Electric Cars Are Close to Overtaking Petrol In the UK, Data Shows
69 million people people live in the United Kingdom. And now >Electrek reports:

Battery-electric cars took 32% of the UK’s new car market in October, while petrol cars fell to just 37.2%, according to new data from the SMMT. That’s the closest the two have been. At the current pace, electric cars will outsell petrol in the UK within a yea … ⌘ Read more

Can CrowdStrike’s New ‘AI Kill Switch’ Shut Down Rogue AI Agents?
CrowdStrike’s “Falcon Guardian” protects Windows systems by enforcing policy, restricting unauthorized applications and blocking USB devices, notes Gartner.
And now CrowdStrike says they’re giving security teams “the ultimate human control over AI agents” with — an “AI Kill Switch… a defender can terminate it where it runs, block it from launching … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia CEO Admits Affair With Alleged Chinese Spy. Investigation Opened
CNBC reports new details about the relationship of alleged Chinese spy with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang:

Huang told Nvidia staff in a email on Sunday that he had an affair with the woman and that Nvidia’s board of directors had opened an independent investigation into the spying allegations. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions … ⌘ Read more

Parents Sue Google Over AI Safety Risks On School Chromebooks
The New York Times reports:

After chatting for months with Google’s artificial intelligence on a school-issued Chromebook laptop, a 13-year-old student made plans to end her life, according to a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court on Monday, the latest in a wave of litigation over Big Tech’s effects on young people. The lawsuit, which refers to … ⌘ Read more

Salon, One of the Web’s Pioneering News Outlets, Shuts Down After 31 Years
“It has been an extraordinary privilege,” says the subheading on Thursday’s announcement. After 31 years Salon.com will stop publishing, according to an announcement which appeared on the site under the byline “Salon”. It remembers that Salon “was an idea about what journalism could be, born at a moment when the internet was stil … ⌘ Read more

Claude Code’s ‘Don’t Ask Again’ File Exposes Passwords and Keys in 1,122 Public Copies on GitHub
Be careful with the file .claude/settings.local.json, warns The Hacker News:

Passwords and API keys that developers typed into commands they approved in Claude Code are sitting in public GitHub repositories, where anyone can read them. When a user selects “Yes, and don’t ask again,” Anthro … ⌘ Read more

Do Data Centers Have a Smaller Effect on Electricity Prices Than We Think?
“According to a new study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, data centers are probably having only a small effect on residential electricity prices,” reports the Washington Post.

“The researchers calculated that these operations were responsible for just 4% of the utility rate increase … ⌘ Read more

Norwegians Release FOSS GNOME Software for Music Recording, Internet Radio, and Cameras
ole (Slashdot reader #19,909) writes in about his free, Norwegian open-source music recording studio for GNOME called GarageJam, which he says allows musicians to compose, record, and share original music seamlessly on the Internet.
The latest release, GarageJam 8.0.1, is available in C and Pyth … ⌘ Read more

Python’s CVEs Triple. Anthropic Funds a New Security Developer
In the last year CVEs have increased 3x for Python and its package manager Pip, according to Python’s security developer in residence Seth Larson. “And the amount of malware published and removed from the Python Package Index (PyPI) is up 60%.” Securing Python’s ecosystem is getting more complex, he writes, especially given “the evolving role of … ⌘ Read more

Aaron Swartz Would’ve Been 40 Today. His ‘Legacy Lives On’ Says FSF
“Aaron Swartz would have turned forty this year,” writes FSF deputy director Sean O’Brien. “November 8 is Aaron Swartz Day, when we remember a pioneer of free software and information sharing whose contributions helped shape the modern internet.”

The Internet Archive will host a hackathon Sunday in San Francisco celebrating Aaron’s Swartz’s li … ⌘ Read more

NASA Announces It’s Looking for New Astronauts
Saturday NASA officials announced it’s accepting applications for a new astronaut class, reports the Associated Press:

With only 32 active astronauts, the space agency needs more recruits as it looks to expand humanity’s presence beyond low-Earth orbit as quickly as possible… “We have far more work than we have astronauts,” Artemis III commander Randy Bresnik told The Associat … ⌘ Read more

Scifi Magazine ‘Starlog’ Relaunches, and Back Issues Return to Internet Archive
Slashdot reader sandbagger brings news about the classic science ficdtion magazine Starlog. It’s 33-year run from 1976 to 2009 is now available on the Internet Archive.

