После девяти месяцев разработки сформирован релиз FreeBSD 14.4. Установочные образы подготовлены для архитектур amd64, i386, aarch64, armv7, powerpc, powerpc64 и riscv64. Дополнительно подготовлены сборки для систем виртуализации (QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, raw) и облачных окружений Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine и Vagrant.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64956

The FBI is investigating a breach affecting systems tied to wiretapping and surveillance warrant data, after abnormal logs revealed possible unauthorized access to law-enforcement-sensitive information. "The FBI identified and addressed suspicious activities on FBI networks, and we have leveraged all technical capabilities to respond," a spokesperson for the bureau said. "We have nothing additional to provide." The Register reports: [W]hile the FBI declined to provide any additional information, it's worth noting that China's Salt Typhoon previously compromised wiretapping systems used by law enforcement. Salt Typhoon is the PRC-backed crew that famously hacked major US telecommunications firms and stole information belonging to nearly every American.

According to the Associated Press, the FBI notified Congress that it began investigating the breach on February 17 after spotting abnormal log information related to a system on its network. "The affected system is unclassified and contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, such as pen register and trap and trace surveillance returns, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of FBI investigations," the notification said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/09/236207/fbi-investigates-breach-that-may-have-hit-its-wiretapping-tools?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Claws Mail — это легковесный, быстрый и дружелюбный почтовый клиент с графическим интерфейсом на базе GTK+. Он известен своей расширяемостью (благодаря плагинам), низким потреблением ресурсов и гибкостью настройки. Проект ориентирован на опытных пользователей, но при этом остаётся доступным для всех, кто ценит эффективность и минимализм.

9 марта 2026 года состоялся релиз версии 4.4.0, которая примечательна не только техническими улучшениями, но и символической датой — проекту исполняется 25 лет.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18238581#cut ) )

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, tens of thousands of game developers and producers will once again gather in San Francisco, as they have since 1988, for the weeklong Game Developers Conference. But this year's show will be missing many international developers who say they no longer feel comfortable traveling to the United States to attend, no matter how relevant the show is to their work and careers. Dozens of those developers who spoke to Ars in recent months say they're wary of traveling to a country that has shown a callous disregard for -- or outright hostility toward -- the safety of international travelers. That's especially true for developers from various minority groups, those with transgender identities, and those who feel they could be targeted for outspoken political beliefs. "I honestly don't know anyone who is not from the U.S. who is planning on going to the next GDC," Godot Foundation Executive Director Emilio Coppola, who's based in Spain, told Ars. "We never felt super safe, but now we are not willing to risk it." "I honestly don't know anyone who is not from the U.S. who is planning on going to the next GDC," says Godot Foundation Executive Director Emilio Coppola, who's based in Spain. "We never felt super safe, but now we are not willing to risk it."

"Hearing European citizens getting arrested by border control over their views on the U.S. is not something I would like to test for myself," adds Nazih Fares, a French-Lebanese citizen and creative director at indie studio Le Cabinet du Savoir..

Many of the developers who spoke to Ars cite the intrusive questioning, racial profiling, and other horror stories reported at the U.S. border. "I read a few long reads about how UK/German tourists ended up detained, and that was the final straw for me," Austrian-based Cohop Game founder Eline Muijres said. "It doesn't feel safe for me."

Domini Gee, a Canadian game writer and narrative designer echoed that concern, adding: "There's no shortage of stories... about the risk of detainment, deportation, phones being searched... the consequences if I'm not [OK] could be high."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/0442249/many-international-game-developers-plan-to-skip-gdc-in-us?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Private equity firm EQT AB is reportedly exploring a sale of SUSE that could value the open-source Linux pioneer at up to $6 billion, roughly doubling the valuation since EQT took the company private in 2023. Reuters reports: EQT "has hired investment bank Arma Partners to sound out a group of private equity investors for a possible sale of the company, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters. The deliberations are at "an early stage and there is no certainty that EQT will proceed with "a transaction, the sources said. [...] The potential deal comes amid a broader selloff in software stocks, which has disrupted mergers and acquisitions activity. Investors are "concerned that new artificial intelligence tools could displace many existing software products, weighing on technology "valuations and making deals harder to price.

Some investors, however, see Luxembourg-headquartered SUSE as a potential beneficiary of AI adoption, arguing that demand for enterprise-grade infrastructure software is likely to grow as companies build and deploy more AI applications. The company generates about $800 million in revenue and more than $250 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and could fetch between $4 billion and $6 billion in a sale, the sources said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/0450204/eqt-eyes-6-billion-sale-of-suse?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

10 марта 2026 года проект FreeBSD объявил о выходе новой стабильной версии операционной системы – 14.4-RELEASE. Этот релиз, доступный на официальном сайте, продолжает развитие ветки 14-STABLE и включает в себя исправления безопасности, обновления компонентов, новые драйверы и улучшения для облачных сред.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/bsd/18238511#cut ) )

German publishers and advertising groups are urging regulators to fine Apple over its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) system, arguing it unfairly restricts access to advertising data while allowing Apple to remain the central gatekeeper -- without subjecting its own apps to the same restrictions. If Germany's antitrust authority does rule against Apple, the company could face fines of up to 10% of its global revenue. 9to5Mac reports: One of the countries investigating whether ATT is anticompetitive is Germany. Last year, in an attempt to appease the country's antitrust watchdog, the company proposed several changes to the framework's rules. From Reuters' original coverage of Apple's changes proposals: "Apple had agreed to introduce neutral consent prompts for both its own services and third-party apps, and to largely align the wording, content and visual design of these messages, said Andreas Mundt, head of Germany's Bundeskartellamt. The company also proposed simplifying the consent process so developers can obtain user permission for advertising-related data processing in a way that complies with data protection law." [...] At the time, German regulators launched a consultation with industry publications to determine whether the proposals addressed their concerns. As it turns out, the answer was a hard no.

As Reuters reported today: "Apple's proposed changes to its app tracking rules do not resolve antitrust issues in the mobile advertising market, associations representing German publishers and advertisers said on Tuesday as they urged the country's antitrust authority to slap a fine on the U.S. tech giant. [...] 'The proposed commitments would not change the negative effects of the App Tracking Transparency Framework,' Bernd Nauen, chief executive of the German Advertising Federation, said in a joint letter signed by the trade bodies. 'Apple would remain the data gatekeeper and would continue to decide who gets access to advertising-relevant data and how companies can communicate with their end customers,' he said."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/050253/german-publishers-push-regulators-to-fine-apple-over-app-tracking-transparency?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Состоялся выпуск 7.2.0 [ высокопроизводительной ]( https://github.com/stephenberry/json_performance ) библиотеки [ Glaze ]( https://stephenberry.github.io/glaze/ ) , предназначенной для чтения и записи JSON с удобными возможностями [ сериализации и десериализации ]( https://stephenberry.github.io/glaze/enum-reflection/ ) данных.

