'Crises at Boeing and Intel Are a National Emergency'

Intel and Boeing, once exemplars of American manufacturing prowess, now face existential crises. Their market values have plummeted, jeopardizing not just shareholder wealth but national security. The U.S. is losing its edge in manufacturing high-tech products, crucial in its geopolitical contest with China, a story on WSJ argues.

Unlike past manufacturing declines, Intel and Boeing's woes stem from internal missteps, prioritizing financial performance over engineering excellence. Their potential demise threatens America's semiconductor and commercial aircraft industries, with far-reaching consequences for the nation's technological ecosystem. While government intervention is controversial, national security concerns may necessitate support. WSJ adds: So, much as national leaders would like to ignore these companies' woes, they can't. National security dictates the U.S. maintain some know-how in making aircraft and semiconductors.

Certainly other countries feel that way: European governments heavily subsidized Airbus. China is pursuing dominance in key technologies regardless of the cost. Its so-called Big Fund has sunk roughly $100 billion into semiconductors while aid to Comac had reached $72 billion in 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Until Comac succeeds in gaining significant global market share, it will continue to run big losses and be bailed out by the Chinese government," said Atkinson, whose organization gets support from Boeing.

Both political parties have bought into the idea that manufacturing is special and thus deserving of public support. That raises the question: which manufacturing, and what kind of support?

The goal of manufacturing strategy shouldn't be just producing jobs but great, world-beating products. [...]

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/161231/crises-at-boeing-and-intel-are-a-national-emergency?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/161231/crises-at-boeing-and-intel-are-a-national-emergency?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Linus Torvalds Growing Frustrated By Buggy Hardware, Theoretical CPU Attacks

jd writes: Linus Torvalds is not a happy camper and is condemning hardware vendors for poor security and the plethora of actual and theoretical attacks, especially as some of the new features being added impact the workarounds. These workarounds are now getting very expensive, CPU-wise.

TFA quotes Linus Torvalds: "Honestly, I'm pretty damn fed up with buggy hardware and completely theoretical attacks that have never actually shown themselves to be used in practice. "So I think this time we push back on the hardware people and tell them it's *THEIR* damn problem, and if they can't even be bothered to say yay-or-nay, we just sit tight. Because dammit, let's put the onus on where the blame lies, and not just take any random shit from bad hardware and say 'oh, but it *might* be a problem.'"

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/1533228/linus-torvalds-growing-frustrated-by-buggy-hardware-theoretical-cpu-attacks?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/1533228/linus-torvalds-growing-frustrated-by-buggy-hardware-theoretical-cpu-attacks?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Cuba's Power Grid Collapses Again. And Then a Hurricane Hit

"Millions of Cubans remained without power for a third day in a row Sunday," reports CNN, "after fresh attempts to restore electricity failed overnight and the power grid collapsed for the fourth time — all before the arrival of Hurricane Oscar."

A report from Reuters notes it was the fourth power grid failure in 48 hours.

"On the forecast track, the center of Oscar is expected to continue moving across eastern Cuba tonight and Monday, then emerge off the northern coast of Cuba late Monday and cross the central Bahamas on Tuesday," the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The Communist-run government canceled school through Wednesday — a near unprecedented move in Cuba — citing the hurricane and the ongoing energy crisis...

Cuba had restored power to 160,000 clients in Havana just prior to the grid's Sunday collapse, giving some residents a glimmer of hope... Energy and mines minister Vicente de la O Levy told reporters earlier on Sunday he expected the grid to be fully functional by Monday or Tuesday but warned residents not to expect dramatic improvements.

It was not immediately clear how much the latest setback would delay the government's efforts.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/0255215/cubas-power-grid-collapses-again-and-then-a-hurricane-hit?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/0255215/cubas-power-grid-collapses-again-and-then-a-hurricane-hit?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Microsoft's Honeypots Lure Phishers at Scale - to Spy on Them and Waste Their Time

A principal security software engineer at Microsoft described how they use their Azure cloud platform "to hunt phishers at scale," in a talk at the information security conference BSides Exeter.

Calling himself Microsoft's "Head of Deception." Ross Bevington described how they'd created a "hybrid high interaction honeypot" on the now retired code.microsoft.com "to collect threat intelligence on actors ranging from both less skilled cybercriminals to nation state groups targeting Microsoft infrastructure," according to a report by BleepingComputer:

With the collected data, Microsoft can map malicious infrastructure, gain a deeper understanding of sophisticated phishing operations, disrupt campaigns at scale, identify cybercriminals, and significantly slow down their activity... Bevington and his team fight phishing by leveraging deception techniques using entire Microsoft tenant environments as honeypots with custom domain names, thousands of user accounts, and activity like internal communications and file-sharing...

In his BSides Exeter presentation, the researcher says that the active approach consists in visiting active phishing sites identified by Defender and typing in the credentials from the honeypot tenants. Since the credentials are not protected by two-factor authentication and the tenants are populated with realistic-looking information, attackers have an easy way in and start wasting time looking for signs of a trap. Microsoft says it monitors roughly 25,000 phishing sites every day, feeding about 20% of them with the honeypot credentials; the rest are blocked by CAPTCHA or other anti-bot mechanisms.

Once the attackers log into the fake tenants, which happens in 5% of the cases, it turns on detailed logging to track every action they take, thus learning the threat actors' tactics, techniques, and procedures. Intelligence collected includes IP addresses, browsers, location, behavioral patterns, whether they use VPNs or VPSs, and what phishing kits they rely on... The deception technology currently wastes an attacker 30 days before they realize they breached a fake environment. All along, Microsoft collects actionable data that can be used by other security teams to create more complex profiles and better defenses.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/20/1840217/microsofts-honeypots-lure-phishers-at-scale---to-spy-on-them-and-waste-their-time?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/20/1840217/microsofts-honeypots-lure-phishers-at-scale---to-spy-on-them-and-waste-their-time?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Can We Turn Off AI Tools From Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta?  Sometimes...

"Who asked for any of this in the first place?" wonders a New York Times consumer-tech writer. (Alternate URL here.) "Judging from the feedback I get from readers, lots of people outside the tech industry remain uninterested in AI — and are increasingly frustrated with how difficult it has become to ignore."

The companies rely on user activity to train and improve their AI systems, so they are testing this tech inside products we use every day. Typing a question such as "Is Jay-Z left-handed?" in Google will produce an AI-generated summary of the answer on top of the search results. And whenever you use the search tool inside Instagram, you may now be interacting with Meta's chatbot, Meta AI. In addition, when Apple's suite of AI tools, Apple Intelligence, arrives on iPhones and other Apple products through software updates this month, the tech will appear inside the buttons we use to edit text and photos.

The proliferation of AI in consumer technology has significant implications for our data privacy, because companies are interested in stitching together and analyzing our digital activities, including details inside our photos, messages and web searches, to improve AI systems. For users, the tools can simply be an annoyance when they don't work well. "There's a genuine distrust in this stuff, but other than that, it's a design problem," said Thorin Klosowski, a privacy and security analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, and a former editor at Wirecutter, the reviews site owned by The New York Times. "It's just ugly and in the way."

It helps to know how to opt out. After I contacted Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google, they offered steps to turn off their AI tools or data collection, where possible. I'll walk you through the steps.
The article suggests logged-in Google users can toggle settings at myactivity.google.com. (Some browsers also have extensions that force Google's search results to stop inserting an AI summary at the top.) And you can also tell Edge to remove Copilot from its sidebar at edge://settings.

But "There is no way for users to turn off Meta AI, Meta said. Only in regions with stronger data protection laws, including the EU and Britain, can people deny Meta access to their personal information to build and train Meta's AI."

On Instagram, for instance, people living in those places can click on "settings," then "about" and "privacy policy," which will lead to opt-out instructions. Everyone else, including users in the United States, can visit the Help Center on Facebook to ask Meta only to delete data used by third parties to develop its AI.

By comparison, when Apple releases new AI services this month, users will have to opt in, according to the article. "If you change your mind and no longer want to use Apple Intelligence, you can go back into the settings and toggle the Apple Intelligence switch off, which makes the tools go away."

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/10/20/2023223/can-we-turn-off-ai-tools-from-google-microsoft-apple-and-meta-sometimes?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/10/20/2023223/can-we-turn-off-ai-tools-from-google-microsoft-apple-and-meta-sometimes?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


How WatchTowr Explored the Complexity of Vulnerability in a Secure Firewall Appliance

Cybersecurity startup Watchtowr "was founded by hacker-turned-entrepreneur Benjamin Harris," according to a recent press release touting their Fortune 500 customers and $29 million investments from venture capital firms. ("If there's a way to compromise your organization, watchTowr will find it," Harris says in the announcement.)

