust.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62685

After a $523 million charge on its CST-100 Starliner program in 2024, Boeing's total losses on the commercial crew vehicle now exceed $2 billion -- and there's still no clear timeline for its next flight. SpaceNews reports: In the company's 10-K annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Feb. 3, Boeing said it took $523 million in charges on Starliner in 2024. The company blamed the losses on "schedule delays and higher testing and certification costs as well as higher costs for post certification missions."

The company had reported a $125 million charge in the second quarter and a $250 million charge in the third quarter. The company warned Jan. 23 it would take an additional loss in the fourth quarter but did not disclose a figure when it released its financial results five days later. The annual loss implies a $148 million loss in the fourth quarter.

The $523 million in charges is the most Boeing has recorded in a single year on Starliner, exceeding $489 million it reported in 2019. The company's cumulative charges on Starliner are now just over $2 billion. "Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods," the company stated in the 10-K filing.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/0058237/boeings-starliner-losses-top-2-billion?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In the most comprehensive study of its kind, scientists have found that generally, the world feels brighter when you wake up. People start the day in the best frame of mind in the morning, but end in the worst, at about midnight, the findings suggest, with the day of the week and the season also playing a part. Mental health also tends to be more varied at weekends but steadier during the week, according to the study led by University College London. "Generally, things do seem better in the morning," the researchers concluded. Their findings were published in the journal BMJ Mental Health. [...]
The results showed that happiness, life satisfaction, and worthwhile ratings were all higher on Mondays and Fridays than on Sundays, while happiness was also higher on Tuesdays. There was no evidence that loneliness differed across days of the week. There was clear evidence of a seasonal influence on mood. Compared with winter, people tended to have lower levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms and loneliness, and higher levels of happiness, life satisfaction and feeling that life was worthwhile in the three other seasons. Mental health was best in the summer across all outcomes. But the season didn't affect the associations observed across the day, however. Scientists suggest that the findings may be due to physiological changes linked to the body's circadian rhythm. Cortisol, a hormone that influences mood and motivation, peaks after waking and declines by bedtime, which may contribute to better mental health earlier in the day.

Factors like sleep cycles, weather, and when participants chose to respond to the survey could have influenced the findings. There's also the differences between weekdays and weekends, which have their own variations in daily routines.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/0035259/scientists-find-that-things-really-do-seem-better-in-the-morning?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The UK government has ordered Apple to create a backdoor allowing access to encrypted cloud backups of users worldwide, Washington Post reported Friday, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. The unprecedented demand, issued last month through a technical capability notice under the UK Investigatory Powers Act, requires Apple to provide blanket access to fully encrypted material rather than assistance with specific accounts.

Apple is likely to discontinue its encrypted storage service in the UK rather than compromise user security globally, the report said. The company would still face pressure to provide backdoor access for users in other countries, including the United States. The order was issued under Britain's 2016 Investigatory Powers Act, which makes it illegal to disclose such government demands, according to the report. While Apple can appeal to a secret technical panel and judge, the law requires compliance during any appeal process. The company told Parliament in March that the UK government should not have authority to decide whether global users can access end-to-end encryption.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1150200/uk-orders-apple-to-let-it-spy-on-users-encrypted-accounts?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Asahi lead developer Hector Martin, writing in an email: I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or community management approach.

Apple/ARM platform development will continue downstream. If I feel like sending some patches upstream in the future myself for whatever subtree I may, or I may not. Anyone who feels like fighting the upstreaming fight themselves is welcome to do so.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1332241/asahi-linux-lead-developer-hector-martin-resigns-from-linux-kernel?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Newly unsealed emails allegedly provide the "most damning evidence" yet against Meta in a copyright case raised by book authors alleging that Meta illegally trained its AI models on pirated books.

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna's Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," the authors' court filing said. And "Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen."

"The magnitude of Meta's unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing," the authors' filing alleged, insisting that "vastly smaller acts of data piracy -- just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated -- have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys' office for criminal investigation."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1224244/torrenting-from-a-corporate-laptop-doesnt-feel-right-meta-emails-unsealed?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A British manufacturer of hydrogen fuel cell components for London's double-decker bus fleet has collapsed into administration, jeopardizing a $15.8 million government-backed project to cut transport emissions. Aeristech Limited, which was developing high-powered compressors for hydrogen fuel cells, was working on Project HEIDI to retrofit London buses with hydrogen technology. The project received $7.84 million in government funding last year, with additional investment from project partners including University of Bath and Equipmake.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1250220/british-hydrogen-bus-supplier-aeristech-collapses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A passenger on the French rail network SNCF has revealed that he received a $155 fine for using his phone on loud speaker within a train station. From a report: The passenger, named only as David, told French TV channel BFM that he was on the phone to his sister while waiting at Nantes station when the SNCF staff member told him to switch his phone's loud speaker off, or risk being fined. When he argued, he was served with the $155 fine, which has been increased to $207 because he did not pay it immediately. Further reading: Flying Was Already the Worst. Then America Stopped Using Headphones.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1257245/french-train-passenger-fined-155-for-using-phone-on-speaker?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A survey of 2,130 Americans has revealed widespread vulnerability to cyber attacks through unsupported smart devices, with 43% unaware their devices might lose software support. The security threat was underscored in December 2023 when U.S. authorities disrupted a Chinese state-sponsored botnet targeting home routers and cameras that had stopped receiving security updates. Cloudflare separately reported a record-breaking DDoS attack in late 2023, primarily originating from compromised smart TVs and set-top boxes.