Также поддерживаются форматы CSV, [ CBOR ]( https://cbor.io ) , [ BEVE ]( https://github.com/beve-org/beve ) , MessagePack, TOML, [ EETF (Erlang External Term Format) ]( https://www.erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/erl_ext_dist.html ) (опционально, для компиляции требуются библиотеки Erlang), YAML 1.2, Stencil и Mustache.
Библиотека написана на языке C++ (header-only, стандарт C++23 и выше) и распространяется по лицензии MIT.

Glaze также предоставляет поддержку [ REPE RPC ]( https://github.com/repe-org/REPE ) и [ сервер и клиент HTTP ]( https://stephenberry.github.io/glaze/networking/http-rest-support/ ) , используя современные возможности C++, включая автоматическую генерацию REST API, поддержку WebSocket и шифрование SSL/TLS.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/development/18238601#cut ) )

Axios reports that Meta has acquired Moltbook, the viral, Reddit-like social network designed for AI agents. Humans are welcome, but only to observe. Axios reports: The deal brings Moltbook's creators -- Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr -- into Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), the unit run by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Meta did not disclose Moltbook's purchase price. The deal is expected to close mid-March, Meta says, with the pair starting at MSL on March 16. When it launched in late January, Moltbook was labeled the "most interesting place on the internet" by open-source developer and writer Simon Willison. "Browsing around Moltbook is so much fun. A lot of it is the expected science fiction slop, with agents pondering consciousness and identity. There's also a ton of genuinely useful information, especially on m/todayilearned."

In an internal post seen by Axios, Meta's Vishal Shah said existing Moltbook customers can temporarily continue using the platform. "The Moltbook team has given agents a way to verify their identity and connect with one another on their human's behalf," Shah says. "This establishes a registry where agents are verified and tethered to human owners." He added: "Their team has unlocked new ways for agents to interact, share content, and coordinate complex tasks."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/1524229/meta-acquires-moltbook-the-social-network-for-ai-agents?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: AI can reverse engineer machine code and find vulnerabilities in ancient legacy architectures, says Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, who used his own Apple II code from 40 years ago as an example. Russinovich wrote: "We are entering an era of automated, AI-accelerated vulnerability discovery that will be leveraged by both defenders and attackers."

In May 1986, Russinovich wrote a utility called Enhancer for the Apple II personal computer. The utility, written in 6502 machine language, added the ability to use a variable or BASIC expression for the destination of a GOTO, GOSUB, or RESTORE command, whereas without modification Applesoft BASIC would only accept a line number. Russinovich had Claude Opus 4.6, released early last month, look over the code. It decompiled the machine language and found several security issues, including a case of "silent incorrect behavior" where, if the destination line was not found, the program would set the pointer to the following line or past the end of the program, instead of reporting an error. The fix would be to check the carry flag, which is set if the line is not found, and branch to an error.

The existence of the vulnerability in Apple II type-in code has only amusement value, but the ability of AI to decompile embedded code and find vulnerabilities is a concern. "Billions of legacy microcontrollers exist globally, many likely running fragile or poorly audited firmware like this," said one comment to Russinovich's post.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/0521258/claude-ai-finds-bugs-in-microsoft-ctos-40-year-old-apple-ii-code?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI is reportedly backing away from expanding its AI data center partnership with Oracle because newer generations of Nvidia GPUs may arrive before the facility is even operational. CNBC reports: Artificial intelligence chips are getting upgraded more quickly than data centers can be built, a market reality that exposes a key risk to the AI trade and Oracle's debt-fueled expansion. OpenAI is no longer planning to expand its partnership with Oracle in Abilene, Texas, home to the Stargate data center, because it wants clusters with newer generations of Nvidia graphics processing units, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The current Abilene site is expected to use Nvidia's Blackwell processors, and the power isn't projected to come online for a year. By then, OpenAI is hoping to have expanded access to Nvidia's next-generation chips in bigger clusters elsewhere, said the person, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. In a post on X, Oracle called the reports "false and incorrect." However, it only said existing projects are on track and didn't address expansion plans.

CNBC notes: "Oracle secured the site, ordered the hardware, and spent billions of dollars on construction and staff, with the expectation of going bigger."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/0510223/oracle-is-walking-away-from-expanding-its-stargate-data-center-with-oracle?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания Cloudflare объявила об устранении трёх уязвимостей во фреймворке Pingora, двум из которых присвоен критический уровень опасности (9.3 из 10). Фреймворк Pingora написан на языке Rust и предназначен для разработки защищённых высокопроизводительных сетевых сервисов. Построенный при помощи Pingora прокси используется в сети доставки контента Cloudflare и обрабатывает более 40 млн запросов в секунду. Уязвимости устранены в выпуске Pingora 0.8.0.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64957

OpenAI is reportedly backing away from expanding its AI data center partnership with Oracle because newer generations of Nvidia GPUs may arrive before the facility is even operational. CNBC reports: Artificial intelligence chips are getting upgraded more quickly than data centers can be built, a market reality that exposes a key risk to the AI trade and Oracle's debt-fueled expansion. OpenAI is no longer planning to expand its partnership with Oracle in Abilene, Texas, home to the Stargate data center, because it wants clusters with newer generations of Nvidia graphics processing units, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The current Abilene site is expected to use Nvidia's Blackwell processors, and the power isn't projected to come online for a year. By then, OpenAI is hoping to have expanded access to Nvidia's next-generation chips in bigger clusters elsewhere, said the person, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. In a post on X, Oracle called the reports "false and incorrect." However, it only said existing projects are on track and didn't address expansion plans.

CNBC notes: "Oracle secured the site, ordered the hardware, and spent billions of dollars on construction and staff, with the expectation of going bigger."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/0510223/openai-is-walking-away-from-expanding-its-stargate-data-center-with-oracle?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Since 1999, Slashdot has been covering the annual Ig Nobel prize ceremonies -- which honor real scientific research into strange or surprising subjects. "After 35 years in Boston, the annual prize ceremony will take place in Zurich, Switzerland, this year and will continue to be held in a European city for the foreseeable future," reports Ars Technica. "The reason: concerns about the safety of international travelers, who are increasingly reluctant to travel to the U.S. to participate."