This week they shared their own research on a Fortinet FortiGate SSLVPN appliance vulnerability (discovered in February by Gwendal Guégniaud of the Fortinet Product Security team — presumably in a static analysis for format string vulnerabilities). "It affected (before patching) all currently-maintained branches, and recently was highlighted by CISA as being exploited-in-the-wild... It's a Format String vulnerability [that] quickly leads to Remote Code Execution via one of many well-studied mechanisms, which we won't reproduce here..."

"Tl;dr SSLVPN appliances are still sUpEr sEcurE," their post begains — but the details are interesting. When trying to test an exploit, Watchtowr discovered instead that FortiGate always closed the connection early, thanks to an exploit mitigation in glibc "intended to hinder clean exploitation of exactly this vulnerability class." Watchtowr hoped to "use this to very easily check if a device is patched — we can simply send a %n, and if the connection aborts, the device is vulnerable. If the connection does not abort, then we know the device has been patched... " But then they discovered "Fortinet added some kind of certificate validation logic in the 7.4 series, meaning that we can't even connect to it (let alone send our payload) without being explicitly permitted by a device administrator."

We also checked the 7.0 branch, and here we found things even more interesting, as an unpatched instance would allow us to connect with a self-signed certificate, while a patched machine requires a certificate signed by a configured CA. We did some reversing and determined that the certificate must be explicitly configured by the administrator of the device, which limits exploitation of these machines to the managing FortiManager instance (which already has superuser permissions on the device) or the other component of a high-availability pair. It is not sufficient to present a certificate signed by a public CA, for example...

Fortinet's advice here is simply to update, which is always sound advice, but doesn't really communicate the nuance of this vulnerability... Assuming an organisation is unable to apply the supplied workaround, the urgency of upgrade is largely dictated by the willingness of the target to accept a self-signed certificate. Targets that will do so are open to attack by any host that can access them, while those devices that require a certificate signed by a trusted root are rendered unexploitable in all but the narrowest of cases (because the TLS/SSL ecosystem is just so solid, as we recently demonstrated)...

While it's always a good idea to update to the latest version, the life of a sysadmin is filled with cost-to-benefit analysis, juggling the needs of users with their best interests.... [I]t is somewhat troubling when third parties need to reverse patches to uncover such details.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Mirnotoriety for sharing the article.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/20/1955241/how-watchtowr-explored-the-complexity-of-vulnerability-in-a-secure-firewall-appliance?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/20/1955241/how-watchtowr-explored-the-complexity-of-vulnerability-in-a-secure-firewall-appliance?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


NASA's Artemis Mission To Moon Unveils New Spacesuit Designed By Prada

For the first time in 50 years, humans will walk on the moon again. Currently planned for as soon as 2026, the Artemis III mission "will be one of the most complex undertakings of engineering and human ingenuity in the history of deep space exploration..." writes NASA. "Two crew members will descend to the surface and spend approximately a week near the South Pole of the Moon conducting new science before returning to lunar orbit..."

And they'll be wearing Prada, according to a Space News report from Milan:

At a briefing at the International Astronautical Congress here October 16, Axiom and Prada revealed details about the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) suit that Axiom is creating for use by NASA on lunar landing missions starting with Artemis 3... Axiom emphasized the advanced capabilities in the suit, particularly when compared to the suits worn by the Apollo astronauts on moonwalks more than a half-century ago [including greater redundancy and healthy monitoring systems not available in Apollo-era suits]...

The unveiling came just over a year after Axiom announced it was working with luxury goods company Prada, an unconventional partnership intended to leverage Prada's expertise in materials and design... [Axiom's executive VP of extravehicular activity Russell Ralston] said Axiom has leveraged Prada's expertise in fabrics and garment design in helping create the outer layer of the suit, which reflects sunlight and keeps dust from getting into interior layers... "If you look across all the different technologies that are needed within the suit, the uniqueness of those technologies and their application, the supply chain has tended to be pretty unstable," he said. "So, one of the things that Prada has really helped us with is bringing stability to that base, especially on the fabric side...."

Not surprisingly, Prada also contributed to the appearance of the suit. "One of the things that was important to us was the appeal of the suit, the look of the suit," Ralston said. "Something that Prada brought to the table was helping with the general aesthetic of the suit." One design aspect that brought the two companies together was a prominent red stripe on the suit. Ralston noted that was a nod to a NASA tradition where the mission commander's suit would have that red stripe to distinguish them from another spacewalker...
While the current focus of the suit is for walking on the moon, Ralston said the suit can be easily adapted for applications in low Earth orbit, such as spacewalks from the International Space Station or Axiom's future commercial space station.

The article adds that 30 people worked on the suit (full- or part-time). "These suits will give the astronauts increased range of motion and flexibility to explore more of the landscape than on previous lunar missions," according to NASA.

With "the ability to send high quality images and video to the ground with advanced communication technology, they will be sharing a unique new human experience with the world."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/1656219/nasas-artemis-mission-to-moon-unveils-new-spacesuit-designed-by-prada?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/1656219/nasas-artemis-mission-to-moon-unveils-new-spacesuit-designed-by-prada?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


After Second Power Outage, 10 Million Cubans Endure Saturday Afternoon Blackout

The Miami Herald reports:
Cuba's electrical grid shut down again early Saturday, leaving the island without electricity after authorities tried but failed to restore power following an earlier nationwide blackout on Friday. The island's Electric Union reported a second "total outage" at 6:15 a.m., just hours after officials reported they had restored power in a few "microsystems" all over the island... The country has been going through its worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the government lacks money to buy oil in the international market to meet domestic demand.
Cubans irked by the daily blackouts defied the country's Draconian laws punishing criticism of the government and left several comments in official news outlets calling for government officials to resign. The second outage will likely exacerbate public frustration as food begins to spoil because of the lack of refrigeration.

Two hours ago, Reuters reported that Cuba's government "said on Saturday it had made some progress in gradually re-establishing electrical service across the island, including to hospitals and parts of the capital Havana..."

"Most of Cuba's 10 million people, however, remained without electricity on Saturday afternoon."
Traffic lights were dark at intersections throughout Havana, and most commerce was halted...

Cuban officials have said even if the immediate grid collapse is resolved, the electricity crisis will continue. Cuba produces little of its own crude oil, and fuel deliveries to the island have dropped significantly this year, as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, once important suppliers, have reduced their exports to Cuba.

Mexico experienced a historic drop in production, according to the New York Times, while Venezuela is selling its oil to foreign companies to ease its own economic crisis:

The experts had warned for years: Cuba's power grid was on the verge of collapse, relying on plants nearly a half-century old and importing fuel that the cash strapped Communist government could barely afford... Cuban economists and foreign analysts blamed the crisis on several factors: the government's failure to tackle the island's aging infrastructure; the decline in fuel supplies from Venezuela, Mexico and Russia; and a lack of capital investment in badly needed renewable systems, such as wind and solar.
Jorge Piñon, a Cuban-born energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin, highlighted that Cuba's electricity grid relies on eight very large power plants that are close to 50 years old. "They have not received any operational maintenance much less capital maintenance in the last 12 to 15 years," he said, adding that they have a lifetime of only 25-30 years. "So, number one, it's a structural problem, they are breaking down all the time and that has a domino effect," he said. Compounding the problems, Cuba burns crude oil as a fuel for its plants. Experts said Cuba's own crude oil production is very heavy in sulfur and metals that can impair the thermoelectric combustion process. "So they have to be constantly repairing them, and they're repairing them with Band-Aids," said Mr. Piñon...

"If they can't turn these plants back on there is a concern that this could turn into another mass exodus," said Ricardo Herrero, the director of the Cuba Study Group in Washington. "They are really short on options," he added.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/2253239/after-second-power-outage-10-million-cubans-endure-saturday-afternoon-blackout?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/2253239/after-second-power-outage-10-million-cubans-endure-saturday-afternoon-blackout?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


MIT Researchers Build Solar-Powered Low-Cost Drinking Water Desalination System

MIT engineers have built a solar-powered desalination system that "ramps up its desalting process and automatically adjusts to any sudden variation in sunlight, for example by dialing down in response to a passing cloud or revving up as the skies clear."

While traditional reverse osmosis systems typically require steady power levels, "the MIT system requires no extra batteries for energy storage, nor a supplemental power supply, such as from the grid." And their results were pretty impressive:

The engineers tested a community-scale prototype on groundwater wells in New Mexico over six months, working in variable weather conditions and water types. The system harnessed on average over 94 percent of the electrical energy generated from the system's solar panels to produce up to 5,000 liters of water per day despite large swings in weather and available sunlight... "Being able to make drinking water with renewables, without requiring battery storage, is a massive grand challenge," says Amos Winter, the Germeshausen Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center at MIT. "And we've done it."

The system is geared toward desalinating brackish groundwater — a salty source of water that is found in underground reservoirs and is more prevalent than fresh groundwater resources. The researchers see brackish groundwater as a huge untapped source of potential drinking water, particularly as reserves of fresh water are stressed in parts of the world. They envision that the new renewable, battery-free system could provide much-needed drinking water at low costs, especially for inland communities where access to seawater and grid power are limited...