The survey, conduced by Consumer Reports, found that only 39% of consumers learned about lost software support from manufacturers, with most discovering issues when devices stopped working (40%) or through media reports (15%). Most consumers expect their smart devices to retain functionality after losing software support, particularly for large appliances (70%). However, Consumer Reports' research found only 14% of 21 smart appliance brands specify support timeframes, while an FTC study of 184 devices showed just 11% disclose support duration.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1314200/zombie-devices-raise-cybersecurity-alarm-as-consumers-ignore-smart-tech-expiry-dates?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has edited Gemini's AI response in a Super Bowl commercial to remove an incorrect statistic about cheese. The ad, which shows a small business owner using Gemini to write a website description about Gouda, no longer says the variety makes up "50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption."

In the edited YouTube video, Gemini's response now skips over the specifics and says Gouda is "one of the most popular cheeses in the world." Google Cloud apps president Jerry Dischler initially defended the response, saying on X it's "grounded in the Web" and "not a hallucination."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1322252/google-pulls-incorrect-gouda-stat-from-its-ai-super-bowl-ad?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

В недавно вышедшем релизе GNU binutils 2.44 произошло знаковое изменение. Альтернативный основному компоновщику GNU Gold Linker объявлен устаревшим и исключён из поставки binutils по умолчанию. Его код пока ещё не исключён из общего репозитория binutils-gdb и вместо основного тарбола binutils он [ доступен ]( https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/ ) в binutils-with-gold-2.44.tar.*. Однако в одном из будущих релизов binutils планируется полностью удалить код GNU Gold Linker.

Gold Linker был изначально создан инженерами компании Google более двух десятилетий назад исключительно для ELF формата. Основная мотивация его создания была — создать более быстрый компоновщик. И действительно, линковка ELF объектных файлов при помощи Gold Linker работает быстрее, чем у основного компоновщика GNU, однако активность разработки Gold Linker была довольно низкой в последние несколько лет. Одна из причин снижения активности заключается в том, что Google сменил приоритет в сторону тулчейна LLVM со своим компоновщиком. Компоновщик из этого LLVM-тулчейна уже сейчас превосходит в производительности оба компоновщика GNU.

>>> [ Официальный анонса GNU binutils 2.44 ]( https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2025-02/msg00001.html )

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/gnu/17875745

U.S. employers are deploying increasingly aggressive phishing tests to combat cyber threats, sparking backlash from workers who say the simulated scams create unnecessary panic and distrust in the workplace. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, a test email about a fake Ebola outbreak sent staff scrambling before learning it was a security drill. At Lehigh Valley Health Network, employees who fall for phishing tests lose external email access, with termination possible after three failures.

Despite widespread use, recent studies question these tests' effectiveness. Research from ETH Zurich found that phishing tests combined with voluntary training actually made employees more vulnerable, while a University of California, San Diego study showed only a 2% reduction [PDF] in phishing success rates. "These are just an ineffective and inefficient way to educate users," said Grant Ho, who co-authored the UCSD study.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/127221/phishing-tests-the-bane-of-work-life-are-getting-meaner?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Опубликован выпуск ONLYOFFICE DocumentServer 8.3 с реализацией сервера для online-редакторов ONLYOFFICE и организации совместной работы. Редакторы можно использовать для работы с текстовыми документами, таблицами и презентациями. Код проекта распространяется под свободной лицензией AGPLv3.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62686

An anonymous reader shares a report: India's central bank is introducing an exclusive ".bank.in" domain for banks from April 2025 as part of efforts to combat rising digital payment frauds and bolster trust in online banking services.

[...] The central bank plans to roll out a separate 'fin.in' domain for non-bank financial institutions. "Increased instances of fraud in digital payments are a significant concern," said RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra, adding that the new domain system aims to reduce cyber security threats and malicious activities like phishing.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1335247/india-to-launch-new-domain-name-for-banks-to-fight-digital-fraud?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Most Britons support strict controls on AI systems that could surpass human capabilities, according to a YouGov poll, highlighting a growing divide between public opinion and government policy. The survey of 2,344 adults found 87% back laws requiring AI developers to prove their systems are safe before release, while 60% favor banning the development of "smarter-than-human" AI models. Only 9% trust tech CEOs to act in the public interest on AI regulation.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1347229/most-britons-back-ban-on-smarter-than-human-ai-models-poll-shows?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Спустя почти два года разработки релиз 0.5.1 наконец состоялся. Это быстрее, нежели в прошлый раз, когда обовление с 0.4.10 до 0.5 заняло 2 года и 8 месяцев. Команда благодарит всех поддерживающих, контрибьюторов и тестировщиков за вложенное ими время и усилия. В центре внимания в этот раз были мнения видов о империях, а также аннексия колоний иными способами нежели грубой силой — вторжением. Это означает, что теперь важно, что населяющие галактику виды думают об игроке. Также, разумеется, были обычные улучшения различных элементов и механик игры, исправления ошибок.