And 17 years after publishing its final issue, Starlog is relaunching, publishing one issue a year starting November 13, according to The Holly … ⌘ Read more

AlpineBSD Announced - an AI-free FOSS OS
Lproven (Slashdot reader #6,030) shares his article about a new OS in the BSD family “combining NetBSD’s kernel and libc with a port of the Alpine Linux userland” — and promising it won’t use AI-generated code:

AlpineBSD is so new that it barely exists yet. There are no installation media available, though it’s possible to manually bootstrap an installation. What AlpineBSD does already have i … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Removes PC-to-PC Migration from Windows 11, Points Users to OneDrive-Based Backup
Windows 11 offered a PC-to-PC Migration feature that “moved files and settings directly between two PCs over Wi-Fi or Ethernet,” reports Ghacks. But according to an updated Microsoft support page, the tool is no longer available.

“Microsoft’s support documentation now redirects users to Window … ⌘ Read more

Data Centers are Being Powered By Giant Gas Plants, Possibly Increasing Carbon Pollution for Decades
Rather than racing toward their net-zero targets, Amazon and other AI/cloud computing companies “are driving emissions sharply higher,” reports the Washington Post:

To support their data centers, tech firms are driving construction of a new generation of supersized, gas-f … ⌘ Read more

Is Mandating AI Use in the Workplace Backfiring?
Some workplaces are holding mandatory AI training sessions, while others “are requiring employees to use a specific number of tokens,” reports the Washington Post, “or log a certain amount of time on AI platforms.”
The article’s headline? “Why mandating AI use in the workplace can backfire.”

[A] lot of employers are going about it the wrong way, said Arvind Karunakaran, an assi … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Find Rare Meteorite From Mars With Signs of Ancient Water
“I didn’t think a rock like this existed on Earth,” a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas told the Washington Post. It looks like a polished rock, dark brown with a clay-colored stripe — but it’s actually one of the oldest Mars meteorites ever found, blasted by an impact from the surface of Mars billions of years ag … ⌘ Read more

A Third Major US Offshore Wind Farm Is Now Fully Operational
Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to halt development on a $6.2 billion wind farm, it’s now “completely up and running,” reports the nonprofit energy news site Canary Media, delivering enough electricity to power the equivalent over 350,000 homes:

On Thursday, the Danish energy giant Ørsted said its 704-megawatt wind farm near Connecticut and R … ⌘ Read more

AlmaLinux Shows Advantages of ABI Compatibility After RHEL Restricted Source Code Access
“AlmaLinux OS charted a new path in 2023 when Red Hat restricted source code access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux,” remembers Linux Magazine.

“Rather than pursue 1:1 compatibility with RHEL like other Enterprise Linux alternatives, the AlmaLinux OS Foundation chose application binary interface (ABI) … ⌘ Read more

China’s Top Spy Agency Recruited Woman Who Targeted Jensen Huang
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: A Chinese businesswoman who had a close relationship with the chief executive of one of the most important artificial intelligence companies in the United States was a spy for China’s Ministry of State Security, Beijing’s top intelligence agency, according to people briefed on U.S. surveillan … ⌘ Read more

Cryosphere Faces Permanent Damage When World Overshoots 1.5C, Scientists Warn
A UN-backed report warns that even temporarily overshooting the Paris agreement’s 1.5C warming target could cause permanent and widespread losses of glaciers, snow and polar ice sheets. With Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets already melting about six times faster than in the 1990s, the report argues that global temperatur … ⌘ Read more

Vibrating Mattress Helps Clear Alzheimer’s Protein From the Brain
A vibrating mattress combined with two pills that release nitric oxide enhanced the brain’s ability to clear an Alzheimer’s-related protein. According to New Scientist, the experiment “caused the brain’s blood vessels to swell and constrict more strongly, which enhanced the glymphatic system’s clearance of [the protein].” From the report: \ … ⌘ Read more

Mexico’s Senate Approves ISP Rules To Disconnect Persistent Online Pirates
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: On Tuesday, Mexico’s Senate approved (PDF) a reform of the Federal Copyright Law that ties ISP liability to having a policy to terminate repeat infringers. [This policy has to be published permanently on their website and in their terms of service, and it must include a basi … ⌘ Read more

EU Says TikTok’s ‘Rabbit Hole’ Effect Must Stop
The European Commission has preliminarily found that TikTok violates the Digital Services Act because its For You recommendation algorithm can create a “rabbit hole effect,” repeatedly exposing users to potentially harmful content involving topics such as sadness, isolation and body image. TikTok must change the feed’s design or potentially face fines of up to 6% of its global annua … ⌘ Read more

Chainalysis Says Breach Exposed Credentials For All Customers
Chainalysis says attackers exposed usernames, password hashes and live tokens for all of its customers. “While the company locked Chainalysis accounts as a precaution after discovering that some customers’ passwords had been exposed and asked users to reset their passwords before signing in again, it has now taken the login portal offline, together with … ⌘ Read more