"During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country," Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of The Annals of Improbable Research magazine, told The Associated Press. "We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the U.S. this year." It comes on the heels of our recent story that many international game developers are opting to skip this year's weeklong Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, citing similar concerns. Ars Technica reports: Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor "achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think." As the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of scientific merit. The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures, in which experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and again in just seven words.

Traditionally, the awards ceremony and related Ig Nobel events have taken place in Boston at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University. However, four of last year's 10 winners opted to skip the ceremony rather than travel to the U.S., and the situation has not improved. [...] [T]his year, the Ig Nobel organizers are joining forces with the ETH Domain and the University of Zurich for hosting duties. "Switzerland has nurtured many unexpected good things -- Albert Einstein's physics, the world economy, and the cuckoo clock leap to mind -- and is again helping the world appreciate improbable people and ideas," Abraham said.

The Ig Nobels will not be returning to the U.S. any time soon. Instead, the plan is for Zurich to host every second year; every odd-numbered year, the ceremony will be hosted by a different European city. Abraham likened the arrangement to the Eurovision Song Contest.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/1540242/ig-nobels-ceremony-moves-to-europe-indefinitely-citing-us-safety-concerns?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

AT&T plans to invest more than $250 billion over the next five years to expand U.S. telecom infrastructure for the AI age. The company says it will also hire thousands of technicians while partnering with AST SpaceMobile to extend coverage to remote areas. Reuters reports: Rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, cloud computing and connected devices has prompted telecom operators to invest heavily in fiber and 5G networks as they also seek to fend off intensifying competition from cable broadband providers. AT&T, which has about 110,000 employees in the U.S., said the new hires will help build and maintain its infrastructure. The outlay includes capital expenditure and other spending, the company said.

The spending will focus on expanding its fiber and wireless networks, including accelerating deployment of fiber broadband, 5G home internet and satellite connectivity to extend coverage across urban, suburban and rural areas. [...] AT&T is also working with satellite partner AST SpaceMobile to expand connectivity to remote regions where traditional network infrastructure is difficult to deploy. The company said it would continue spending on the FirstNet network built for first responders and bolster investment in network security and artificial intelligence-driven threat detection.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/162222/att-outlines-250-billion-us-investment-plan-to-boost-infrastructure-in-ai-age?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Опубликован выпуск основной ветки nginx 1.29.6, в которой продолжается развитие новых возможностей. В параллельно поддерживаемую стабильную ветку 1.28.x вносятся только изменения, связанные с устранением серьёзных ошибок и уязвимостей. В дальнейшем на базе основной ветки 1.29.x будет сформирована стабильная ветка 1.30. Код проекта написан на языке Си и распространяется под лицензией BSD.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64961

Simple Viewer GL – лёгкий одноконный просмотрщик изображений.

Многое из того, что раньше делалось на CPU, теперь выполняется на GPU.

В строке статуса, которую можно отключать клавишей i, отображается базовая информация: формат, разрешение, размер в памяти (CPU + GPU), размер на диске. В режиме информации о пикселе, который включается клавишей p, отображается бабл с информацией о позиции, цвете пикселя, параметрах выделенной области.

Simple Viewer GL умеет определять тип файла по его сигнатуре (параметр -a), а не только по расширению файла. Поддерживается рекурсивный обход директории (параметр -r).

Есть возможность менять в рантайме тип фона (три базовых цвета + шахматная доска) окна или задавать кастомный цвет, что удобно при просмотре изображений с прозрачными пикселями.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18238995#cut ) )

sziring shares a report from Business Insider: Silicon Valley has long competed for talent with ever-richer pay packages built around salary, bonus, and equity. Now, a fourth line item is creeping into the mix: AI inference. As generative AI tools become embedded in software development, the cost of running the underlying models -- known as inference -- is emerging as a productivity driver and a budget line that finance chiefs can't ignore.

Software engineers and AI researchers inside tech companies have already been jousting for access to GPUs, with this AI compute capacity being carefully parceled out based on which projects are most important. Now, some tech job candidates have begun asking about what AI compute budget they will have access to if they decide to join.

"I am increasingly asked during candidate interviews how much dedicated inference compute they will have to build with Codex," Thibault Sottiaux, engineering lead at OpenAI's Codex, the startup's AI coding service, wrote on X recently. He added that usage per user is growing much faster than overall user growth, a sign that AI compute is becoming even scarcer and more valuable. That scarcity is reshaping how engineers think about their work and pay. "The inference compute available to you is increasingly going to drive overall software productivity," said OpenAI President Greg Brockman.

The report cites a recent compensation submission from a software engineer that listed "Copilot subscription" as part of the pay and benefits. "OpenAI and Anthropic should create recruitment sites where their clients can advertise roles, listing the token budget for the job alongside the salary range," said Peter Gostev, AI capability lead at Arena, a startup that measures the performance of models.

Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures predicts AI inference will be the fourth component of engineering compensation, alongside salary, bonus, and equity. "Will you be paid in tokens? In 2026, you likely will start to be," Tunguz said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/200253/silicon-valley-is-buzzing-about-this-new-idea-ai-compute-as-compensation?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Last November, Amazon sued Perplexity demanding that the AI search startup stop allowing its AI browser agent, Comet, to make purchases for users online. Today, a judge ruled in favor of the tech giant, granting it a temporary court injunction blocking the scraping of Amazon's website. According to court filings, the judge found strong evidence the tool accessed the retailer's systems "without authorization." CNBC reports: In a ruling dated Monday, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney wrote that Amazon has provided "strong evidence" that Perplexity's Comet browser accessed its website at the user's direction, but "without authorization" from the e-commerce giant. Chesney said Amazon submitted "essentially undisputed evidence" that it spent more than $5,000 to respond to the issue, including "numerous hours" where its employees worked to develop tools to block Comet from accessing its private customer tools and to prevent the tool from "future unauthorized access." "Given such evidence, the Court finds Amazon has shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its claim," Chesney wrote.