Разработчики надеются, что все эти новшества и обновления сделают игровой опыт богаче и разнообразнее. Так что вперёд, скачайте новый релиз и оторвитесь по полной!

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/games/17876191#cut ) )

An anonymous reader shares a report: Users are now receiving notifications regarding their Microsoft 365 subscriptions and must take action if they wish to avoid Copilot and its extra charges.

The email from Microsoft warns that the cost of a 365 Personal Subscription will jump, however, there is no need to worry -- Microsoft knows what's best and will increase your payment in return for all those AI-powered Copilot services it knows you want.

We noted the upcoming increases last month and how users could turn off the generative AI assistant. At the time, Microsoft said users would be able to switch to plans without Copilot. However, unless a user takes action, the price they pay for their "Current Subscription" will increase, and AI-powered delights will be added to their plan.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/140254/microsoft-365-price-rises-are-coming---pay-up-or-opt-out?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Software companies are under pressure to invest in new AI capabilities without denting profits. One increasingly popular strategy to keep costs low is to shift hiring outside the US. From a report:Â Salesforce and Workday are simultaneously cutting jobs and highlighting the cost savings from adding workers internationally. "Do we need to hire everybody in San Francisco?" Salesforce Chief Operating Officer Brian Millham said at an event hosted by Barclays in December. "Or can we think about other locations that are cheaper where we can get really incredible labor like India and Mexico City."

US-based employees at Salesforce dropped to 51% from 58% in the four years ending in January 2024. In early 2023, it announced a reduction of roughly 8,000 jobs. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that the San Francisco-based software company would cut more than 1,000 positions in large part to make room for new AI-focused hiring. [...] Human resources software maker Workday, based in Pleasanton, California, announced Wednesday that it would eliminate about 1,750 jobs. Last year, Chief Executive Officer Carl Eschenbach emphasized a new focus on expanding margins, saying hiring more in countries like Costa Rica would help in this effort.Â

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/1423237/salesforce-workday-are-hiring-more-overseas-to-save-cash?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica written by Kevin Purdy: There are only two licensed professional sports games included in Wikipedia's "List of video games notable for negative reception." Do not be fooled, however: WWE 2K20 and eFootball 2022 are just the outliers, arriving so poorly crafted as to cause notable outcry and an actual change to development plans. Most licensed professional sports games come out yearly, whether fully baked, notably improved, or not, and fans who have few other options to play with their favorite intellectual property learn to make do with them.

Not so with fans of Football Manager, a series that can be traced back in some form to 1992 that has released a game almost every year, minus one ownership shift in the early 2000s. Sports Interactive, the company behind the franchise, released a statement on Thursday (in British time) that says that "following extensive internal discussions and careful consideration," Football Manager 25 is canceled. The game was "too far away from the standards you deserve," so they are focusing on the 2026 version. [...]

The developer's statement notes that preorder customers are getting refunds. Answering a question that has always been obvious to fans but never publishers, the company notes that, no, Football Manager 2024 will not get an update with the new season's players and data. The company says it is looking to extend the 2024 version's presence on subscription platforms, like Xbox's Game Pass, and will "provide an update on this in due course." Fans eager to build out their dynasty team and end up with Bukayo Saka may be disappointed to miss out this year. But a developer with big ambitions to meaningfully improve and rethink a long-running franchise deserves some consideration amid the consternation.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/2053255/football-manager-25-canceled-in-a-refreshing-show-of-concern-for-quality?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A German court has ruled that Amazon's Prime Video service violates a Nokia-owned patent, ordering Amazon to stop streaming in its current form or face fines of 250,000 euros per violation. However, Amazon assured customers in a statement on Friday that there is no risk of losing access to Prime Video because the decision affects only a limited functionality related to casting videos between devices.

"Prime Video will comply with this local judgement and is currently considering next steps. However, there is absolutely no risk at all for customers losing access to Prime Video," Amazon's Prime Video spokesperson told Reuters. Meanwhile, Nokia's chief licensing officer, Arvin Patel, said: "...the innovation ecosystem breaks down if patent holders are not fairly compensated for the use of their technologies, as it becomes much harder for innovators to fund the development of next generation technologies."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/213240/amazon-says-germany-customers-wont-lose-amazon-prime-as-a-result-of-nokia-patent-win?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Register highlights concerns raised at a recent UK parliamentary committee regarding AI companies' exploitation of copyrighted content without permission or payment. From the report: The Culture, Media and Sport Committee and Science, Innovation and Technology Committee asked composer Max Richter how he would know if "bad-faith actors" were using his material to train AI models. "There's really nothing I can do," he told MPs. "There are a couple of music AI models, and it's perfectly easy to make them generate a piece of music that sounds uncannily like me. That wouldn't be possible unless it had hoovered up my stuff without asking me and without paying for it. That's happening on a huge scale. It's obviously happened to basically every artist whose work is on the internet."