Activists Breach Microsoft Data Center Construction Site As Protests Spread In Europe
More than 100 activists breached a Microsoft AI data center construction site in Amsterdam as part of coordinated protests against the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure. “These data centres are destroying our world. It’s becoming uninhabitable because of all the resources they consume. That’s why we’re … ⌘ Read more

Developer Pulls Roku’s Popular Fish Tank Screensaver Following Fox Sale
Roku is removing its popular Aquatic Life fish tank screensaver on December 1 and automatically switching affected users to Roku City. According to Cord Cutters News, the creator pulled the license after Roku’s sale to FOX was announced. Ars Technica reports: The screensaver has been an option for Roku OS users for 10 years. Roku has … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s New Cyber Model Found Ways to Attack Nearly 1,000 Linux Flaws
OpenAI says its new GPT-6 Cyber model helped an automated system identify 1,724 security flaws in the Linux kernel and exploit 948 of them to gain administrator-level access during testing, including at least 10 previously unknown techniques. Axios reports: During testing, the system identified 1,724 security flaws and found ways to use 9 … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Summoned By Congress Over Chinese Espionage Concerns
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Top Republican lawmakers have asked Jensen Huang to appear before Congress to answer questions after it was reported that US intelligence officials believe Nvidia’s chief executive has been targeted by a Chinese spying operation. The chairs of the House committees on Ch … ⌘ Read more

Tesla to Wind Down Cybertruck Production
Elon Musk says Tesla will be “winding down” Cybertruck production at its Texas Gigafactory around mid-2027 to free up capacity for increased production of its Cybercab robotaxi. CNBC reports: The Cybertruck is exclusively produced at the company’s plant in Texas alongside the Tesla Model Y and two-seat Cybercab, which Musk has touted as a crucial product for the automaker moving forward. Musk … ⌘ Read more

Britain to Make Salary Disclosure In Job Ads Mandatory
Britain plans to require employers to disclose salaries in job advertisements. “Whether you’re a young person starting out or a parent trying to support your family, you should know what a job pays before spending your time and effort applying for it,” Prime Minister Andy Burnham said in a statement. Reuters reports: The government said requiring companies to disclo … ⌘ Read more

Sony Revives the Original Walkman Headphones, Adds USB-C
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Sony has brought back the MDR-3-series headphones that debuted in 1979 alongside the Walkman TPS-L2 cassette player. […] The new MDR-3R (originally called the “MDR-3L2”) headphones look just like the originals and come with orange and blue ear cushions. New headphones are often wireless these day … ⌘ Read more

Blue Origin Announces New Glenn Third Stage, New Booster Engine
Blue Origin has unveiled a third stage called GS3 for its New Glenn rocket, designed to deliver satellite constellations directly to geostationary orbit and support heavy-lift missions to the Moon and deep space. The company also announced Northstar, a new methalox booster engine that it says produces 715,000 pounds of thrust while cutting mass b … ⌘ Read more

FAA Phases Out Floppy Disks From Air Traffic Control
The FAA announced today that it is finally phasing out floppy disks from air traffic control systems at more than 400 facilities. Engadget reports: They’ll be replaced by a more modern system called Enterprise – Information Display System (E-IDS), which is comprised of a digital display for relaying status information, updates and other alerts to air traffic teams. … ⌘ Read more

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Changing the Color of the Ocean
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the Pacific Ocean where debris naturally accumulates, is full of tiny bits of plastic – so full, in fact, that it seems to be changing the color of the ocean. […] To better understand how microplastics may have influenced the ocean’s … ⌘ Read more

Applebee’s Exposed Customers’ Personal Data After Leaving Database Password In App
Joe_Dragon shares a report from TechCrunch: Applebee’s has fixed a security flaw that allowed anyone to access the personal information of its registered customers, after a researcher found a password for an internal database inside Applebee’s mobile app, TechCrunch has learned. The popular restaurant chain confi … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Responds to US Midterm Elections With New Commitment to Communities
“OpenAI has published a new National Community Compact and Compute Campus Policy Blueprint, apparently in response to the Blue Wave Midterm Elections,” writes ancient Slashdot reader Gilmoure. “Instead of moving into communities like a juggernaut, they say they will be dangling friendly carrots going forward.” Here’s an ex … ⌘ Read more