Chesney's ruling includes a weeklong stay to allow Perplexity to appeal the order. Amazon wrote in its original complaint that Perplexity's agents posed security risks to customer data because they "can act within protected computer systems, including private customer accounts requiring a password." The company also said Perplexity's agents created challenges for the company's advertising business, because when AI systems generate ad traffic, the impressions have to be detected and filtered out before advertisers can be billed. "This requires modifications to Amazon's advertising systems, including developing new detection mechanisms to identify and exclude automated traffic," Amazon wrote in its complaint. "These system adaptations are necessary to maintain contractual obligations with advertisers who pay only for legitimate human impressions."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/2012222/amazon-wins-court-order-to-block-perplexitys-ai-shopping-bots?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Worried that your latest ask to a cloud-based AI reveals a bit too much about you? Want to know your genetic risk of disease without revealing it to the services that compute the answer? There is a way to do computing on encrypted data without ever having it decrypted. It's called fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE. But there's a rather large catch. It can take thousands -- even tens of thousands -- of times longer to compute on today's CPUs and GPUs than simply working with the decrypted data. So universities, startups, and at least one processor giant have been working on specialized chips that could close that gap. Last month at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, Intel demonstrated its answer, Heracles, which sped up FHE computing tasks as much as 5,000-fold compared to a top-of the-line Intel server CPU.

Startups are racing to beat Intel and each other to commercialization. But Sanu Mathew, who leads security circuits research at Intel, believes the CPU giant has a big lead, because its chip can do more computing than any other FHE accelerator yet built. "Heracles is the first hardware that works at scale," he says. The scale is measurable both physically and in compute performance. While other FHE research chips have been in the range of 10 square millimeters or less, Heracles is about 20 times that size and is built using Intel's most advanced, 3-nanometer FinFET technology. And it's flanked inside a liquid-cooled package by two 24-gigabyte high-bandwidth memory chips—a configuration usually seen only in GPUs for training AI.

In terms of scaling compute performance, Heracles showed muscle in live demonstrations at ISSCC. At its heart the demo was a simple private query to a secure server. It simulated a request by a voter to make sure that her ballot had been registered correctly. The state, in this case, has an encrypted database of voters and their votes. To maintain her privacy, the voter would not want to have her ballot information decrypted at any point; so using FHE, she encrypts her ID and vote and sends it to the government database. There, without decrypting it, the system determines if it is a match and returns an encrypted answer, which she then decrypts on her side. On an Intel Xeon server CPU, the process took 15 milliseconds. Heracles did it in 14 microseconds. While that difference isn't something a single human would notice, verifying 100 million voter ballots adds up to more than 17 days of CPU work versus a mere 23 minutes on Heracles.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/2022201/intel-demos-chip-to-compute-with-encrypted-data?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Tony Hoare, the Turing Award-winning pioneer who created the Quicksort algorithm, developed Hoare logic, and advanced theories of concurrency and structured programming, has died at age 92.

News of his passing was shared today in a blog post. The site I Programmer also commemorated Hoare in a post highlighting his contributions to computer science and the lasting impact of his work. Personal accounts have been shared on Hacker News and Reddit.

Many Slashdotters may know Hoare for his aphorism regarding software design: "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/2038225/tony-hoare-turing-award-winning-computer-scientist-behind-quicksort-dies-at-92?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Amazon's ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a "deep dive" into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools. The online retail giant said there had been a "trend of incidents" in recent months, characterized by a "high blast radius" and "Gen-AI assisted changes" among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT. Under "contributing factors" the note included "novel GenAI usage for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established."

"Folks, as you likely know, the availability of the site and related infrastructure has not been good recently," Dave Treadwell, a senior vice-president at the group, told employees in an email, also seen by the FT. The note ahead of Tuesday's meeting did not specify which particular incidents the group planned to discuss. [...] Treadwell, a former Microsoft engineering executive, told employees that Amazon would focus its weekly "This Week in Stores Tech" (TWiST) meeting on a "deep dive into some of the issues that got us here as well as some short immediate term initiatives" the group hopes will limit future outages.

He asked staff to attend the meeting, which is normally optional. Junior and mid-level engineers will now require more senior engineers to sign off any AI-assisted changes, Treadwell added. Amazon said the review of website availability was "part of normal business" and it aims for continual improvement. "TWiST is our regular weekly operations meeting with a specific group of retail technology leaders and teams where we review operational performance across our store," the company said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/212214/after-outages-amazon-to-make-senior-engineers-sign-off-on-ai-assisted-changes?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Доступен корректирующий выпуск Firefox 148.0.2, в котором устранено 5 уязвимостей. 4 уязвимости вызваны проблемами при работе с памятью, такими как переполнения буферов и обращение к уже освобождённым областям памяти. Одно из переполнений буфера затрагивает код для воспроизведения звука и видео в версии для Android. Потенциально данные проблемы способны привести к выполнению кода злоумышленника при открытии специально оформленных страниц. Не связанная с памятью проблема присутствует в коде разбора CSS и позволяет обойти ограничения Same-origin.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64954

Van Allen Probe A, a 1,300-pound (600 kg) NASA satellite launched in 2012 to study Earth's radiation belts, is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere this week. While most of it is expected to burn up during descent, "some components may survive," reports the BBC. "The space agency said there is a one in 4,200 chance of being harmed by a piece of the probe, which it characterized as 'low' risk." From the report: The spacecraft is projected to re-enter around 19:45 EST (00:45 GMT) on Tuesday the U.S. Space Force predicted, according to Nasa, though there is a 24-hour margin of "uncertainty" in the timing. [...] The spacecraft and its twin, Van Allen Probe B, were on a mission to gather unprecedented data on Earth's two permanent radiation belts. It was not immediately clear where in Earth's atmosphere the satellite is projected to re-enter. NASA and the U.S. Space Force has said it will monitor the re-entry and update any predictions. [...] Van Allen Probe B is not expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere before 2030.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/0026235/a-1300-pound-nasa-spacecraft-to-re-enter-earths-atmosphere?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Издание Reuters получило сведения о подготовке корпорации EQT к продаже компании SUSE. На основании информации от источника, который не разглашается, шведская инвестиционная компания EQT наняла банк Arma Partners для обсуждения с группой инвесторов возможной продажи компании SUSE. Утверждается, что обсуждения находятся на ранней стадии и пока нет полной уверенности в том, что EQT осуществит сделку.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64962

Компания Oracle представила Solaris 11.4.90 CBE (Common Build Environment), вариант операционной системы Solaris 11.4, нацеленный на использование разработчиками открытого ПО и применение в персональных целях. CBE упрощает доступ к актуальным версиям программ и обновлениям для тех, кто желает использовать Solaris бесплатно. Это третий выпуск серии CBE - первый был опубликован в 2022 году. В отличие от основных сборок Solaris 11.4, лицензия на которые допускает бесплатное использование для тестирования, разработки и применения в персональных проектах, редакция CBE отличается задействованием непрерывной модели публикации новых версий и близка к редакции Solaris 11.4 SRU (Support Repository Update).