Richter, whose work has been used in a number of major film and television scores, said the consequences for creative musicians and composers would be dire. "You're going to get a vanilla-ization of music culture as automated material starts to edge out human creators, and you're also going to get an impoverishing of human creators," he said. "It's worth remembering that the music business in the UK is a real success story. It's 7.6 billion-pound income last year, with over 200,000 people employed. That is a big impact. If we allow the erosion of copyright, which is really how value is created in the music sector, then we're going to be in a position where there won't be artists in the future."

Speaking earlier, former Google staffer James Smith said much of the damage from text and data mining had likely already been done. "The original sin, if you like, has happened," said Smith, co-founder and chief executive of Human Native AI. "The question is, how do we move forward? I would like to see the government put more effort into supporting licensing as a viable alternative monetization model for the internet in the age of these new AI agents."

Matt Rogerson, director of global public policy and platform strategy at the Financial Times, said: "We can only deal with what we see in front of us and [that is] people taking our content, using it for the training, using it in substitutional ways. So from our perspective, we'll prosecute the same argument in every country where we operate, where we see our content being stolen." The risk, if the situation continued, was a hollowing out of creative and information industries, he said. [...] "The problem is we can't see who's stolen our content. We're just at this stage where these very large companies, which usually make margins of 90 percent, might have to take some smaller margin, and that's clearly going to be upsetting for their investors. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't. It's just a question of right and wrong and where we pitch this debate. Unfortunately, the government has pitched it in thinking that you can't reduce the margin of these big tech companies; otherwise, they won't build a datacenter."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/2114226/creators-demand-tech-giants-fess-up-pay-for-all-that-ai-training-data?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Hospital Sisters Health System notified over 882,000 patients that an August 2023 cyberattack led to a data breach that exposed their personal and health information. Established in 1875, HSHS works with over 2,200 physicians and has around 12,000 employees. It also operates a network of physician practices and 15 local hospitals across Illinois and Wisconsin, including two children's hospitals. The non-profit healthcare system said in data breach notifications sent to those impacted that the incident was discovered on August 27, 2023, after detecting that the attacker had gained access to HSHS' network.

After the security breach, its systems were also impacted by a widespread outage that took down "virtually all operating systems" and phone systems across Illinois and Wisconsin hospitals. HSHS also hired external security experts to investigate the attack, assess its impact, and help its IT team restore affected systems. [...] While the incident and the resulting outage have all the signs of a ransomware attack, no ransomware operation has claimed the breach. Following the forensic investigation, HSHS found that the attackers had accessed files on compromised systems between August 16 and August 27, 2023.

The information accessed by the threat actors while inside HSHS' systems varies for each impacted individual, and it includes a combination of name, address, date of birth, medical record number, limited treatment information, health insurance information, Social Security number, and/or driver's license number. While HSHS added that there is no evidence that the victims' information has been used in fraud or identity theft attempts, it warned affected individuals to monitor their account statements and credit reports for suspicious activity. The health system also offers those affected by the breach one year of free Equifax credit monitoring.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/2124217/us-health-system-notifies-882000-patients-of-august-2023-breach?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI says it's investigating after a hacker claimed to have stolen login credentials for 20 million OpenAI accounts and advertised the data for sale on a dark web forum. Though security researchers doubt on the legitimacy of the breach, the AI company stated that it takes the claims seriously, advising users to enable two-factor authentication and stay vigilant against phishing attempts. Decrypt reports: Daily Dot reporter Mikael Thalan wrote on X that he found invalid email addresses in the supposed sample data: "No evidence (suggests) this alleged OpenAI breach is legitimate. At least two addresses were invalid. The user's only other post on the forum is for a stealer log. Thread has since been deleted as well."

"We take these claims seriously," the spokesperson said, adding: "We have not seen any evidence that this is connected to a compromise of OpenAI systems to date."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/2236218/openai-investigating-claim-of-20-million-stolen-user-credentials?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Register's Thomas Claburn reports: Google's overhaul of Chrome's extension architecture continues to pose problems for developers of ad blockers, content filters, and privacy tools. [...] While Google's desire to improve the security, privacy, and performance of the Chrome extension platform is reasonable, its approach -- which focuses on code and permissions more than human oversight -- remains a work-in-progress that has left extension developers frustrated.

Alexei Miagkov, senior staff technology at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who oversees the organization's Privacy Badger extension, told The Register, "Making extensions under MV3 is much harder than making extensions under MV2. That's just a fact. They made things harder to build and more confusing." Miagkov said with Privacy Badger the problem has been the slowness with which Google addresses gaps in the MV3 platform. "It feels like MV3 is here and the web extensions team at Google is in no rush to fix the frayed ends, to fix what's missing or what's broken still." According to Google's documentation, "There are currently no open issues considered a critical platform gap," and various issues have been addressed through the addition of new API capabilities.