The researchers' report details the new system in a paper appearing in Nature Water. The study's co-authors are Bessette, Winter, and staff engineer Shane Pratt... "Our focus now is on testing, maximizing reliability, and building out a product line that can provide desalinated water using renewables to multiple markets around the world," Pratt adds. The team will be launching a company based on their technology in the coming months.

This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, the Julia Burke Foundation, and the MIT Morningside Academy of Design. This work was additionally supported in-kind by Veolia Water Technologies and Solutions and Xylem Goulds.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/1845248/mit-researchers-build-solar-powered-low-cost-drinking-water-desalination-system?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/1845248/mit-researchers-build-solar-powered-low-cost-drinking-water-desalination-system?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Debunking Hype: China Hasn't Broken Military Encryption with Quantum

An anonymous reader shared this report from Forbes:

Recent headlines have proclaimed that Chinese scientists have hacked "military-grade encryption" using quantum computers, sparking concern and speculation about the future of cybersecurity. The claims, largely stemming from a recent South China Morning Post article about a Chinese academic paper published in May, was picked up by many more serious publications.

However, a closer examination reveals that while Chinese researchers have made incremental advances in quantum computing, the news reports are a huge overstatement. "Factoring a 50-bit number using a hybrid quantum-classical approach is a far cry from breaking 'military-grade encryption'," said Dr. Erik Garcell, Head of Technical Marketing at Classiq, a quantum algorithm design company. While advancements have indeed been made, the progress represents incremental steps rather than a paradigm-shifting breakthrough that renders current cryptographic systems obsolete. "This kind of overstatement does more harm than good," Dr. Garcell said. "Misrepresenting current capabilities as 'breaking military-grade encryption' is not just inaccurate — it's potentially damaging to the field's credibility...."

In fact, the Chinese paper in question, titled Quantum Annealing Public Key Cryptographic Attack Algorithm Based on D-Wave Advantage, does not mention military-grade encryption, which typically involves algorithms like the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Instead, the paper is about attacking RSA encryption (RSA stands for Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, named after its creators)... While factoring a 50-bit integer is an impressive technical achievement, it's important to note that RSA encryption commonly uses key sizes of 2048 bits or higher. The difficulty of factoring increases exponentially with the size of the number, meaning that the gap between 50-bit and 2048-bit integers is astronomically large.
Moreover, the methods used involve a hybrid approach that combines quantum annealing with classical computation. This means that the quantum annealer handles part of the problem, but significant processing is still performed by classical algorithms. The advances do not equate to a scalable method for breaking RSA encryption as it is used in practical applications today.

Duncan Jones, Head of Cybersecurity at Quantinuum, tells Forbes that if China had actually broken AES — they'd be keeping it secret (rather than publicizing it in newspapers).

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/1752205/debunking-hype-china-hasnt-broken-military-encryption-with-quantum?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/1752205/debunking-hype-china-hasnt-broken-military-encryption-with-quantum?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Serious Infections Linked to Dementia Risk, Study Shows

"Getting sick feels bad in the moment," reports the Washington Post, "and may affect your brain in the longer term."

A new study published in Nature Aging adds to growing evidence that severe infections, including flu, herpes and respiratory tract infections, are linked to accelerated brain atrophy and increased risk of dementia years later. It also hints at the biological drivers that may contribute to neurodegenerative disease.

The current research is a "leap beyond previous studies that had already associated infection with susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease" and provides a "useful dataset," said Rudy Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and the director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. Other recent studies have found that the flu shot and the shingles vaccine reduce the risk of subsequent dementia in those who get them. Severe infections have also been linked to subsequent strokes and heart attacks.
 "Big infection, big immune response — not good for the brain," said one of the study's co-authors (Keenan Walker, a tenure-track investigator and the director of the Multimodal Imaging of Neurodegenerative Disease Unit at the National Institute on Aging).
And the article also includes this quote from Kristen Funk, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (who studies neuroinflammation in neuroinfectious and neurodegenerative diseases). "They really found that there's a range of infections that are associated with this brain atrophy, associated with this cognitive decline."
In turn, most of these infections associated with brain atrophy seem to be risk factors for dementia, according to the researchers' analyses of the UK Biobank data of 495,896 subjects and a Finnish dataset of 273,132 subjects. They found that having a history of infections was associated with an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease years later. The increased risk was even higher for vascular dementia, which is the second-most-common dementia diagnosis after Alzheimer's disease and caused by restriction of blood to the brain...
More-minor infections are not cause for alarm since the data was drawn from patients who had a hospital record of their infections, indicating more-severe cases, experts say.

And speaking of infections, the Post also published an interesting guest column by Dr. Mikkael A. Sekeres, division chief for hematology and medicine professor at the University of Miami's cancer center:

A recent report from the American Association for Cancer Research attributed 13 percent of cancer cases worldwide to infections. Some estimates run as high as 20 percent, with particularly high rates of infection-related cancers in developing countries. Infectious agents linked to cancer include bacteria, such as Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), and viruses, such as human papillomavirus (HPV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), and hepatitis B and C.
But keep in mind that an exceedingly small percentage of infected people develop cancer...

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/0545239/serious-infections-linked-to-dementia-risk-study-shows?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/0545239/serious-infections-linked-to-dementia-risk-study-shows?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


'NASA's $100 Billion Moon Mission Is Going Nowhere'

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an op-ed written by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, and chair of the Defense Innovation Board: There are government boondoggles, and then there's NASA's Artemis program. More than a half century after Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind, Artemis was intended to land astronauts back on the moon. It has so far spent nearly $100 billion without anyone getting off the ground, yet its complexity and outrageous waste are still spiraling upward. The next US president should rethink the program in its entirety. As someone who greatly respects science and strongly supports space exploration, the more I have learned about Artemis, the more it has become apparent that it is a colossal waste of taxpayer money. [...]

A celestial irony is that none of this is necessary. A reusable SpaceX Starship will very likely be able to carry cargo and robots directly to the moon -- no SLS, Orion, Gateway, Block 1B or ML-2 required -- at a small fraction of the cost. Its successful landing of the Starship booster was a breakthrough that demonstrated how far beyond NASA it is moving. Meanwhile, NASA is canceling or postponing promising scientific programs -- including the Veritas mission to Venus; the Viper lunar rover; and the NEO Surveyor telescope, intended to scan the solar system for hazardous asteroids -- as Artemis consumes ever more of its budget. Taxpayers and Congress should be asking: What on Earth are we doing? And the next president should be held accountable for answers.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2354259/nasas-100-billion-moon-mission-is-going-nowhere?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2354259/nasas-100-billion-moon-mission-is-going-nowhere?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Diamond Dust Could Cool the Planet At a Cost of Mere Trillions

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: From dumping iron into the ocean to launching mirrors into space, proposals to cool the planet through 'geoengineering' tend to be controversial -- and sometimes fantastical. A new idea isn't any less far-out, but it may avoid some of the usual pitfalls of strategies to fill the atmosphere with tiny, reflective particles. In a modeling study published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists report that shooting 5 million tons of diamond dust into the stratosphere each year could cool the planet by 1.6C -- enough to stave off the worst consequences of global warming. The scheme wouldn't be cheap, however: experts estimate it would cost nearly $200 trillion over the remainder of this century -- far more than traditional proposals to use sulfur particles. [...]

The researchers modeled the effects of seven compounds, including sulfur dioxide, as well as particles of diamond, aluminum, and calcite, the primary ingredient in limestone. They evaluated the effects of each particle across 45 years in the model, where each trial took more than a week in real-time on a supercomputer. The results showed diamond particles were best at reflecting radiation while also staying aloft and avoiding clumping. Diamond is also thought to be chemically inert, meaning it would not react to form acid rain, like sulfur. To achieve 1.6C of cooling, 5 million tons of diamond particles would need to be injected into the stratosphere each year. Such a large quantity would require a huge ramp up in synthetic diamond production before high-altitude aircraft could sprinkle the ground-up gems across the stratosphere. At roughly $500,000 per ton, synthetic diamond dust would be 2,400 times more expensive than sulfur and cost $175 trillion if deployed from 2035 to 2100, one study estimates.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/003230/diamond-dust-could-cool-the-planet-at-a-cost-of-mere-trillions?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/003230/diamond-dust-could-cool-the-planet-at-a-cost-of-mere-trillions?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Penguin Random House Underscores Copyright Protection in AI Rebuff

The world's biggest trade publisher has changed the wording on its copyright pages to help protect authors' intellectual property from being used to train large language models and other artificial intelligence tools, The Bookseller has reported. From the report: Penguin Random House has amended its copyright wording across all imprints globally, confirming it will appear "in imprint pages across our markets." The new wording states: "No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems," and will be included in all new titles and any backlist titles that are reprinted.