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64963

Ghostty – эмулятор терминала с открытым исходным кодом, написанный на языке Zig. В этом обновлении множество новых функций, таких как поиск с прокруткой назад, встроенные полосы прокрутки и уведомления о завершении процессов.
В разработку Ghostty 1.3.0 вложено 6 месяцев работы и более 2800 коммитов от 180 участников.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18239272#cut ) )

В мультимедийном фреймворке GStreamer, используемом в GNOME, выявлено 10 уязвимостей, все из которых помечены как допускающие удалённое выполнение кода при обработке некорректно оформленных мультимедийных данных в форматах AVI, RTP, H.266, JPEG, ASF и RealMedia, а также субтитров DVB-SUB. Двум проблемам присвоен уровень опасности 8.8 из 10, а остальным 7.8. Восемь уязвимостей приводят к записи данных за пределы буфера, а две к целочисленному переполнению.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64964

Исходный код PortableGL оформлен в виде одного заголовочного файла и [ опубликован ]( https://github.com/rswinkle/PortableGL ) на GitHub под лицензией MIT.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/18239318#cut ) )

Это вариант операционной системы Solaris 11.4, нацеленный на использование разработчиками открытого ПО и применение в персональных целях. CBE упрощает доступ к актуальным версиям программ и обновлениям для тех, кто желает использовать Solaris бесплатно. В отличие от основных сборок Solaris 11.4, лицензия на которые допускает бесплатное использование для тестирования, разработки и применения в персональных проектах, редакция CBE отличается задействованием непрерывной модели публикации новых версий и близка к редакции [ Solaris 11.4 SRU ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/proprietary/18228789 ) (Support Repository Update).

Код открытых компонентов Solaris доступен в репозитории на GitHub, а отдельные пакеты можно загрузить с сайта pkg.oracle.com. Поддержка платформы Oracle Solaris будет осуществляться до 2037 года.

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/proprietary/18239381

Valve is facing a new consumer class-action lawsuit two weeks after New York sued the video game company for "letting children and adults illegally gamble" with loot boxes. The new lawsuit is similar, alleging that loot boxes in games like Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2 are "carefully engineered to extract money from consumers, including children, through deceptive, casino-style psychological tactics."

"We believe Valve deliberately engineered its gambling platform and profited enormously from it," Steve Berman, founder and managing partner at law firm Hagens Berman, said in a press release. "Consumers played these games for entertainment, unaware that Valve had allegedly already stacked the odds against them. We intend to hold Valve accountable and put money back in the pockets of consumers." PC Gamer reports: The system is well known to anyone who's played a Valve multiplayer game: Earn a locked loot box by playing, pay $2.50 for a key, unlock it, get a digital doohickey that's sometimes worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars but far more often is worth just a few pennies. Is that gambling? If these cases go to court, we'll find out.

The full complaint points out that the unlocking process is even designed to look like a slot machine: "Images of possible items scroll across the screen, spinning fast at first, then slowing to a stop on the player's 'prize.' Players buy and open loot boxes for the same reason people play slot machines -- the hope of a valuable payout." Loot boxes, the complaint continues, are not "incidental features" of Valve's games, but rather "a deliberate, carefully engineered revenue model." So too is the Steam Community Market, and Steam itself, which the suit claims is "deliberately designed" to enable the sale of digital items on third-party marketplaces through "trade URLs," despite Valve's terms of service prohibiting off-platform sales.

And while the debate over whether loot boxes constitute a form of gambling continues to rage, the suit claims Valve's system does indeed qualify under Washington law, which defines gambling as "staking or risking something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under the person's control or influence." "Valve's loot boxes satisfy every element of this definition," the lawsuit alleges. "Users stake money (the price of a key) on the outcome of a contest of chance (the random selection of a virtual item), and the items received are 'things of value' under RCW 9.46.0285 because they can be sold for real money through Valve's own marketplace and through third-party marketplaces that Valve has fostered and facilitated."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/0546238/valve-faces-second-class-action-lawsuit-over-loot-boxes?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Спустя два года с момента формирования прошлого выпуска опубликован релиз серверного Linux-дистрибутива Zentyal 8.1, построенного на пакетной базе Ubuntu 22.04 LTS и специализирующегося на создании серверов для обслуживания локальной сети предприятий среднего и малого бизнеса. Среди прочего дистрибутив позиционируется в качестве альтернативы Windows Server и включает компоненты для замены служб Microsoft Active Directory и Microsoft Exchange Server. Размер iso-образа 4.5 ГБ. Отдельно поставляется коммерческая редакция дистрибутива, но пакеты с компонентами Zentyal доступны пользователям Ubuntu через штатный репозиторий Universe.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64965

Доступен выпуск uChmViewer 8.6, программы для просмотра электронных книг в форматах CHM и EPUB. Из особенностей просмотрщика отмечается улучшенная поддержка языков, отличных от английского, возможность отключения JavaScript, автоопределение кодировок, корректный поиск в chm-файлах с кириллицей, возможность использования сложных поисковых выражений, система установки закладок, сохранение истории операций в привязке к просматриваемым файлам, масштабирование размера текста. Код написан на С++ с использованием библиотеки Qt и поставляется под лицензией GPLv3. Пакеты cформированы для Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu и инсталлятор для Windows.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64966

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a new Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Monday it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models. LeCun argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary to develop true human-level intelligence. "The idea that you're going to extend the capabilities of LLMs [large language models] to the point that they're going to have human-level intelligence is complete nonsense," he said in an interview with WIRED.

The financing, which values the startup at $3.5 billion, was co-led by investors such as Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. Other notable backers include Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and French billionaire and telecommunications executive Xavier Niel. AMI (pronounced like the French word for friend) aims to build "a new breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe," the company says in a press release. The startup says it will be global from day one, with offices in Paris, Montreal, Singapore, and New York, where LeCun will continue working as a New York University professor in addition to leading the startup. AMI will be the first commercial endeavor for LeCun since his departure from Meta in November 2025. [...]