Miagkov described an unresolved problem that means Privacy Badger is unable to strip Google tracking redirects on Google sites. "We can't do it the correct way because when Google engineers design the [chrome.declarativeNetRequest API], they fail to think of this scenario," he said. "We can do a redirect to get rid of the tracking, but it ends up being a broken redirect for a lot of URLs. Basically, if the URL has any kind of query string parameters -- the question mark and anything beyond that -- we will break the link." Miagkov said a Chrome developer relations engineer had helped identify a workaround, but it's not great. Miagkov thinks these problems are of Google's own making -- the company changed the rules and has been slow to write the new ones. "It was completely predictable because they moved the ability to fix things from extensions to themselves," he said. "And now they need to fix things and they're not doing it."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/2246202/googles-7-year-slog-to-improve-chrome-extensions-still-hasnt-satisfied-developers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Maine's overwhelmingly popular right-to-repair law is under attack by automakers through lawsuits and lobbying efforts aimed at weakening or delaying enforcement. While the law remains in limbo due to industry influence and legal challenges, broader enforcement issues persist across multiple states, with corporations often ignoring right-to-repair laws despite their legal passage. Techdirt reports: A little over a year ago, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) to pass a new state right to repair law designed to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to consumers and third-party independent repair shops. But as we've seen with other states that have passed right to reform laws (most notably New York), passing the law isn't the end of the story. Corporate lobbyists have had great success not just watering these laws down before passage, but after voters approve them. They've also been swarmed by coordinated industry lawsuits and falsehood-spewing attacks.

Maine's popular right to repair law just took effect after a year of hashing out the fine details, but the bill's still being changed as the state tries to sort out enforcement. Large automakers have been looming over that process to try and weaken the law. But the Alliance For Automotive Innovation also just filed a new lawsuit saying the law isn't fully cooked and therefore violates the law: "This is an example of putting the cart before the horse. Before automakers can comply, the law requires the attorney general to first establish an 'independent entity' to securely administer access to vehicle data. The independent entity hasn't been established. That's not in dispute. Compliance with the law right now is not possible."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/2256236/automakers-sue-to-kill-maines-hugely-popular-right-to-repair-law?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In today's issue of Nature, a team at Oxford University describes using quantum teleportation to link two pieces of quantum hardware that were located about 2 meters apart, meaning they could easily have been in different rooms entirely. Once linked, the two pieces of hardware could be treated as a single quantum computer, allowing simple algorithms to be performed that involved operations on both sides of the 2-meter gap. [...] The Oxford team was simply interested in a proof-of-concept, and so used an extremely simplified system. Each end of the 2-meter gap had a single trap holding two ions, one strontium and one calcium. The two atoms could be entangled with each other, getting them to operate as a single unit.

The calcium ion served as a local memory and was used in computations, while the strontium ion served as one of the two ends of the quantum network. An optical cable between the two ion traps allowed photons to entangle the two strontium ions, getting the whole system to operate as a single unit. The key thing about the entanglement processes used here is that a failure to entangle left the system in its original state, meaning that the researchers could simply keep trying until the qubits were entangled. The entanglement event would also lead to a photon that could be measured, allowing the team to know when success had been achieved (this sort of entanglement with a success signal is termed "heralded" by those in the field).

The researchers showed that this setup allowed them to teleport with a specific gate operation (controlled-Z), which can serve as the basis for any other two-qubit gate operation -- any operation you might want to do can be done by using a specific combination of these gates. After performing multiple rounds of these gates, the team found that the typical fidelity was in the area of 70 percent. But they also found that errors typically had nothing to do with the teleportation process and were the product of local operations at one of the two ends of the network. They suspect that using commercial hardware, which has far lower error rates, would improve things dramatically. Finally, they performed a version of Grover's algorithm, which can, with a single query, identify a single item from an arbitrarily large unordered list. The "arbitrary" aspect is set by the number of available qubits; in this case, having only two qubits, the list maxed out at four items. Still, it worked, again with a fidelity of about 70 percent.

While the work was done with trapped ions, almost every type of qubit in development can be controlled with photons, so the general approach is hardware-agnostic. And, given the sophistication of our optical hardware, it should be possible to link multiple chips at various distances, all using hardware that doesn't require the best vacuum or the lowest temperatures we can generate. That said, the error rate of the teleportation steps may still be a problem, even if it was lower than the basic hardware rate in these experiments. The fidelity there was 97 percent, which is lower than the hardware error rates of most qubits and high enough that we couldn't execute too many of these before the probability of errors gets unacceptably high.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/236248/quantum-teleportation-used-to-distribute-a-calculation?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Состоялся экспериментальный выпуск открытой реализации Win32 API - Wine 10.1. С момента выпуска 10.0 было закрыто 35 отчётов об ошибках и внесено 342 изменения. Напомним, что начиная с ветки 2.x проект Wine перешёл на схему нумерации версий, в которой каждый стабильный релиз приводит к увеличению первой цифры в номере версии (9.0.0, 10.0.0), а обновления к стабильным релизам выпускаются с изменением третьей цифры (10.0.1, 10.0.2, 10.0.3). Экспериментальные версии, публикуемые в процессе подготовки следующего значительного релиза, выпускаются с изменением второй цифры (10.1, 10.2, 10.3).