The statement also "expressly reserves [the titles] from the text and data mining exception," in accordance with a European Parliament directive. The move specifically to ban the use of its titles by AI firms for the development of chatbots and other digital tools comes amid a slew of copyright infringement cases in the US and reports that large tranches of pirated books have already been used by tech companies to train AI tools. In 2024, several academic publishers including Taylor & Francis, Wiley and Sage have announced partnerships to license content to AI firms.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/0121240/penguin-random-house-underscores-copyright-protection-in-ai-rebuff?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/0121240/penguin-random-house-underscores-copyright-protection-in-ai-rebuff?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


West Virginia Town of Green Bank Has Become a Refuge For Electrosensitive People

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Brandon Barrett arrived here two weeks ago, sick but hopeful, like dozens before him. Just a few years back, he could dead lift 660 pounds. After an injury while training to be a professional dirt-bike rider, he opened a motorcycle shop just north of Buffalo. When he wasn't working, he would cleanse his mind through rigorous meditation. In 2019, he began getting sick. And then sicker. Brain fog. Memory issues. Difficulty focusing. Depression. Anxiety. Fatigue. Brandon was pretty sure he knew why: the cell tower a quarter-mile behind his shop and all the electromagnetic radiation it produces, that cellphones produce, that WiFi routers produce, that Bluetooth produces, that the whole damn world produces. He thought about the invisible waves that zip through our airspace -- maybe they pollute our bodies, somehow? [...]

Then Brandon read about Green Bank, an unincorporated speck on the West Virginia map, hidden in the Allegheny Mountains, about a four-hour drive southwest of D.C. There are no cell towers there, by design. He read that other sick people had moved here and gotten better, that the area's electromagnetic quietude is protected by the federal government. Perhaps it could protect Brandon. It's quiet here so that scientists can listen to corners of the universe, billions of light-years away. In the 1950s, the federal government snatched up farmland to build the Green Bank Observatory. It's now home to the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope, the largest steerable telescope in the world at 7,600 metric tons and a height of 485 feet. Its 2.3-acre dish can study quasars and pulsars, map asteroids and planets, and search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

The observatory's machines are so sensitive that terrestrial radio waves would interfere with their astronomical exploration, like a shout (a bunch of WiFi signals) drowning out a whisper (signals from the clouds of hydrogen hanging out between galaxies). So in 1958, the Federal Communications Commission created the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area encompassing wedges of both Virginia and West Virginia, where radio transmissions are restricted to varying degrees. At its center is a 10-mile zone around the observatory where WiFi, cellphones and cordless phones -- among many other types of wave-emitting equipment -- are outlawed. Wired internet is okay, as are televisions -- though you must have a cable or satellite provider. It's not a place out of 100 years ago. More like 30. If you want to make plans to meet someone, you make them in person. Some people move here to work at the observatory. Others come because they feel like they have to. These are the 'electrosensitives,' as they often refer to themselves. They are ill, and Green Bank is their Lourdes. The electrosensitives guess that they number at least 75 in Pocahontas County, which has a population of roughly 7,500. Literary Hub, the BBC, Slate, and the Washingtonian have non-paywalled articles about Green Bank and the "wi-fi refugees" that shelter there.

https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2342223/west-virginia-town-of-green-bank-has-become-a-refuge-for-electrosensitive-people?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2342223/west-virginia-town-of-green-bank-has-become-a-refuge-for-electrosensitive-people?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Microsoft Says It Lost Weeks of Security Logs For Its Customers' Cloud Products

Microsoft has notified customers that it's missing more than two weeks of security logs for some of its cloud products, leaving network defenders without critical data for detecting possible intrusions. From a report: According to a notification sent to affected customers, Microsoft said that "a bug in one of Microsoft's internal monitoring agents resulted in a malfunction in some of the agents when uploading log data to our internal logging platform" between September 2 and September 19.

The notification said that the logging outage was not caused by a security incident, and "only affected the collection of log events." Business Insider first reported the loss of log data earlier in October. Details of the notification have not been widely reported. As noted by security researcher Kevin Beaumont, the notifications that Microsoft sent to affected companies are likely accessible only to a handful of users with tenant admin rights. Logging helps to keep track of events within a product, such as information about users signing in and failed attempts, which can help network defenders identify suspected intrusions. Missing logs could make it more difficult to identify unauthorized access to the customers' networks during that two-week window.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/0114211/microsoft-says-it-lost-weeks-of-security-logs-for-its-customers-cloud-products?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/19/0114211/microsoft-says-it-lost-weeks-of-security-logs-for-its-customers-cloud-products?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund Has Invested Over $24.9M In Open-Source In Two Years

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) is today celebrating its second anniversary for "empowering public digital infrastructure." In the past two years it has invested more than $24.9 million into sixty open technologies. This effort backed by the German government has provided nearly $25 million USD in open-source funding over the past two years. In this time there has been more than 500 submissions proposing over 114 million euros in work.

This Sovereign Tech Funding has helped open-source projects provide much needed maintenance to their software, enhance the security posture of the software, and make other open-source improvements in the public interest. You can learn more about the Sovereign Tech Fund via their blog.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2326255/germanys-sovereign-tech-fund-has-invested-over-249m-in-open-source-in-two-years?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2326255/germanys-sovereign-tech-fund-has-invested-over-249m-in-open-source-in-two-years?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


FTC Probing John Deere Over Customers' 'Right To Repair' Equipment

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating farm equipment maker Deere over its repair policies, focusing on whether the company's restrictions on repairs violate customers' "right to repair." Reuters reports: The investigation, authorized on Sept. 2, 2021, focuses on repair restrictions manufacturers place on hardware or software, often referred to by regulators as impeding customers' "right to repair" the goods they purchase. The probe was made public through a filing by data analytics company Hargrove & Associates Inc, which sought to quash an FTC subpoena seeking market data submitted to it by members of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. Neither HAI nor AEM is a target of the FTC probe [...].

The FTC is probing whether Deere violated the Federal Trade Act's section 5, according to the filing. The law prohibits unfair or deceptive practices affecting commerce, and the FTC has recently used it in a broad array of cases, including against Amazon and pharmacy benefit managers.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/211249/ftc-probing-john-deere-over-customers-right-to-repair-equipment?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/211249/ftc-probing-john-deere-over-customers-right-to-repair-equipment?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Netflix Raises Prices As Password Boost Fades

Netflix has begun raising prices in several countries, including Japan, parts of Europe, and Africa, as it seeks to sustain growth following its crackdown on password sharing. While its recent financial results show strong revenue growth, the company faces challenges in finding new subscribers and aims to boost future growth through advertising and fresh content. The BBC reports: In its latest results, Netflix announced that it had added 5.1 million subscribers between July and September - ahead of forecasts but the smallest gain in more than a year. The company is under pressure to show investors what will power growth in the years ahead, as its already massive reach makes finding new subscribers more difficult. The last time Netflix saw signs of slowdown, in 2022, it launched measures to stop password sharing and said it would offer a new streaming option with advertisements.

The crackdown unleashed a new wave of growth. The firm has added more than 45 million new members since last year and has 282 million subscribers globally. Analysts also expect advertisements to eventually become big business for Netflix. For now, however, Netflix has said it remains "early days" and warned it did not expect it to start driving growth until next year, despite many subscribers opting for the ad-supported plan. The plan, which is the company's least expensive option, accounted for 50% of new sign-ups in the places where it is offered in the most recent quarter, Netflix said. Even without a boost from advertising, Netflix said revenue in the July-September period was up 15% compared with the same period last year, to more than $9.8 billion. Profit also rose from $1.6 billion in the same period last year to $2.3 billion.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2111218/netflix-raises-prices-as-password-boost-fades?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2111218/netflix-raises-prices-as-password-boost-fades?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Cuba Plunged Into an Island Wide Blackout As Power Grid Fails

Cuba's power grid failed on Friday, leaving 10 million people without electricity. NPR reports: One of the country's largest power plants, the Antonio Guiteras power plant in the western province of Matanzas, failed shortly before midday on Friday. The failure prompted a total breakdown of Cuba's electrical system. The power outage comes after days of rolling blackouts. Cuba's prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, blamed the problem on deteriorating infrastructure and fuel shortages exacerbated by Hurricane Milton, which has made it difficult for fuel deliveries to reach the island.

The prime minister made an address on state television on Thursday evening and said the government would prioritize providing electricity to residential areas and promised shipments of fuel would arrive on the island in the coming days. Cuban officials have not indicated a timeline for when the power grid will be operational again. The massive blackout is a new low in a country that has already been dealing with a deepening economic crisis and widespread food shortages.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2114207/cuba-plunged-into-an-island-wide-blackout-as-power-grid-fails?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2114207/cuba-plunged-into-an-island-wide-blackout-as-power-grid-fails?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


OpenAI's Lead Over Other AI Companies Has Largely Vanished, 'State of AI' Report Finds

An anonymous reader shares a report: Every year for the past seven, Nathan Benaich, the founder and solo general partner at the early-stage AI investment firm Air Street Capital, has produced a magisterial "State of AI" report. Benaich and his collaborators marshal an impressive array of data to provide a great snapshot of the technology's evolving capabilities, the landscape of companies developing it, a survey of how AI is being deployed, and a critical examination of the challenges still facing the field.