OpenSSH Flaw Lets Attackers Log Into Password-Disabled Linux Accounts
A newly disclosed OpenSSH flaw dubbed “*sshole” can allow attackers to log in to password-disabled accounts on certain musl-based Linux systems simply by submitting a password longer than 256 bytes. “Apparently certain varieties of musl Linux (Alpine, OpenWrt, Buildroot, Yocto, etc.) have had this OpenSSH vulnerability for about a decade … ⌘ Read more

Apple Is Putting Employees On an AI Budget
According to Bloomberg, Apple is cutting employee AI spending limits to reduce costs, lowering some engineers from $300 to $200 per day and considering limits as low as $100, with some teams capped at $25. Employees are also being encouraged to use cheaper models or on-device AI. MacRumors reports: Engineers at Apple have the largest budgets because using AI for coding can consume a large … ⌘ Read more

Want to Rent an Internet Address at the White House?
Longtime Slashdot reader bbsguru shares a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Several staffers at the White House are using computers or mobile devices equipped with residential proxy services that render their internet address available for others to rent, security experts warned today. One of the proxy services is a Russian company whose founder’s web hosting business was groun … ⌘ Read more

Discord Is Ditching Electron For Rust
Discord is replacing Electron with a desktop client built fully in Rust, which the company says should significantly reduce the app’s notoriously high resource usage while improving performance and memory safety. “We’ve been early adopters of Rust since 2018 and a lot of our infra, voice tech, and even some of the current client is already Rust, the holy grail was getting the whole client there,” exp … ⌘ Read more

Motorola’s Ultra Premium Smartphone Is Its First With GrapheneOS Support
Motorola’s $1,600 Signature 27 will become the company’s first smartphone to support the security- and privacy-focused GrapheneOS that completely strips out native Google services and telemetry at the OS level. To help justify the price, Motorola equipped the Signature 27 with top-of-the-line specs, including a tandem OLED disp … ⌘ Read more

Major Digital Bank In Paraguay Collapses With Half of Population’s Savings
Paraguayan President Santiago Pena resigned Thursday amid mass protests and impeachment threats following the collapse of Ueno Bank, a major digital lender with close ties to his administration and more than 60% of the country’s adults as customers. Regulators seized the bank after uncovering risky insider lending and accountin … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s Imagine Cup ‘Evolves’ From Student Competition To AI Startup Contest
theodp writes: That Was Then: The Imagine Cup competition, Microsoft explained in a 2003 press release, “seeks to provide students [aged 16-and-up] around the world with resources to use technology and Web services to solve everyday problems […] Imagine Cup is about empowering students to apply their creativity a … ⌘ Read more

NASA Announces X-70 Experimental Aircraft to Advance Flight Research
NASA has unveiled the X-70 Fractal, a new crewed experimental aircraft “designed to accelerate the development and testing of advanced aviation technologies.” From a press release: The crewed X-70 features advanced, rapidly reconfigurable flight-control technology that will allow NASA to explore aircraft maneuverability in ways never b … ⌘ Read more

3M To Pay Over $7 Billion To Settle ‘Forever Chemical’ Groundwater Claims
3M has agreed to pay up to $7.35 billion over nine years to settle claims from as many as 120,000 people who say they were sickened by PFAS-contaminated groundwater near military bases, airports and other locations where firefighting foam was used. The Associated Press reports that 3M “did not admit liability,” noting that the settle … ⌘ Read more

Vietnam Jails Pirate Football Streamers For Up To a Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A Vietnamese court has sentenced 14 people who worked on the pirate football streaming site Bun Cha TV, handing out the first prison terms we’ve seen since the country’s piracy crackdown began earlier this year. […] Four defendants, including the heads of the content, programming and operations teams, wer … ⌘ Read more

Axon Sued Over AI-Powered License Plate Reader Network
Axon has been sued in a proposed class action accusing the Taser and police body-camera maker of illegally collecting and storing license plate data on millions of California drivers through its AI-powered surveillance network. Reuters reports the details: - The lawsuit (PDF), filed on Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco by law firms Hausfeld and Gibbs Mura, al … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Says ChatGPT Is Catching Up to Google In Search
Adam Fry, OpenAI’s consumer product lead for ChatGPT, says the number of searches performed through ChatGPT has grown to roughly 20% of Google’s search volume. The company defines a search as a ChatGPT query that triggers a web search, suggesting the chatbot is becoming an increasingly significant competitor to traditional search engines. The Verge reports: Having on … ⌘ Read more

Netflix Launches First AI-Branded Content Recommendations Feature on TVs
Netflix is testing its first consumer-facing feature explicitly branded as AI-powered. Called “AI Discover,” the feature generates personalized TV and movie recommendations in real time based on viewing history, preferences, trending content and selectable themes like “Something Light” or “Quick Watches.” Variety reports: … ⌘ Read more