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62691

Опубликован релиз стандартной Си-библиотеки PicoLibc 1.8.9, развиваемой Китом Паккардом (Keith Packard, лидер проекта X.Org) для применения на встраиваемых устройствах с ограниченным размером постоянного хранилища и оперативной памяти. При разработке часть кода заимствована из библиотеки newlib от проекта Сygwin и AVR Libc, развивавшейся для микроконтроллеров Atmel AVR. Код PicoLibc распространяется под лицензией BSD. Поддерживается сборка библиотеки для архитектур ARM (32-bit), Aarch64, i386, RISC-V, x86_64, m68k, PowerPC, LatticMico32, LoongArch и OpenRisc.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62690

According to Downdetector, PlayStation Network (PSN) has been down since 6 PM ET, with Sony assuring users that they're working to fix the problem "as soon as possible." For gaming specifically, Sony says that "you might have difficulty launching games, apps, or network features."

"We are aware some users might be currently experiencing issues with PSN," Sony said in an 8:46PM ET post on X. No further details were made available.

An r/PlayStation thread has more than 10,000 comments. As of 11:35 PM PST, the service remains down.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/02/08/0733239/playstation-network-suffering-major-outage?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания Intel опубликовала компилятор ISPC 1.26 (Implicit SPMD Program Compiler), предназначенный для сборки кода на языке Си с расширениями параллельного программирования SPMD (Single Program, Multiple Data), позволяющими добиться параллельного выполнения нескольких экземпляров одной программы с разными наборами входных данных. Код проекта написан на языке С++ и распространяется под лицензией BSD. Поддерживается работа в Linux, Windows, macOS и FreeBSD.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62692

Опубликована новая версия браузера Min 1.34, предлагающего минималистичный интерфейс, сосредоточенный на манипуляциях с адресной строкой. Браузер создан с использованием платформы Electron, позволяющей создавать обособленные приложения на основе движка Chromium и платформы Node.js. Интерфейс Min написан на JavaScript, CSS и HTML. Код распространяется под лицензией Apache 2.0. Сборки сформированы для Linux, macOS и Windows.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62693

В сообществе разработчиков ядра Linux возникли разногласия по поводу интеграции языка программирования Rust. Кристоф Хелвиг (Christoph Hellwig), мэйнтейнер подсистем DMA, KVM, Slab Allocator и архитектуры PowerPC в ядре Linux, в своё время входивший в управляющий технический комитет организации Linux Foundation и выступавший истцом в связанном с GPL судебном разбирательстве с VMware, отказался подтверждать патчи, связанные с поддержкой разработки драйверов на языке Rust.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/kernel/17876385#cut ) )

After the powerful solar storm of May 2024, scientists detected two new temporary radiation belts around Earth -- one of which contained something we had never seen before: energetic protons. ScienceAlert reports: "These are really high-energy electrons and protons that have found their way into Earth's inner magnetic environment," says astronomer David Sibeck of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who was not involved with the research. "Some might stay in this place for a very long time." In fact, the belts remained intact for much longer than previous temporary radiation belts generated by solar storms: three months, compared to the weeks we'd normally expect.

Subsequent solar storms in June and August of 2024 knocked most of the particles out of orbit, significantly diminishing the density of the belts. A small amount, however, still remains up there, hanging out with Earth. What's more, the proton belt may remain intact for over a year. Ongoing measurements will help scientists measure its longevity and decay rate.

This is important information to have: particles in Earth orbit can pose a hazard to satellites hanging out up there, so knowing the particle density and the effects solar storms can have thereon can help engineers design mitigation strategies to protect our technology. At the moment, though, the hazard posed by the new radiation belts is unquantified. Future studies will be needed to determine the risks these, and future belts, might pose. The findings have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/08/0746221/mysterious-radiation-belts-detected-around-earth-after-epic-solar-storm?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: If you watched the 2007 documentary King of Kong or followed the controversy surrounding score-chaser Billy Mitchell, you know all about Donkey Kong's famous kill screen. For over four decades, no one was able to pass the game's 117th screen (aka level 22-1) due to a glitch in the game's bonus timer that kills Mario well before he can reach the top of the stage's girders. That was true until last weekend, when Mario speedrunner Kosmic shared the news that he had passed the kill screen using a combination of frame-perfect emulator inputs, a well-known ladder movement glitch, and a bit of luck. And even though Kosmic's trick is functionally impossible to pull off with human reflexes on real hardware, the method shows how the game's seemingly insurmountable kill screen actually can be overcome without modifying the code on an official Donkey Kong arcade board.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/02/08/0758212/donkey-kongs-famed-kill-screen-has-been-cleared-for-the-first-time?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Важные изменения ожидают пользователей популярного почтового клиента Thunderbird. Начиная с марта 2025 года, канал Thunderbird Desktop Release станет основным вариантом для загрузки, предлагая ежемесячные обновления функций.

Новый основной канал загрузки

С версии 135.0, которая выйдет в марте 2025 года, канал Thunderbird Desktop Release станет основным вариантом для загрузки. Это означает, что пользователи будут получать новые функции и исправления ошибок ежемесячно, а не ежегодно, как это было с каналом ESR (Extended Support Release).

Преимущества для пользователей

• Частые обновления функций: Новые функции будут доступны каждый месяц.