One of the big takeaways from this year's report, which was published late last week, is that OpenAI's lead over other AI labs has largely eroded. Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google's Gemini 1.5, X's Grok 2, and even Meta's open-source Llama 3.1 405 B model have equaled, or narrowly surpassed on some benchmarks, OpenAI's GPT-4o.ââBut, on the other hand, OpenAI still retains an edge for the moment on reasoning tasks with the release of its o1 "Strawberry" model -- which Air Street's report rightly characterized as a weird mix of incredibly strong logical abilities for some tasks, and surprisingly weak ones for others.

Another big takeaway, Benaich told me, is the extent to which the cost of using a trained AI model -- an activity known as "inference" -- is falling rapidly. There are several reasons for this. One is linked to that first big takeaway: With models less differentiated from one another on capabilities and performance, companies are forced to compete on price.ââAnother reason is that engineers for companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic -- and their hyperscaler partners Microsoft and AWS, respectively -- are discovering ways to optimize how the largest models run on big GPU clusters. The cost of outputs from OpenAI's GPT-4o today is 100-times less per token (which is about equivalent to 1.5 words) than it was for GPT-4 when that model debuted in March 2023. Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro now costs 76% less per output token than it did when that model was launched in February 2024.â

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/180238/openais-lead-over-other-ai-companies-has-largely-vanished-state-of-ai-report-finds?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/180238/openais-lead-over-other-ai-companies-has-largely-vanished-state-of-ai-report-finds?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


FIDO Alliance Working on Making Passkeys Portable Across Platforms

The FIDO Alliance is developing new specifications to enable secure transfer of passkeys between different password managers and platforms. Announced this week, the initiative is the result of collaboration among members of the FIDO Alliance's Credential Provider Special Interest Group, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, and others. From a report: Passkeys are an industry standard developed by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium, and were integrated into Apple's ecosystem with iOS 16, iPadOS 16.1, and macOS Ventura. They offer a more secure and convenient alternative to traditional passwords, allowing users to sign in to apps and websites in the same way they unlock their devices: With a fingerprint, a face scan, or a passcode.

Passkeys are also resistant to online attacks like phishing, making them more secure than things like SMS one-time codes. The draft specifications, called Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP) and Credential Exchange Format (CXF), will standardize the secure transfer of credentials across different providers. This addresses a current limitation where passkeys are often tied to specific ecosystems or password managers. Further reading: Passwords Have Problems, But Passkeys have more.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/179230/fido-alliance-working-on-making-passkeys-portable-across-platforms?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/179230/fido-alliance-working-on-making-passkeys-portable-across-platforms?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Stripe In Talks To Acquire Bridge For $1 Billion

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Stripe is in talks to acquire stablecoin platform Bridge for a whopping $1 billion, according to Forbes (paypalled). The talks are reportedly in advanced stages, although nothing has been finalized. Bridge, co-founded by Coinbase alumni Zach Abrams and Sean Yu, has built an API that helps companies accept stablecoins. The pair raised $58 million from investors like Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, according to PitchBook. If the deal with Stripe goes through, it would be a huge jump from Bridge's $200 million valuation, as well as being Stripe's largest acquisition to date.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/014215/stripe-in-talks-to-acquire-bridge-for-1-billion?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/014215/stripe-in-talks-to-acquire-bridge-for-1-billion?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Trump Says Tim Cook Called Him To Complain About the EU

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Donald Trump said Apple CEO Tim Cook called him to discuss the billions of dollars that Apple has been fined in the European Union. Trump made the statement during his appearance on the PBD Podcast -- and said that he won't let the EU "take advantage" of US companies like Apple if reelected. "Two hours ago, three hours ago, he [Cook] called me," Trump said. "He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion... Then on top of that, they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion." In March, the EU fined Apple around $2 billion after finding that Apple used its dominance to restrict music streaming apps from telling customers about cheaper subscription deals outside the App Store. The EU later won its fight to make Apple pay $14.4 billion in unpaid taxes.

"He [Cook] said something that was interesting," Trump said. "He said they're using that to run their enterprise, meaning Europe is their enterprise. "I said, 'That's a lot... But Tim, I got to get elected first, but I'm not going to let them take advantage of our companies -- that won't, you know, be happening.'" Trump has talked to several Big Tech executives over the past several months. "During an interview this week, Trump said he spoke with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to complain about all the 'bad stories' the search engine shows about him," notes The Verge. "Elon Musk recently spoke at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Trump over the summer 'a few times,' according to the former president."

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2323239/trump-says-tim-cook-called-him-to-complain-about-the-eu?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2323239/trump-says-tim-cook-called-him-to-complain-about-the-eu?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Adobe's Upcoming Features Include AI Sound Generation and Image Remixing

During its MAX event yesterday, Adobe teased some experimental photo and video editing tools for PhotoShop and Premiere Pro. There are a total of nine features, which include being able to rotate vector images, produce sound effects from text descriptions, and generate images in various shapes and sizes. Engadget reports: [W]e'll start with Project Perfect Blend for PS, which improves natural blending and makes shadow casting more realistic, creating more lifelike images. Project Clean Machine removes photo flashes, fireworks and objects blocking the camera's view. One feature that stands out is Project In Motion, which lets users transform custom shape animations into video by entering a prompt, while Project Know How is a content authenticator tool that can search for a video file's source online. Project Turntable lets users rotate 2D vector art in 3D, thereby allowing the 2D vector art to face a direction of their choice. The generative AI model fills in any blanks to create presentable 3D vector art.

Another standout tool is Project Super Sonic, which generates sound effects via prompts or clicking on objects in a video. The latter method can create sounds without typing prompts into the generative AI model. Project Super Sonic seems helpful for people looking to design the sounds they want. Adobe is also working on Microsoft Copilot integration in Project Scenic. This tool creates 3D scene layouts using Copilot prompts, and the camera and objects in the layout can be tweaked. Project Remix A Lot leverages generative AI to create images in various shapes and sizes, all fully editable. In other words, users can "remix" creations into shapes they like, including unusual ones. Finally, we have Project Hi-Fi. With this tool, it's possible to transform sketches and concepts into high-quality images. These images can easily be dragged into PhotoShop for editing.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/237222/adobes-upcoming-features-include-ai-sound-generation-and-image-remixing?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/237222/adobes-upcoming-features-include-ai-sound-generation-and-image-remixing?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Google's NotebookLM Now Lets You Customize Its AI Podcasts

Google's NotebookLM app has been updated to let you generate custom podcasts from almost any source material. The AI software is also dropping the "experimental" tag. Wired reports: To make an AI podcast using NotebookLM, open up the Google Labs website and start a New Notebook. Then, add any source documents you would like to be used for the audio output. These can be anything from files on your computer to YouTube links. Next, when you click on the Notebook guide, you'll now see the option to generate a deep dive as well as the option to customize it first. Choose Customize and add your prompt for how you'd like the AI podcast to come out. The software suggests that you consider what sections of the sources you'd like highlighted, larger topics you want further explored, or different intended audiences who you want the message to reach.

One tip [Raiza Martin, who leads the NotebookLM team inside of Google Labs] shares for trying out the new feature is to generate the Audio Overview without changes, and while you're listening to this first iteration, write down any burning questions you have or topics you wish it expanded on. Afterwards, use these notes as a launching pad to create your prompts for NotebookLM and regenerate that AI podcast with your interests in mind. [...] Yes, Google's NotebookLM might flatten the specifics of a big document or get some details mixed up, but being able to generate more personalized podcasts from disparate sources truly does feel like a transformation -- and luckily nothing like turning into a giant bug. You can view some examples of AI-generated podcasts here.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2248238/googles-notebooklm-now-lets-you-customize-its-ai-podcasts?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2248238/googles-notebooklm-now-lets-you-customize-its-ai-podcasts?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Fake Google Meet Conference Errors Push Infostealing Malware

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: A new ClickFix campaign is luring users to fraudulent Google Meet conference pages showing fake connectivity errors that deliver info-stealing malware for Windows and macOS operating systems. ClickFix is a social-engineering tactic that emerged in May, first reported by cybersecurity company Proofpoint, from a threat actor (TA571) that used messages impersonating errors for Google Chrome, Microsoft Word, and OneDrive. The errors prompted the victim to copy to clipboard a piece of PowerShell code that would fix the issues by running it in Windows Command Prompt. Victims would thus infect systems with various malware such as DarkGate, Matanbuchus, NetSupport, Amadey Loader, XMRig, a clipboard hijacker, and Lumma Stealer.