LeCun says AMI aims to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries that have lots of data. For example, he says AMI could build a realistic world model of an aircraft engine and work with the manufacturer to help them optimize for efficiency, minimize emissions, or ensure reliability. LeCun says AMI will release its first AI models quickly, but he's not expecting most people to take notice. The company will first work with partners such as Toyota and Samsung, and then will learn how to apply its technology more broadly. Eventually, he says, AMI intends to develop a "universal world model," which would be the basis for a generally intelligent system that could help companies regardless of what industry they work in. "It's very ambitious," he says with a smile.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/2055212/yann-lecun-raises-1-billion-to-build-ai-that-understands-the-physical-world?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Meta will begin charging advertisers a 2-5% "location fee" to offset digital services taxes imposed by several European countries, including the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Turkey. Reuters reports: The fee, for image or video ads delivered on Meta platforms including WhatsApp click-to-message campaigns and marketing messages together with ads, will apply from July 1 and will also cover other government-imposed levies. "Until now, Meta has covered these additional costs. These changes are part of Meta's ongoing effort to respond to the evolving regulatory landscape and align with industry standards," the company said in the blog.

The location fees are determined by where the audience is located and not the advertisers' business location. Meta listed six countries where the fees will apply, ranging from 2% in the United Kingdom to 3% in France, Italy and Spain and 5% in Austria and Turkey.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://meta.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/065230/meta-to-charge-advertisers-a-fee-to-offset-europes-digital-taxes?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

ASUS says the MacBook Neo is a "shock" to the Windows PC ecosystem. "In the past, Apple's pricing situation has always been high, so for them to release a very budget-friendly product, this is obviously a shock to the entire industry," said ASUS co-CEO S.Y. Hsu in a Tuesday earnings call. While he expects PC makers to respond, rising AI-driven memory shortages could push hardware prices higher across the industry. PCMag reports: Hsu said he believes all the PC players -- including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD -- take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. "In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product," he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year. Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop's 8GB of "unified memory," or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can't upgrade it.

He also described the MacBook Neo as a "content consumption" device, similar to an iPad. "This is different from the use case of a mainstream notebook," which can handle more compute-intensive tasks, Hsu said. "How big of an impact [the MacBook Neo] will have on the PC industry will still require some time for us to observe," Hsu said while suggesting it might not gain traction among Windows PC users due to software differences. "Of course, the entire Windows PC ecosystem will push out products to compete against Apple," he added.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/0615216/asus-executive-says-macbook-neo-is-shock-to-pc-industry?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Chinese authorities moved to restrict state-run enterprises and government agencies from running OpenClaw AI apps on office computers, acting swiftly to defuse potential security risks after companies and consumers across China began experimenting with the agentic AI phenomenon. Government agencies and state-owned enterprises, including the largest banks, have received notices in recent days warning them against installing OpenClaw software on office devices for security reasons [...]. Several of them were instructed to notify superiors if they had already installed related apps for security checks and possible removal, some of the people said.

Certain employees, including those at state-run banks and some government agencies, were banned from installing OpenClaw on office computers and also personal phones using the company's network, some of the people said. One person said the ban was also extended to the families of military personnel. Other notices stopped short of calling for an outright ban on OpenClaw software, saying only that prior approval is needed before use, the people said. The warning underscores Beijing's growing concern about OpenClaw, an agentic AI platform that requires unusually broad access to private data and can communicate externally, potentially exposing computers to external attack. [...]

Despite the potential security risks, companies from Tencent to JD.com Inc. have been rolling out OpenClaw apps to try and capitalize on the groundswell of enthusiasm, while several local government agencies have declared millions of yuan in subsidies for companies that develop atop the platform. [...] Tech giants like Tencent and Alibaba, along with AI upstarts ranging from Moonshot to MiniMax, have rolled out their own tweaks of the software touting simple, one-click adoption. A slew of government agencies, in cities from Shenzhen to Wuxi, have issued notices offering multimillion-yuan subsidies to startups leveraging OpenClaw to make advances. The frenzy has helped drive up shares of AI model developer MiniMax nearly 640% since its listing just two months ago. It's now worth about $49 billion, surpassing Baidu -- once viewed as the frontrunner in Chinese AI development -- in market value. The company launched MaxClaw, an agent built on OpenClaw, in late February.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/0623220/china-moves-to-curb-openclaw-ai-use-at-banks-state-agencies?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

YouTube is expanding its AI deepfake detection tools to a pilot group of politicians, government officials, and journalists, allowing them to identify and request removal of unauthorized AI-generated videos impersonating them. TechCrunch reports: The technology itself launched last year to roughly 4 million YouTube creators in the YouTube Partner Program, following earlier tests. Similar to YouTube's existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users' uploaded videos, the likeness detection feature looks for simulated faces made with AI tools. These tools are sometimes used to try to spread misinformation and manipulate people's perception of reality, as they leverage the deepfaked personas of notable figures -- like politicians or other government officials -- to say and do things in these AI videos that they didn't in real life.

With the new pilot program, YouTube aims to balance users' free expression with the risks associated with AI technology that can generate a convincing likeness of a public figure. [...] [Leslie Miller, YouTube's vice president of Government Affairs and Public Policy] explained that not all of the detected matches would be removed when requested. Instead, YouTube would evaluate each request under its existing privacy policy guidelines to determine whether the content is parody or political critique, which are protected forms of free expression. The company noted it's advocating for these protections at a federal level, too, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in D.C., which would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized recreations of an individual's voice and visual likeness.

To use the new tool, eligible pilot testers must first prove their identity by uploading a selfie and a government ID. They can then create a profile, view the matches that show up, and optionally request their removal. YouTube says it plans to eventually give people the ability to prevent uploads of violating content before they go live or, possibly, allow them to monetize those videos, similar to how its Content ID system works. The company would not confirm which politicians or officials would be among its initial testers, but said the goal is to make the technology broadly available over time.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/1653217/youtube-expands-ai-deepfake-detection-to-politicians-government-officials-and-journalists?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Представлена бета-версия дистрибутива Fedora Linux 44, ознаменовавшая переход на финальную стадию тестирования, при которой допускается только исправление критических ошибок. Релиз запланирован на 14 апреля. Выпуск охватывает Fedora Workstation, Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop, Fedora Server, Fedora IoT, Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Cloud Base, Fedora IoT Edition, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite и Live-сборки, поставляемые в форме спинов c пользовательскими окружениями Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE, Phosh, Miracle, LXQt, Budgie, Sway и Cosmic. Сборки сформированы для архитектур x86_64, Power64 и ARM64 (AArch64).

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64967

Инженер из компании SUSE предложил для включения в ветку linux-next, на основе которой формируется функциональность ядра Linux 7.1, серию патчей, убирающих возможность сборки стека IPv6 в форме модуля ядра. В качестве причин упоминается желание избавиться от усложнений и упростить сопровождение. Возможность сборки IPv6 в форме модуля остаётся в ядре в основном по историческим причинам и в современных дистрибутивах не применяется на практике (IPv6 либо встраивают в ядро, либо полностью отключают).

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64968

Nvidia is preparing to launch an open-source AI agent platform called NemoClaw, designed to compete with the likes of OpenClaw. According to Wired, the platform will allow enterprise software companies to dispatch AI agents to perform tasks for their own workforces. "Companies will be able to access the platform regardless of whether their products run on Nvidia's chips," the report adds. From the report: The move comes as Nvidia prepares for its annual developer conference in San Jose next week. Ahead of the conference, Nvidia has reached out to companies including Salesforce, Cisco, Google, Adobe, and CrowdStrike to forge partnerships for the agent platform. It's unclear whether these conversations have resulted in official partnerships. Since the platform is open source, it's likely that partners would get free, early access in exchange for contributing to the project, sources say. Nvidia plans to offer security and privacy tools as part of this new open-source agent platform. [...]

For Nvidia, NemoClaw appears to be part of an effort to court enterprise software companies by offering additional layers of security for AI agents. It's also another step in the company's embrace of open-source AI models, part of a broader strategy to maintain its dominance in AI infrastructure at a time when leading AI labs are building their own custom chips. Nvidia's software strategy until now has been heavily reliant on its CUDA platform, a famously proprietary system that locks developers into building software for Nvidia's GPUs and has created a crucial "moat" for the company.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/177232/nvidia-is-planning-to-launch-its-own-open-source-openclaw-competitor?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Binance is hoping that suing (PDF) The Wall Street Journal for defamation might help shake off a fresh round of government probes into how the cryptocurrency exchange failed to detect $1.7 billion in transfers to a network that was funding Iran-backed terror groups. The lawsuit comes after a Wall Street Journal investigation, based on conversations with insiders and reviews of internal documents, reported that Binance had quietly dismantled its own investigation into the unlawful transfers and then fired compliance staff who initially flagged them.

Alleging that the report falsely accused Binance of retaliation -- among 10 other allegedly false claims -- Binance accused the Journal of conducting a "sham" investigation that intentionally disregarded the company's statements. That included supposedly failing to note that Binance had not closed its investigation into the unlawful transfers. Binance's role in the large-scale violation of US sanctions laws is currently being investigated by the Justice and Treasury Departments. Congress members also took notice, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), who launched an additional inquiry. In a letter to Binance CEO Richard Teng, Blumenthal cited the Journal's report, as well as reporting from The New York Times and Fortune, while demanding that Binance explain how it managed to overlook the money-laundering for so long and why compliance staff members were fired.

In its complaint Wednesday, Binance claimed that these probes may "be just the tip of the iceberg" if the record is not corrected. The reputational harm is particularly damaging, the exchange noted, since Binance has allegedly worked hard to strengthen its compliance after reaching a settlement with the US government in 2023. In taking that plea deal, Binance admitted to violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and paid a $4.3 billion fine, and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, eventually pled guilty to a related charge. Since that scandal, Binance claimed that the WSJ has "made a business of maligning both the cryptocurrency industry generally and Binance specifically." That's why the Journal allegedly rushed to publish its story following a similar New York Times investigation. Alleging that the WSJ was financially motivated to publish a negative story that would get more clicks, Binance claimed the Journal provided little time to respond and then failed to make necessary corrections before and after publication.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/192225/binance-sues-wsj-panicked-by-govt-probes-into-sanctioned-crypto-transfers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A Swiss e-voting pilot was suspended after officials couldn't decrypt 2,048 ballots because the USB keys needed to unlock them failed. "Three USB sticks were used, all with the correct code, but none of them worked," spokesperson Marco Greiner told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's Swissinfo service. The canton government says it "deeply regrets" the incident and has launched an investigation with authorities. The Register reports: Basel-Stadt announced the problem with its e-voting pilot, open to about 10,300 locals living abroad and 30 people with disabilities, last Friday afternoon. It encouraged participants to deliver a paper vote to the town hall or use a polling station but admitted this would not be possible for many. By the close of polling on Sunday, its e-voting system had collected 2,048 votes, but Basel-Stadt officials were not able to decrypt them with the hardware provided, despite the involvement of IT experts. [...]

The votes made up less than 4 percent of those cast in Basel-Stadt and would not have changed any results, but the canton is delaying confirmation of voting figures until March 21 and suspending its e-voting pilot until the end of December, while its public prosecutor's office has started criminal proceedings. The country's Federal Chancellery said e-voting in three other cantons -- Thurgau, Graubunden, and St Gallen -- along with the nationally used Swiss Post e-voting system, had not been affected.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/1953224/swiss-e-voting-pilot-cant-count-2048-ballots-after-usb-keys-fail-to-decrypt-them?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Grammarly has disabled its Expert Review feature after backlash from writers whose names were used to present AI-generated feedback without their permission. Superhuman (formerly Grammarly) CEO Shishir Mehrotra wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will disable Expert Review while they "reimagine" the feature: Back in August, we launched a Grammarly agent called Expert Review. The agent draws on publicly available information from third-party LLMs to surface writing suggestions inspired by the published work of influential voices.

Over the past week, we received valid critical feedback from experts who are concerned that the agent misrepresented their voices. This kind of scrutiny improves our products, and we take it seriously. As context, the agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans. We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this. I want to apologize and acknowledge that we'll rethink our approach going forward.

After careful consideration, we have decided to disable Expert Review while we reimagine the feature to make it more useful for users, while giving experts real control over how they want to be represented -- or not represented at all.

We deeply believe in our mission to solve the "last mile of AI" by bringing AI directly to where people work, and we see this as a significant opportunity for experts. For millions of users, Grammarly is a trusted writing sidekick -- ever-present in every application, ready to help. We're opening up this platform so anyone can build agents that work like Grammarly -- expanding from one sidekick to a whole team. Imagine your professor sharpening your essay, your sales leader reshaping a customer pitch, a thoughtful critic challenging your arguments, or a leading expert elevating your proposal. For experts, this is a chance to build that same ubiquitous bond with users, much like Grammarly has. But in this world, experts choose to participate, shape how their knowledge is represented, and control their business model. That future excites me, and I hope to build it with experts who want to develop it alongside us.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/2121238/grammarly-disables-tool-offering-generative-ai-feedback-credited-to-real-writers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

In April, Microsoft will be rolling out a full-screen "Xbox mode" to all Windows 11 PCs, including laptops, desktops, and tablets. The move follows last week's confirmation of its next-generation Xbox console, known internally as Project Helix, which will be capable of running both Xbox titles and PC games. The Verge reports: Technically, you've been able to try the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) in preview since November 2025, if you were part of both the Windows Insider and Xbox Insider Programs. But it needed work, as well as a better name. When Microsoft originally shipped it on the Asus-designed Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds, we were clear: it didn't meaningfully turn a PC experience into an easy-to-use Xbox one. But if Microsoft is putting its full weight behind PC as the future of Xbox gaming, perhaps that will change change.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/2132256/microsofts-xbox-mode-is-coming-to-every-windows-11-pc?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers say they have uncovered a takedown-resistant botnet of 14,000 routers and other network devices -- primarily made by Asus -- that have been conscripted into a proxy network that anonymously carries traffic used for cybercrime. The malware -- dubbed KadNap -- takes hold by exploiting vulnerabilities that have gone unpatched by their owners, Chris Formosa, a researcher at security firm Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, told Ars. The high concentration of Asus routers is likely due to botnet operators acquiring a reliable exploit for vulnerabilities affecting those models. He said it's unlikely that the attackers are using any zero-days in the operation.

The number of infected routers averages about 14,000 per day, up from 10,000 last August, when Black Lotus discovered the botnet. Compromised devices are overwhelmingly located in the US, with smaller populations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Russia. One of the most salient features of KadNap is a sophisticated peer-to-peer design based on Kademlia (PDF), a network structure that uses distributed hash tables to conceal the IP addresses of command-and-control servers. The design makes the botnet resistant to detection and takedowns through traditional methods.

[...] Despite the resistance to normal takedown methods, Black Lotus says it has devised a means to block all network traffic to or from the control infrastructure." The lab is also distributing the indicators of compromise to public feeds to help other parties block access. [...] People who are concerned their devices are infected can check this page for IP addresses and a file hash found in device logs. To disinfect devices, they must be factory reset. Because KadNap stores a shell script that runs when an infected router reboots, simply restarting the device will result in it being compromised all over again. Device owners should also ensure all available firmware updates have been installed, that administrative passwords are strong, and that remote access has been disabled unless needed.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/2140227/researchers-discover-14000-routers-wrangled-into-never-before-seen-botnet?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: In a paper, published last month in the journal The Anatomical Record, researchers offered a novel take on falling felines. Their evidence suggests new insights into the so-called falling cat problem, particularly that cats have a very flexible segment of their spines that allows them to correct their orientation midair. [...] People have been curious about falling cats perhaps as long as the animals have been living with humans, but the method to their acrobatic abilities remains enigmatic. Part of the difficulty is that the anatomy of the cat has not been studied in detail, explains Yasuo Higurashi, a physiologist at Yamaguchi University in Japan and lead author of the study. [...]

Modern research has split the falling cat problem into two competing models. The first, "legs in, legs out," suggests that cats correct their falling trajectory by first extending their hind limbs before retracting them, using a sequential twist of their upper and then lower trunk to gain the proper posture while in free fall. The second model, "tuck and turn," suggests that cats turn their upper and lower bodies in simultaneous juxtaposed movements. [...]

The researchers found that the feline spine was extremely flexible in the upper thoracic vertebrae, but stiffer and heavier in the lower lumbar vertebrae. The discovery matches video evidence showing the cats first turn their front legs, and then their lower legs. The results suggest the cat quickly spins its flexible upper torso to face the ground, allowing it to see so that it can correctly twist the rest of its body to match. "The thoracic spine of the cat can rotate like our neck," Dr. Higurashi said.

Experiments on the spine show the upper vertebrae can twist an astounding 360 degrees, he says, which helps cats make these correcting movements with ease. The results are consistent with the "legs in, legs out" model, but definitively determining which model is correct will take more work, Dr. Higurashi says. The results also yielded another discovery: Cats, like many animals, appear to have a right-side bias. One of the dropped cats corrected itself by turning to the right eight out of eight times, while the other turned right six out of eight times.

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Опубликован выпуск проекта D7VK 1.5, развивающего реализацию графических API Direct3D 3, 5, 6 и 7, предложенных компанией Microsoft в 1996, 1997, 1998 и 1999 годах. D7VK работает через трансляцию вызовов в API Vulkan и позволяет при помощи Wine запускать в Linux ретро игры, завязанные на API Direct3D 3, 5, 6 и 7. Код проекта написан на языке C++ и распространяется под лицензией Zlib. В качестве основы при разработке использован код бэкенда d3d9 от проекта DXVK - D7VK преобразует API Direct3D 3, 5, 6 и 7 в вызовы Direct3D 9, которые затем транслируются в API Vulkan. Разработчик не намерен добиваться включения D7VK в состав DXVK, как это было с реализациями Direct3D 8 и Direct3D 9 поверх Vulkan.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64972

Компания Google подвела итоги включения оптимизации AutoFDO (Auto-Feedback-Directed Optimization) при сборке ядра Linux для платформы Android. AutoFDO использует результаты профилирования c информацией о частоте выполнения различных участков кода для повышения производительности часто выполняемых операций. Оптимизация AutoFDO задействована при сборке ядра Linux.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=64973

GFiber (a.k.a. Google Fiber) and Astound Broadband announced that they plan to merge into a deal backed by infrastructure investor Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners. The resulting company will be majority owned by Stonepeak, with Alphabet becoming a "significant minority shareholder." Light Reading reports: Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners teamed with Patriot Media to acquire Astound in November 2020 for $8.1 billion. Stonepeak is Astound's largest investor. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. The combined business will be led by the existing GFiber executive team. GFiber is currently led by CEO Dinni Jain. Jain, a former Time Warner Cable and Insight Communications exec, took the helm of what was then called Google Fiber in 2018.

"This agreement advances GFiber's mission of redefining internet connectivity and represents a major step toward its goal of operational and financial independence," the companies said. "GFiber will have the external capital and strategic focus needed to accelerate its next phase of growth, expanding its customer-first approach and pioneering fiber technology across the country." GFiber's combination with Astound represents "a strategic opportunity to scale our customer-focused approach to connect more households to a truly different type of internet service," Jain said in a statement.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/03/11/2342217/gfiber-and-astound-broadband-to-join-forces?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.