• Плавные переходы: Переход от одной ежемесячной версии к другой будет менее разрушительным, чем обновления между версиями ESR.

• Постоянные исправления ошибок: Пользователи будут получать все доступные исправления ошибок без необходимости ждать патчей.

Процесс улучшений

Для обеспечения стабильности ежемесячных релизов команда Thunderbird внедрила несколько улучшений в процесс разработки:

• Предварительные заморозки кода: Четырехдневная мягкая заморозка кода перед слиянием изменений в канал Beta и недельная заморозка после слияния в канал Release.

• Предварительные обзоры изменений: Оценка изменений перед слиянием, чтобы можно было откатить рискованные изменения.

• Новый uplift-шаблон. Новый и более продуманный uplift-шаблон.

Цели на 2025 год

Одной из целей на 2025 год является увеличение активных установок на канале Release до 20% от общего числа установок. На данный момент, по данным stats.thunderbird.net, на канале Release зарегистрировано 29 543 активных установок, что составляет 0.27% от общего числа 10 784 551 установок.

Поддержка пользователей ESR

Пользователи, которые предпочитают стабильность канала ESR, могут не беспокоиться: переход на новый канал не будет принудительным. Пользователи останутся на своем текущем канале, если не решат перейти на другой.

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/mozilla/17876827

Friday on a Washington Post podcast, their columnists discussed the hybrid/remote work trend, asking why it "seems to be reversing".

Molly Roberts: Why have some companies decided finally that having offices full of employees is better for them?

Heather Long: It's a loaded question, but I would say, unfortunately, 2025 is the year of operational efficiency, and that's corporate speak for save money at all costs. How do you save money? The easiest way is to get people to quit. What are these return to office mandates, particularly the five day a week in office mandates? We have a lot of data on this now, and it shows people will quit and you don't even have to pay them severance to do it.

Molly Roberts: It's not about productivity for the people who are in the office, then, you think. It's more about just cutting down on the size of the workforce generally.

Heather Long: I do think so. There has been a decent amount of research so far on fully remote, hybrid and fully in office. It's a mixed bag for fully remote. That's why I think if you look at the Fortune 500, only about 16 companies are fully remote, but a lot of them are hybrid. The reason that so much companies are hybrid is because that's the sweet spot. There is no productivity difference between the hybrid schedule and fully in the office five days a week. But what you do see a big difference is employee satisfaction and happiness and employee retention....
I think if what we're talking about is places that have been able to do work from home successfully for the past several years, why are they suddenly in 2025, saying the whole world has changed and we need to come back to the office five days a week? You should definitely be skeptical.
"Who are the first people to leave in these scenarios? It's star employees who know they can get a job elsewhere," Long says (adding later that "There's also quantifiable data that show that, particularly parents, the childcare issues are real.") Long also point out that most of Nvidia's workforce is fully remote — and that housing prices have spiked in some areas where employers are now demanding people return to the office.

But employers also know hiring rates are now low, argues Long, so they're pushing their advantage — possibly out of some misplaced nostalgie. "[T]here's a huge, huge perception difference between what managers, particularly senior leaders in an organization, how effective they think in offices versus what the rank and file people think. Rank and file people tend to prefer hybrid because they don't want their time wasted."

Their discussion also notes a recent Harvard Business School survey that found that 40% of people would trade 5% or more of their salaries to work from home....

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/08/0539235/are-return-to-office-mandates-just-attempts-to-make-people-to-quit?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Разработчики проекта Tor опубликовали выпуск Arti 1.4.0, реализации Tor-клиента, написанного на языке Rust. Ветка 1.x отмечена как пригодная для использования обычными пользователями и обеспечивающая тот же уровень конфиденциальности, юзабилити и стабильности, что и основная реализация на языке Си. Достижение паритета с клиентом на языке Си намечено в ветке 2.0. Когда код на Rust достигнет уровня, способного полностью заменить вариант на Си, разработчики намерены придать Arti статус основной реализации Tor и постепенно прекратить сопровождение реализации на Си. Код распространяется под лицензиями Apache 2.0 и MIT.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62689

To celebrate 3035's newest arrivals in the public domain, the Internet Archive held a special in-person event at their San Francisco headquarters, as well as a virtual celebration online. (It opens with an absolutely gorgeous rendition of "Happy Days are Hear Again" played on a musical saw.)

And somewhere in the festivities they announced the winners of this year's annual "Public Domain Day Film Remix Contest."

These remarkable films not only reimagined and transformed public domain works but also demonstrated the boundless potential of remixing creative works to create something new... Explore all 140+ submissions at the 2025 Public Domain Day Film Remix Contest collection at the Internet Archive...

"The jury was deeply impressed by Queline Meadows's inspired mix of movies, images, music and text woven into a subtle and emotionally affecting video expressing a strong sense of nostalgia and the irretrievable passage of time," said film archivist Rick Prelinger... Filmmaker Samantha Close expresses both the breadth of 1929's production and the eternal bounty of the public domain, using images from 1929's films and public domain images from elsewhere and elsewhen.