In July, McAfee reported that the ClickFix campaigns were becoming mode frequent, especially in the United States and Japan. A new report from Sekoia, a SaaS cybersecurity provider, notes that ClickFix campaigns have evolved significantly and now use a Google Meet lure, phishing emails targeting transport and logistics firms, fake Facebook pages, and deceptive GitHub issues. According to the French cybersecurity company, some of the more recent campaigns are conducted by two threat groups, the Slavic Nation Empire (SNE) and Scamquerteo, considered to be sub-teams of the cryptocurrency scam gangs Marko Polo and CryptoLove.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2156214/fake-google-meet-conference-errors-push-infostealing-malware?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2156214/fake-google-meet-conference-errors-push-infostealing-malware?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Google Shifts Gemini App Team To DeepMind

In a memo from CEO Sundar Pichai, Google said it is moving the team behind the Gemini app to its AI research lab DeepMind. The shift "will improve feedback loops, enable fast deployment of our new models in the Gemini app," said Pichai. Reuters reports: Gemini is Google's most advanced AI technology, developed by DeepMind. The Gemini app is the direct consumer interface to the latest Gemini models. The Gemini app team, led by Sissie Hsiao, will join Google DeepMind under the leadership of its CEO Demis Hassabis.

Google also announced that Prabhakar Raghavan, who has led the company's products including search, ads and commerce will become chief technologist and work closely with Pichai. Raghavan's role as lead of the Knowledge and Information team will be taken up by Nick Fox, who has closely worked with Google on its AI product roadmap.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2310259/google-shifts-gemini-app-team-to-deepmind?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2310259/google-shifts-gemini-app-team-to-deepmind?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Hacker Arrested For the Fake SEC Tweet That Caused a Bitcoin Price Spike

The FBI has arrested an Alabama man who is accused of hacking the Securities and Exchange Commission's X account in January. From a report: The indictment alleges that 25-year-old Eric Council Jr. worked with co-conspirators to take control of the account and post a fake message from SEC Chair Gary Gensler about Bitcoin ETFs that caused the price of Bitcoin to jump by more than $1,000 momentarily.

To carry out this scheme, Council is accused of creating a fake ID using the information belonging to the person in control of the SEC's X account. He then allegedly tricked AT&T into providing a SIM card with the victim's phone number and install it into a new iPhone he purchased. Finally, Council was able to gain control of the SEC's account using recovery authentication codes sent to the number, and later return the iPhone to the Apple Store where he'd bought it.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2044230/hacker-arrested-for-the-fake-sec-tweet-that-caused-a-bitcoin-price-spike?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/2044230/hacker-arrested-for-the-fake-sec-tweet-that-caused-a-bitcoin-price-spike?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


The Pentagon Wants To Use AI To Create Deepfake Internet Users

schwit1 writes: The Department of Defense wants technology so it can fabricate online personas that are indistinguishable from real people.

 The United States' secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake, according to a procurement document reviewed by The Intercept.

 The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense's Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country's most elite, clandestine military efforts. "Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content," the entry reads.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/1639212/the-pentagon-wants-to-use-ai-to-create-deepfake-internet-users?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/1639212/the-pentagon-wants-to-use-ai-to-create-deepfake-internet-users?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


AI-Powered Social Media Manipulation App Promises to 'Shape Reality'

An anonymous reader shares a report: Impact, an app that describes itself as "AI-powered infrastructure for shaping and managing narratives in the modern world," is testing a way to organize and activate supporters on social media in order to promote certain political messages. The app aims to summon groups of supporters who will flood social media with AI-written talking points designed to game social media algorithms.
In video demos and an overview document provided to people interested in using a prototype of the app that have been viewed by 404 Media, Impact shows how it can send push notifications to groups of supporters directing them at a specific social media post and provide them with AI-generated text they can copy and paste in order to flood the replies with counter arguments.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/1425254/ai-powered-social-media-manipulation-app-promises-to-shape-reality?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/17/1425254/ai-powered-social-media-manipulation-app-promises-to-shape-reality?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Ex-Palantir CISO Dane Stuckey Joins OpenAI To Lead Cybersecurity

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Dane Stuckey, the former Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of big data analytics and AI firm Palantir, has joined OpenAI CISO. Stuckey served in senior security roles at Palantir for more than ten years, including 6 plus years as the company's CISO. In his new role, Stuckey said he would be working alongside Matt Knight, Head of Security at OpenAI. "Security is germane to OpenAI's mission," said Stuckey in a post on X. "It is critical we meet the highest standards for compliance, trust, and security to protect hundreds of millions of users of our products, enable democratic institutions to maximally benefit from these technologies, and drive the development of safe AGI for the world."

"I am so excited for this next chapter, and can't wait to help secure a future where AI benefits us all," Stuckey added.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/2120225/ex-palantir-ciso-dane-stuckey-joins-openai-to-lead-cybersecurity?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/2120225/ex-palantir-ciso-dane-stuckey-joins-openai-to-lead-cybersecurity?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Parents Take School To Court After Student Punished For Using AI

The parents of a Massachusetts student are suing his school after he was penalized for using AI in a Social Studies project, claiming it was for research purposes only. The student received a detention and a lower grade, which his parents argue could harm his college prospects. The school is defending its AI policy and fighting to dismiss the case. The Register reports: "The Plaintiff Student will suffer irreparable harm that far outweighs any harm that may befall the Defendants," their filing reads [PDF]. "He is applying to elite colleges and universities given his high level of academic and personal achievement. Early decision and early action applications in a highly competitive admissions process are imminent and start in earnest on October 1, 2024. Absent the grant of an injunction by this Court, the Student will suffer irreparable harm that is imminent."

The school, however, is fighting back with a motion to dismiss [PDF] the case. The school argues that RNH, along with his classmates, was given a copy of the student handbook in the Fall of last year, which specifically called out the use of AI by students. The class was also shown a presentation about the school's policy. Students should "not use AI tools during in-class examinations, processed writing assignments, homework or classwork unless explicitly permitted and instructed," the policy states. "RNH unequivocally used another author's language and thoughts, be it a digital and artificial author, without express permission to do so," the school argues. "Furthermore, he did not cite to his use of AI in his notes, scripts or in the project he submitted. Importantly, RNH's peers were not allowed to cut corners by using AI to craft their projects; thus, RNH acted 'unfairly in order to gain an advantage.'"

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/2045235/parents-take-school-to-court-after-student-punished-for-using-ai?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/2045235/parents-take-school-to-court-after-student-punished-for-using-ai?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


TV Ads To Target Households on Individual Streets in UK

An anonymous reader shares a report: Households on individual streets will be targeted with personalised adverts under plans being rolled out by Channel 4. The channel is to use new technology which will allow brands to tailor who sees their advert by enabling them to select a demographic within a specific location down to street level. For example, someone watching Made in Chelsea on Channel 4's streaming service could be served an ad for a fashion brand in a local outlet to them if a particular fashion trend is being discussed.

Advertisers can further optimise their campaign by selecting from 26 programme genres, as well as time of day and device the show is being watched on. It forms part of a wider update to Channel 4's streaming platform that the broadcaster hopes could boost revenues by as much as $13m. The company will launch a new private marketplace enabling brands to buy advertising space directly in real-time. This will allow advertisers to amend their campaigns to respond to events, whether that be real-world events such as local weather or developments in fictional storylines within TV shows. Channel 4's new ad targeting also includes more detailed data to track whether a viewer has made a purchase after seeing an ad, as well as new viewer profiles for brands to target.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/180234/tv-ads-to-target-households-on-individual-streets-in-uk?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/180234/tv-ads-to-target-households-on-individual-streets-in-uk?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Man Sues Town for $647 Million Over Trashed Bitcoin Hard Drive

smooth wombat writes: In 2013, James Howell's partner inadvertently threw out a hard drive along with other trash. Unknown to this person, this hard drive contained approximately 8,000 bitcoins. For the past decade Howell has been petitioning the town council of Newport to excavate the landfill in the hope of recovering the drive which would now hold approximately $647 million worth of cryptocurrency. Now he is suing the council in an attempt to force them to let him excavate.

Should the hard drive be recovered, Howells thinks there is an 80 percent chance that the coins on it would be retrievable. If it all works out, he has offered the council 10% of the recovered Bitcoin: $65 million worth. But, citing environmental concerns, the council has rejected his proposal to dig through over a decade's worth of garbage. The council issued a report wherein a spokesperson said, "The council has told Mr. Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area. The council is the only body authorized to carry out operations on the site."

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/1733245/man-sues-town-for-647-million-over-trashed-bitcoin-hard-drive?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/1733245/man-sues-town-for-647-million-over-trashed-bitcoin-hard-drive?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Digital River Runs Dry

Digital River has not paid numerous merchants since midsummer for software and digital products they sold through its MyCommerce platform. The Register: "After over 20 years of partnership with Digital River, Traction Software Ltd has been left feeling as though we've been 'rug pulled,'" Lee Midgley, managing director of Traction Software, told The Register. "For the past three months, we've experienced a complete halt in software sales revenue payments with no support, no direct contact, and only additional terms and conditions designed to delay resolution and extract more money from us.

"Astonishingly, Digital River continued to take sales from our loyal customers until we removed them from the order system. It now appears they have no intention of making payments and may be entering a liquidation process under a new CEO who has been involved in similar situations before."

The new CEO, Barry Kasoff, was first noted on the e-commerce biz website in August. Kasoff is also listed as the president of Realization Services, "a full-service strategic consulting firm specializing in turnaround management and value enhancement..." The privately-owned, Minnesota-based business appears to have laid off a significant number of employees, presumably the result of what its UK subsidiary describes as cost reduction initiatives implemented in late 2022.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/1638251/digital-river-runs-dry?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/1638251/digital-river-runs-dry?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Amazon Joins Push For Nuclear Power To Meet Data Center Demand

Amazon said on Wednesday it has signed three agreements on developing the nuclear power technology called small modular reactors, becoming the latest big tech company to push for new sources to meet surging electricity demand from data centers. From a report: Amazon said it will fund a feasibility study for an SMR project near a Northwest Energy site in Washington state. The SMR is planned to be developed by X-Energy. Financial details were not disclosed. Under the agreement, Amazon will have the right to purchase electricity from four modules. Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, will have the option to add up to eight 80 MW modules, resulting in a total capacity up to 960 MWs, or enough to power the equivalent of more than 770,000 U.S. homes. The additional power would be available to Amazon and utilities to power homes and businesses. "Our agreements will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come," said Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services. SMRs will have their components built in a factory to reduce construction costs. [...]

Amazon said it is also leading a funding round for $500 million to support X-Energy's development of SMRs. Amazon and X-Energy aim to bring more than 5 gigawatts online in the United States by 2039, which the companies call the largest commercial deployment target of SMRs yet. Amazon also signed an agreement with Dominion Energy, opens new tab to explore the development of an SMR project near the utility's existing power station in Virginia. The about 300 megawatt project would help meet power needs in a region where demand is expected to jump 85% in 15 years, Dominion said.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/144210/amazon-joins-push-for-nuclear-power-to-meet-data-center-demand?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/144210/amazon-joins-push-for-nuclear-power-to-meet-data-center-demand?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Sustainable Building Effort Reaches New Heights With Wooden Skyscrapers

The University of Toronto is constructing a 14-story building using mass timber, one of the largest and most recent projects to employ this innovative building technology. "Mass timber is an appealing alternative to energy-intensive concrete and steel, which together account for almost 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions," reports Knowable Magazine. "Though experts are still debating mass timber's role in fighting climate change, many are betting it's better for the environment than current approaches to construction. It relies on wood, after all, a renewable resource." From the report: Today, the tallest mass timber building is the 25-story Ascent skyscraper in Milwaukee, completed in 2022. As of that year, there were 84 mass timber buildings eight stories or higher either built or under construction worldwide, with another 55 proposed. Seventy percent of the existing and future buildings were in Europe, about 20 percent in North America and the rest in Australia and Asia, according to a report (PDF) from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. When you include smaller buildings, at least 1,700 mass timber buildings had been constructed in the United States alone as of 2023. [...]

In principle, mass timber is like plywood but on a much larger scale: The smaller pieces are layered and glued together under pressure in large specialized presses. Today, beams up to 50 meters long, usually made of what's called glue-laminated timber, or glulam, can replace steel elements. Panels up to 50 centimeters thick, typically cross-laminated timber, or CLT, replace concrete for walls and floors. These wood composites can be surprisingly strong -- stronger than steel by weight. But a mass timber element must be bulkier to achieve that same strength. As a building gets higher, the wooden supports must get thicker; at some point, they simply take up too much space. So for taller mass timber buildings, including the Ascent skyscraper, architects often turn to a combination of wood, steel and concrete.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/0618259/sustainable-building-effort-reaches-new-heights-with-wooden-skyscrapers?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/0618259/sustainable-building-effort-reaches-new-heights-with-wooden-skyscrapers?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


First Section of Euclid Space Telescope's Map of the Universe Revealed

The Euclid mission has revealed the first part of a 3D map of the universe, showcasing 14 million galaxies and tens of millions of stars with unprecedented detail. "The Euclid mission, launched in 2023 and run by the European Space Agency (Esa) with contributions from Nasa, sent its first snapshots in November of that year and in May 2024," reports The Guardian. "The goal of Euclid is to enable the creation of a 3D map in time and space of the universe, in an attempt to elucidate its evolution and, as a result, shed light on the mysterious phenomena of dark energy and dark matter that together make up 95% of the universe." From the report: The newly released data is a mosaic of 208 gigapixels and covers 1% of what will be the final map. The completed map is expected to involve six years of observations and will take in a third of the sky, with observations expected to capture billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light years. [...] Images released by Esa highlight the area of the sky covered by the new mosaic, together with the mosaic itself and zoomed-in views within it.

Esa said regions of light blue that can be seen in the mosaic were galactic cirrus clouds that sit between stars in the Milky Way. These wispy clouds, composed of gas and dust, reflect optical light, allowing them to be captured by the mission's super-sensitive visible light camera. Zoom in on the mosaic further and other features can be seen, including the spiral galaxy NGC 2188 and the galaxy cluster Abell 3381. In a view zoomed in 600 times relative to the original mosaic, a distant swirling galaxy is visible in incredible detail.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/063239/first-section-of-euclid-space-telescopes-map-of-the-universe-revealed?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/16/063239/first-section-of-euclid-space-telescopes-map-of-the-universe-revealed?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Trump's Coin Sale Misses Early Targets As Crypto Project's Website Crashes

Donald Trump's new crypto project, World Liberty Financial, had a rocky start today with frequent website outages during its token sale. According to CNBC, only about 4% of registered investors have bought tokens, and the project sold less than 3% of the 20 billion tokens available. From the report: WLF's website suffered regular and lengthy outages for much of the morning and early afternoon, contributing to a limited number of sales. Only about 4,300 unique walled addresses hold the token as of Tuesday afternoon, according to blockchain data tracked by Etherscan, representing roughly 4% of the total number of people who registered.

The platform says it has sold more than 532 million tokens at 15 cents per token. That is less than 3% of the 20 billion tokens made available for public sale. Over the course of the day, the website frequently showed a page saying, "We are under maintenance." The glitchy launch is a potential setback to the Republican presidential nominee with just three weeks until the election. Trump and his family have been touting the project since August, branding it as "The DeFiant Ones," a play on DeFi, which is short for decentralized finance.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/2316216/trumps-coin-sale-misses-early-targets-as-crypto-projects-website-crashes?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/2316216/trumps-coin-sale-misses-early-targets-as-crypto-projects-website-crashes?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Cisco Investigates Breach After Stolen Data For Sale On Hacking Forum

Longtime Slashdot reader mprindle shares a report from BleepingComputer: Cisco has confirmed to BleepingComputer that it is investigating recent claims that it suffered a breach after a threat actor began selling allegedly stolen data on a hacking forum. [...] This statement comes after a well-known threat actor named "IntelBroker" said that he and two others called "EnergyWeaponUser and "zjj" breached Cisco on October 6, 2024, and stole a large amount of developer data from the company.

"Compromised data: Github projects, Gitlab Projects, SonarQube projects, Source code, hard coded credentials, Certificates, Customer SRCs, Cisco Confidential Documents, Jira tickets, API tokens, AWS Private buckets, Cisco Technology SRCs, Docker Builds, Azure Storage buckets, Private & Public keys, SSL Certificates, Cisco Premium Products & More!," reads the post to a hacking forum. IntelBroker also shared samples of the alleged stolen data, including a database, customer information, various customer documentation, and screenshots of customer management portals. However, the threat actor did not provide further details about how the data was obtained.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/237244/cisco-investigates-breach-after-stolen-data-for-sale-on-hacking-forum?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/237244/cisco-investigates-breach-after-stolen-data-for-sale-on-hacking-forum?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Intel and AMD Form an x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Intel and AMD have jointly announced the creation of an x86 ecosystem advisory group to bring together the two companies as well as other industry leaders -- both companies and individuals such as Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Intel and AMD are forming this x86 ecosystem advisory group to help foster collaboration and innovations around the x86 (x86_64) ISA. [...] Besides Intel amd AMD, other founding members include Broadcom, Dell, Google, HPE, HP Inc, Lenovo, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat. Here are the "intended outcomes" for the group, as stated in the press release: The intended outcomes include:
- Enhancing customer choice and compatibility across hardware and software, while accelerating their ability to benefit from new, cutting-edge features.
- Simplifying architectural guidelines to enhance software consistency and standardize interfaces across x86 product offerings from Intel and AMD.
- Enabling greater and more efficient integration of new capabilities into operating systems, frameworks and applications.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/2057206/intel-and-amd-form-an-x86-ecosystem-advisory-group?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/2057206/intel-and-amd-form-an-x86-ecosystem-advisory-group?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Apple Announces New, Faster iPad Mini Built For Apple Intelligence

In a press release this morning, Apple announced a new iPad Mini with a faster A17 Pro chip that supports Apple Intelligence. The Verge reports: The new Mini is mostly a spec bump: it runs a new A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has a 30 percent faster CPU, 25 percent faster GPU, and a Neural Engine twice as fast as the previous model. The device also supports the new Apple Pencil Pro, which is a nice touch for the Mini-toting artists out there, and comes with 128GB of storage in the base model rather than 64GB. (Those AI models need all the space they can get.) The Wi-Fi 6E chip is faster, the USB-C port is faster, everything about the iPad Mini is the same as before only faster this time.