One honorable mention entry was described as "an audacious and yes, dopey exploration of the essential greatness of Internet Archive and the dread near-infinity of copyright."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/02/08/0620224/internet-archive-celebrates-new-public-domain-works-with-remixes-in-short-film-contest?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Thursday the White House "moved to halt a $5 billion initiative to build electric vehicle charging stations," reports Politico, "by instructing states not to spend federal funds previously allocated to them..." NPR described the move as "putting in limbo billions of dollars allocated to states with current and future projects..."

Politico notes the move "appears to upend years of precedent in which federal promises of funds for highway projects had given states an all-but-guaranteed assurance that they were free to spend them. It also raises legal questions... Funding experts had told POLITICO last year that decades of legal precedent would largely insulate the charging money...

Andrew Rogers [deputy administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA, in the Biden administration] said in a text message that the new letter "appears to ignore both the law and multiple restraining orders that have been issued by federal courts." Rogers, who is now a senior vice president at Boundary Stone Partners, said the move appears to be "in direct violation" of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a Watergate-era law that prohibits presidents from unilaterally canceling congressionally approved spending. Trump has contended that the law is unconstitutional.

Politico also got a quote from the chief analyst at analytics firm Paren, who predicts lawsuits from affected states and that the final impact of the move will be "just causing havoc and slowing things down for awhile."

[A letter to state transportation directors from the Federal Highway Administration] clarifies that states will be able to receive reimbursements for "existing obligations" to design and build stations "in order to not disrupt current financial commitments." According to the letter, FHWA plans to publish new draft guidance on the NEVI program in the spring, followed by a comment period, before issuing new final guidance. Only then will states be able to resubmit their annual implementation plans for all fiscal years of the program.
"But that doesn't mean that the the program is going to be sunset or the funds are not going to be made available again to the states," Nick Nigro, the founder of Atlas Public Policy consultancy told NPR:
Several experts tell NPR that as a result of its overwhelming bipartisan support at the time, attempts to overturn it within the executive branch are likely to be challenged in court. Nigro believes the funding will resume eventually...
So far, 56 stations [with multiple chargers] are up and running as a result of the program, while more than 900 sites in total have been "awarded" to date, according to Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, another research analytics firm. McDonald said several hundred of the awarded sites are currently under construction and expected to open this year. He does not believe the FHWA has the authority to pause or rescind any aspect of the NEVI program... "I assume lawsuits from states will start soon, and this will go to court and Congress," McDonald said in a statement.

The move has "confounded states, which had been allocated billions of dollars by Congress for the program," the New York Times reported Friday. "[S]ome state officials said that as a result of the memo from the Trump administration, they had stopped work on the charging stations. Others said they intended to keep going."

The Washington Post reports that a Texas Department of Transportation official "said it would continue to deploy federal funds for EV chargers until it receives further guidance," and that Ryan Gallentine, managing director at the national business association Advanced Energy United, said that states "are under no obligation to stop these projects based solely on this announcement."

Politico adds:

Also on Thursday, FHWA took down several internet pages providing information on NEVI and its sister program, the $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure grant program... Amid the confusion, at least six states — Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri, Rhode Island, Ohio and Nebraska — have put their NEVI programs on hold, according to McDonald. Rhode Island and Ohio had been considered leading states in implementing the program.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/08/0735240/white-house-moves-to-halt-federal-funds-for-ev-charging-stations?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a new article from Ars Technica: On Thursday, mobile security company NowSecure reported that [DeepSeek] sends sensitive data over unencrypted channels, making the data readable to anyone who can monitor the traffic. More sophisticated attackers could also tamper with the data while it's in transit. Apple strongly encourages iPhone and iPad developers to enforce encryption of data sent over the wire using ATS (App Transport Security). For unknown reasons, that protection is globally disabled in the app, NowSecure said. Whatâ(TM)s more, the data is sent to servers that are controlled by ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok...

[DeepSeek] is "not equipped or willing to provide basic security protections of your data and identity," NowSecure co-founder Andrew Hoog told Ars. "There are fundamental security practices that are not being observed, either intentionally or unintentionally. In the end, it puts your and your company's data and identity at risk...." This data, along with a mix of other encrypted information, is sent to DeepSeek over infrastructure provided by Volcengine a cloud platform developed by ByteDance. While the IP address the app connects to geo-locates to the US and is owned by US-based telecom Level 3 Communications, the DeepSeek privacy policy makes clear that the company "store[s] the data we collect in secure servers located in the People's Republic of China...." US lawmakers began pushing to immediately ban DeepSeek from all government devices, citing national security concerns that the Chinese Communist Party may have built a backdoor into the service to access Americans' sensitive private data. If passed, DeepSeek could be banned within 60 days.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/08/0531202/deepseek-ios-app-sends-data-unencrypted-to-bytedance-controlled-servers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Проект Tor объявил о выпуске новой версии своего клиента Arti 1.4.0, разработанного на языке Rust. Этот выпуск включает множество новых функций и улучшений, направленных на повышение производительности и удобства использования.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/security/17877387#cut ) )

>>> [ Полный список изменений ]( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/arti/-/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md#arti-140--7-february-2025 )