The only real design change with the new Mini is the colors. Apple's gone more colorful with a lot of its products this year, and the Mini comes in new purple and blue models. In photos they look muted rather than vivid, though, so don't expect the eye-popping new colors on the iPhone 16.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/2051249/apple-announces-new-faster-ipad-mini-built-for-apple-intelligence?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/2051249/apple-announces-new-faster-ipad-mini-built-for-apple-intelligence?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Spotify Criticized For Letting Fake Albums Appear On Real Artist Pages

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This fall, thousands of fake albums were added to Spotify, with some appearing on real artist pages, where they're positioned to lure unsuspecting listeners into streaming by posing as new releases from favorite bands. An Ars reader flagged the issue after finding a fake album on the Spotify page of an UK psych rock band called Gong. The Gong fan knew that the band had begun touring again after a surprise new release last year, but the "latest release" listed by Spotify wasn't that album. Instead, at the top of Gong's page was a fake self-titled album supposedly released in 2024.

The real fan detected the fake instantly, and not just because the generic electronic music sounded nothing like Gong's experimental sounds. The album's cover also gave the scheme away, using a generic font and neon stock image that invoked none of the trippy imagery that characterized Gong's typical album covers. Ars confirmed with Gong member Dave Sturt that the self-titled item was an obvious fake on Monday. At that time, Sturt said the band was working to get the junk album removed from its page, but as of Tuesday morning, that album remained online, along with hundreds of other albums uploaded by a fake label that former Spotify data "alchemist" Glenn McDonald flagged in a social media post that Spotify seemingly ignored.

On his site, McDonald gathered the junk album data by label, noting that Beat Street Music, which has no web presence but released the fake Gong album, uploaded 240 junk albums on Friday alone. Similarly, Ancient Lake Records uploaded 471 albums on Friday. And Gupta Music added 483 just a few days prior, along with 600 junk albums from Future Jazz Records uploaded between September 30 and October 8. These junk albums don't appear to be specifically targeting popular artists, McDonald told Ars. Rather, generic music is uploaded under a wide range of one-word artist names. However, by using that tactic, some of these fake albums appeared on real artist pages, such as Gong, experimental rock band Swans, and English rock bands Asia and Yes. And that oversight is on Spotify, McDonald suggested. "We are aware of the issue, have relocated the content in question, and are considering our further options against the providing licensor," a Spotify spokesperson said. "When we identify or are alerted to attempts by bad actors to game the system, we take action that may include removing stream counts and withholding royalties. Spotify invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of bad actors attempting to collect unearned royalties."

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/2047228/spotify-criticized-for-letting-fake-albums-appear-on-real-artist-pages?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/2047228/spotify-criticized-for-letting-fake-albums-appear-on-real-artist-pages?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


FCC Launches Formal Inquiry Into Why Broadband Data Caps Are Terrible

The Federal Communications Commission announced that it will open a renewed investigation into broadband data caps and how they impact both consumer experience and company competition. From a report: The FCC is soliciting stories from consumers about their experiences with capped broadband service. The agency also opened a formal Notice of Inquiry to collect public comment that will further inform its actions around broadband data caps. "Restricting consumers' data can cut off small businesses from their customers, slap fees on low-income families and prevent people with disabilities from using the tools they rely on to communicate," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said. "As the nation's leading agency on communications, it's our duty to dig deeper into these practices and make sure that consumers are put first."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1922243/fcc-launches-formal-inquiry-into-why-broadband-data-caps-are-terrible?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1922243/fcc-launches-formal-inquiry-into-why-broadband-data-caps-are-terrible?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


More Colleges Set To Close in 2025, Even as 'Ivy Plus' Schools Experience Application Boom

Many colleges are under financial pressure, and the cracks are starting to show. From a report: At least 20 colleges closed in 2024, and more are set to shut down after the current academic year, according to the latest tally by Implan, an economic software and analysis company. Altogether, more than 40 colleges have closed since 2020, according to a separate report by Best Colleges.

As the sticker price at some private colleges nears six figures a year, students have increasingly opted for less expensive public schools or alternatives to a four-year degree altogether, such as trade programs or apprenticeships. At the same time, the population of college-age students is also shrinking, a trend referred to as the "enrollment cliff."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/182207/more-colleges-set-to-close-in-2025-even-as-ivy-plus-schools-experience-application-boom?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/182207/more-colleges-set-to-close-in-2025-even-as-ivy-plus-schools-experience-application-boom?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Google's Chrome Browser Starts Disabling uBlock Origin

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're a fan of uBlock Origin, don't be surprised if it stops functioning on Chrome. The Google-owned browser has started disabling the free ad blocker as part of the company's plan to phase out older "Manifest V2" extensions. On Tuesday, the developer of uBlock Origin, Raymond Hill, retweeted a screenshot from one user, showing the Chrome browser disabling the ad blocker. "These extensions are no longer supported. Chrome recommends that you remove them," the pop-up from the Chrome browser told the user. In response, Hill wrote: "The depreciation of uBO in the Chrome Web Store has started."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1739233/googles-chrome-browser-starts-disabling-ublock-origin?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1739233/googles-chrome-browser-starts-disabling-ublock-origin?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


SSD Prices Set To Fall 10% in Q4 as AI PC Demand Lags - TrendForce

SSD prices are set to drop up to 10% in Q4 2024, market research firm TrendForce has reported. The decline stems from increased production and weakening demand, particularly in the consumer sector. Enterprise SSD prices, however, may see a slight increase. TrendForce analysts attribute the softer demand partly to slower-than-expected adoption of AI PCs. The mobile storage market could experience even steeper price cuts, with eMMC and UFS components potentially falling 13% as smartphone makers deplete inventories. The forecast follows modest price reductions observed in Q3 2024.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1726221/ssd-prices-set-to-fall-10-in-q4-as-ai-pc-demand-lags---trendforce?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1726221/ssd-prices-set-to-fall-10-in-q4-as-ai-pc-demand-lags---trendforce?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Vietnam Plans To Convert All Its Networks To IPv6

Vietnam will convert all its networks to IPv6, under a sweeping digital infrastructure strategy announced last week. From a report: The plan emerged in Decision No. 1132/QD-TTg -- signed into existence by permanent deputy prime minister Nguyen Hoa Binh -- and defines goals for 2025 and 2030. By 2025, the nation intends to connect two new submarine cables -- an important local issue.

Earlier this year, internet speeds slowed when three of the five cables connecting the country broke. Also by 2025, the country wants "universal" fiber-to-the-home, 5G services in all cities and industrial zones, and work to have commenced on an unspecified number of datacenters capable of running AI applications and operating with power usage effectiveness index (PUE) of less than 1.4.

[...] Vietnam's population exceeds 100 million and it already has 140 mobile subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. IPv4 with network address translation can scale to those levels -- if Vietnamese carriers have secured sufficient number resources.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1516244/vietnam-plans-to-convert-all-its-networks-to-ipv6?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1516244/vietnam-plans-to-convert-all-its-networks-to-ipv6?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


India Agrees With Musk in Satellite Spectrum Allocation Row

India announced on Tuesday it would allocate spectrum for satellite services through administrative means rather than auction, a decision that aligns with recent comments by Elon Musk and rebuffs lobbying efforts by the country's largest telecom operators. From a report: Jyotiraditya Scindia, India's Communications Minister, stated on Tuesday evening: "Spectrum for satcomm is shared spectrum, and cannot be auctioned. The administrative allocation of satellite spectrum is practised worldwide."

This move favors Musk's Starlink and Amazon's Project Kuiper, who have advocated for shared spectrum allocation. It contradicts Reliance Jio's position, led by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, which has pushed for auctions to ensure a "level playing field." Musk had warned on Monday that satellite spectrum auctions "would be unprecedented," citing long-standing ITU designations of shared satellite spectrum.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1435205/india-agrees-with-musk-in-satellite-spectrum-allocation-row?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/1435205/india-agrees-with-musk-in-satellite-spectrum-allocation-row?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed