European Commission Investigating Breach After Amazon Cloud Account Hack
The European Commission is investigating a breach after a threat actor allegedly accessed at least one of its AWS cloud accounts and claimed to have stolen more than 350 GB of data, including databases and employee-related information. AWS says its own services were not breached. BleepingComputer reports: Sources familiar with the i … ⌘ Read more

CERN To Host Europe’s Flagship Open Access Publishing Platform
CERN has confirmed it will host an expanded version of Open Research Europe, the EU-backed fee-free open access publishing platform that works to “keep knowledge in public hands.” Research Professional News reports: A little over a year ago, 10 European research organizations announced that they would add their support to Open Research Europe, to b … ⌘ Read more

Apple Can Create Smaller On-Device AI Models From Google’s Gemini
Apple reportedly has full access to customize Google’s Gemini model, allowing it to distill smaller on-device AI models for Siri and other features that can run locally without an internet connection. MacRumors reports: The Information explains that Apple can ask the main Gemini model to perform a series of tasks that provide high-quality resul … ⌘ Read more

Millions Face Mobile Internet Outages in Moscow. ‘Digital Crackdown’ Feared
13 million people live in Moscow, reports CNN.

But since early March the city “has experienced internet and mobile service outages on a level previously unseen.” (Though Wi-Fi access to the internet is still available…) Russian social media “is flooded with jokes and memes about sending letters by carrier pigeons or using sma … ⌘ Read more

Meta Backtracks, Will Keep Horizon Worlds VR Support ‘For Existing Games’
Meta is partially reversing its decision to drop VR support for Horizon Worlds, keeping VR access for existing Unity-based games while shifting future development to a new flatscreen-focused Horizon Engine. UploadVR reports: If you somehow missed it, on Tuesday Meta officially announced that its Horizon Worlds “metaverse” platform … ⌘ Read more

FBI Is Buying Location Data To Track US Citizens, Director Confirms
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FBI has resumed purchasing reams of Americans’ data and location histories to aid federal investigations, the agency’s director, Kash Patel, testified to lawmakers on Wednesday. This is the first time since 2023 that the FBI has confirmed it was buying access to people’s data collected f … ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Appeals Piracy Shield Fine, Hopes To Kill Italy’s Site-Blocking Law
Cloudflare is appealing a 14.2 million-euro fine from Italy for refusing to comply with its “Piracy Shield” law, which requires blocking access to websites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service within 30 minutes. The company argues the system lacks oversight, risks widespread overblocking, and could undermine core Internet infrastru … ⌘ Read more

New Windows 11 Bug Breaks Samsung PCs, Blocking Access To C: Drive
Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Users of Samsung PCs are reporting the inability to access the C: drive after the Windows 11 February update. The bug seems to be in connection with the Samsung Galaxy Connect app, which allows Samsung phones and tablets to connect to Windows machines. [A previous stable version of the app has been … ⌘ Read more

Backblaze Hosts 314 Trillion Digits of Pi Online
BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Cloud storage company Backblaze has partnered with StorageReview to make a massive dataset containing 314 trillion digits of Pi publicly accessible. The digits were calculated by StorageReview in December 2025 after months of heavy computation designed to stress modern hardware. The dataset now hosted in the cloud weighs in at over … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Hm, I’m not sure I would want to do that:

ForwardAgent
    ...

    Agent forwarding should be enabled  with  caution.   Users
    with  the ability to bypass file permissions on the remote
    host (for the agent's Unix-domain socket) can  access  the
    local agent through the forwarded connection.  An attacker
    cannot  obtain  key  material from the agent, however they
    can perform operations on the keys that enable them to au‐
    thenticate using the identities loaded into the agent.

Perplexity’s ‘Personal Computer’ Lets AI Agents Access Your Local Files
Perplexity AI has introduced a “Personal Computer” agent system that can run on a local machine such as a Mac mini, giving its AI agents access to a user’s files and applications to automate tasks. According to CEO Aravind Srinivas, the heavy AI processing runs on Perplexity’s “secure servers” but sensitive actions will require user approval … ⌘ Read more

Google Maps Gets Its Biggest Navigation Redesign In a Decade, Plus More AI
Google Maps is rolling out its biggest update in more than a decade, introducing a Gemini-powered chatbot and a new “Immersive Navigation” interface. “Ask Maps” lets users plan trips, ask questions, and refine travel suggestions conversationally within the app. “The new chatbot will be accessible via a button up near the search … ⌘ Read more

I turned off indexing and anonymous access i think? 🧐

Nvidia Is Planning to Launch Its Own Open-Source OpenClaw Competitor
Nvidia is preparing to launch an open-source AI agent platform called NemoClaw, designed to compete with the likes of OpenClaw. According to Wired, the platform will allow enterprise software companies to dispatch AI agents to perform tasks for their own workforces. “Companies will be able to access the platform regardless of whether their prod … ⌘ Read more

German Publishers Push Regulators To Fine Apple Over App Tracking Transparency
German publishers and advertising groups are urging regulators to fine Apple over its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) system, arguing it unfairly restricts access to advertising data while allowing Apple to remain the central gatekeeper – without subjecting its own apps to the same restrictions. If Germany’s antitrust … ⌘ Read more

FBI Investigates Breach That May Have Hit Its Wiretapping Tools
The FBI is investigating a breach affecting systems tied to wiretapping and surveillance warrant data, after abnormal logs revealed possible unauthorized access to law-enforcement-sensitive information. “The FBI identified and addressed suspicious activities on FBI networks, and we have leveraged all technical capabilities to respond,” a spokesperson … ⌘ Read more

How AI Assistants Are Moving the Security Goalposts
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: AI-based assistants or “agents” – autonomous programs that have access to the user’s computer, files, online services and can automate virtually any task – are growing in popularity with developers and IT workers. But as so many eyebrow-raising headlines over the past few weeks have shown, these powerful and assert … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Officially Supporting Cloud-Based Authentication With Authd
Canonical for a while has been developing Authd as an authentication service for external cloud-based identity providers. Authd was designed from the ground-up to provide secure management of identity and access for Ubuntu systems while only with next month’s Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release is it actually hitting the universe archive… ⌘ Read more

Computer Scientists Caution Against Internet Age-Verification Mandates
fjo3 shares a report from Reason Magazine: Effective January 1, 2027, providers of computer operating systems in California will be required to implement age verification. That’s just part of a wave of state and national laws attempting to limit children’s access to potentially risky content without considering the perils such laws the … ⌘ Read more

AMD EPYC Achieves Performance Leadership In New OCUDU Project For 5G/6G RAN
Announced this week at Mobile World Congress (MWC) by the Linux Foundation was the establishing of the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation for advancing open-source AI-RAN (Radio Access Network) innovations. OCUDU is building a reference platform and innovations around 5G and early 6G network solutions. With OCUDU being benchmark-friendly, I have been putting the early code through some performance tests on current AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon serve … ⌘ Read more

AMD EPYC Achieves 5G/6G RAN Performance Leadership With New OCUDU Project
Announced this week at Mobile World Congress (MWC) by the Linux Foundation was the establishing of the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation for advancing open-source AI-RAN (Radio Access Network) innovations. OCUDU is building a reference platform and innovations around 5G and early 6G network solutions. With OCUDU being benchmark-friendly, I have been putting the early code through some performance tests on current AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon server … ⌘ Read more

Google Chrome Is Switching To a Two-Week Release Cycle
Google is accelerating Chrome’s major release cadence from four weeks to two starting with version 153 on September 8th. “…our goal is to ensure developers and users have immediate access to the latest performance improvements, fixes and new capabilities,” says Google. “Building on our history of adapting our release process to match the demands of a modern web, C … ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.0.1 Released With Important Security Fix For OOB Memory Access From WebGPU
Mesa 26.0.1 is now available as the first point release of this quarter’s Mesa 26.0 series. Besides the usual bug fixing, Mesa 26.0.1 is more pressing than usual since it contains a security fix for possible out-of-bounds memory access in WebGPU contexts from web browsers… ⌘ Read more

Hegseth Gives Anthropic Until Friday To Back Down on AI Safeguards
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday evening to give the military unfettered access to its AI model or face harsh penalties, Axios has learned. Hegseth told Amodei in a tense meeting on Tuesday that the Pentagon will either cut ties and declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” or invoke the Defense Produ … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Disputes Report an AWS Service Was Taken Down By Its AI Coding Bot
Friday Amazon published a blog post “to address the inaccuracies” in a Financial Times report that the company’s own AI tool Kiro caused two outages in an AWS service in December.

Amazon writes that the “brief” and “extremely limited” service interruption “was the result of user error — specifically misconfigured access controls — n … ⌘ Read more

Has the AI Disruption Arrived - and Will It Just Make Software Cheaper and More Accessible?
Programmer/entrepreneur Paul Ford is the co-founder of AI-driven business software platform Aboard. This week he wrote a guest essay for the New York Times titled “The AI Disruption Has Arrived, and It Sure Is Fun,” arguing that Anthropic’s Claude Code “was always a helpful coding assista … ⌘ Read more

PayPal Discloses Data Breach That Exposed User Info For 6 Months
PayPal is notifying customers of a data breach after a software error in a loan application exposed their sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, for nearly 6 months last year. From a report: The incident affected the PayPal Working Capital (PPWC) loan app, which provides small businesses with quick access to financing. PayP … ⌘ Read more

US Plans Online Portal To Bypass Content Bans In Europe and Elsewhere
The U.S. State Department is reportedly developing a site called freedom.gov that would let users in Europe and elsewhere access content restricted under local laws, “including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda,” reports Reuters. Washington views the move as a way to counter censorship. Reuters reports: One source said officia … ⌘ Read more

‘Babylon 5’ Episodes Start Appearing (Free) on YouTube
Cord Cutters News reports:

In a move that has delighted fans of classic science fiction, Warner Bros. Discovery has begun uploading full episodes of the iconic series Babylon 5 to YouTube, providing free access to the show just as it departs from the ad-supported streaming platform Tubi… Viewers noticed notifications on Tubi indicating that all five seasons w … ⌘ Read more

Google Warns EU Risks Undermining Own Competitiveness With Tech Sovereignty Push
Europe risks undermining its own competitiveness drive by restricting access to foreign technology, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer Kent Walker told the Financial Times, as Brussels accelerates efforts to reduce reliance on U.S. tech giants. Walker said the EU faces a “competitive parad … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Plans Smartphone-Style Permission Prompts for Windows 11 Apps
Microsoft is planning to bring smartphone-style app permission prompts to Windows 11, requiring apps to get explicit user consent before they can access sensitive resources like the file system, camera and microphone. The company’s Windows Platform engineer Logan Iyer said the move was prompted by applications increasingly overriding u … ⌘ Read more

Discord Will Require a Face Scan or ID for Full Access Next Month
Discord said today it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults. From a report: Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won … ⌘ Read more

GTK Developers Working On Session Saving Support & Better Accessibility This Year
GTK toolkit developers met in Brussels once again for their annual hackfest during FOSDEM week… ⌘ Read more

CIA Has Killed Off The World Factbook After Six Decades
The CIA has shut down The World Factbook, one of its oldest and most recognizable public-facing intelligence publications, ending a run that began as a classified reference document in 1962 and evolved into a freely accessible digital resource that drew millions of views each year.

The agency offered no explanation for the decision. Originally titled The National … ⌘ Read more

Debian’s CI Data No Longer Publicly Browseable Due To LLM Scrapers / Bot Traffic
LLM scrapers for AI are even hungry for Debian’s continuous integration “CI” data. Due to the ongoing abuse of the open web by LLM scrapers, the Debian CI infrastructure is restricting the publicly accessible data with their web server resources being hammered by bots/scrapers… ⌘ Read more

FBI Couldn’t Get Into Reporter’s iPhone Because It Had Lockdown Mode Enabled
The FBI has been unable to access a Washington Post reporter’s seized iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, a sometimes overlooked feature that makes iPhones broadly more secure, according to recently filed court records. 404Media: The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and whi … ⌘ Read more

‘Everyone is Stealing TV’
A sprawling informal economy of rogue streaming devices has taken hold across the U.S., as consumers fed up with rising TV subscription costs turn to cheap Android-based boxes that promise free access to thousands of live channels, sports events, and on-demand movies for a one-time $200 to $400 purchase.

The two dominant players – SuperBox and vSeeBox – are manufactured by opaque Chinese companies and distributed … ⌘ Read more

Adobe Actually Won’t Discontinue Animate
Adobe is no longer planning to discontinue Adobe Animate on March 1st. From a report: In an FAQ, the company now says that Animate will now be in maintenance mode and that it has “no plans toâdiscontinue or remove access” to the app.

Animate will still receive “ongoing security and bug fixes” and will still be available for “both new and existing users,” but it won’t get new features. Many creat … ⌘ Read more

I built Audiofern to make it simple to turn PDFs into audiobooks. Upload a document, get clean, chapterized narration with natural voices, and share it via a hosted player—or download M4A/M4B and keep it forever. Files are private by default, and pricing is transparent: pay once by audio hour or subscribe to build a listening library.

https://audiofern.com

#audiobooks #accessibility #builders

Experimental Linux Code For 1GB PUD-Level THPs Shows 34% Faster Memory Access Times
Early, experimental code for implementing 1GB PUD-level THPs in the Linux kernel are showing positive benchmark results but other upstream stakeholders were surprised by this patch series appearing and it looking like it could be a while until if/when the patches are mainlined for helping to reduce translaction lookaside buffer (TLB) pressure without resorting to Hugetlbfs… ⌘ Read more

Belkin’s Wemo Smart Devices Will Go Offline On Saturday
Belkin is shutting down cloud support for most Wemo smart home devices on January 31, leaving only Thread-based models and devices already set up in Apple HomeKit functional. Everything else will lose remote access, voice assistant integrations, and future app updates. The Verge reports: The shut down was first announced in July and impacts most Wemo devices, ran … ⌘ Read more

Nobel Hacking Likely Leaked Peace Prize Winner Name, Probe Finds
An anonymous reader shares a report: A hacking of the Nobel organization’s computer systems is the most likely cause of last year’s leak of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado’s name, according to the results of an investigation [non-paywalled source]. An individual or a state actor may have illegally gained access in a cyber breach, … ⌘ Read more

Do Markets Make Us Moral?
A new study [PDF] examining the United States between 1850 and 1920 found that expanded market access – driven largely by railroad expansion – made Americans more trusting of strangers and more outward-looking, but weakened family-based care for the vulnerable.

Researchers Max Posch of the University of Exeter and Itzchak Tzachi Raz of Hebrew University compared places and people gaining different levels of commercial conne … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft is Experimenting With a Top Menu Bar for Windows 11
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft’s PowerToys team is contemplating building a top menu bar for Windows 11, much like Linux, macOS, or older versions of Windows. The menu bar, or Command Palette Dock as Microsoft calls it, would be a new optional UI that provides quick access to tools, monitoring of system resources, and much more.

Micros … ⌘ Read more

Cory Doctorow On Tariffs and the DMCA In Canada
Longtime Slashdot reader devnulljapan writes: In 2012, Canada passed anti-circumvention law Bill C-11, cut-and-pasted from the U.S. DMCA, in return for access to U.S. markets without tariffs. Trump has tariffed Canada anyway, so Cory Doctorow suggests it sounds like like a good idea to ditch Bill C-11 and turn Canada into a “Disenshittification Nation” and go into the business of … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia GeForce NOW Is Now Available Natively On Linux
NVIDIA has officially launched a native GeForce NOW client for Linux as a Flatpak, giving Linux gamers access to cloud-rendered RTX gaming. Phoronix reports: While confined to a Flatpak, for now NVIDIA is just “officially” supporting it on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. Granted, thanks to Flatpak it should run on other non-Ubuntu distributions too but in terms of the of … ⌘ Read more

French Lawmakers Vote To Ban Social Media Use By Under-15s
French lawmakers have voted to ban social media access for children under 15 and prohibit mobile phones in high schools, positioning France as the second country after Australia to impose sweeping age-based digital restrictions. The Guardian reports: The lower national assembly adopted the text by a vote of 130 to 21 in a lengthy overnight session from Mon … ⌘ Read more

SoundCloud Data Breach Impacts 29.8 Million Accounts
A data breach at SoundCloud exposed information tied to 29.8 million user accounts, according to Have I Been Pwned. While SoundCloud says no passwords or financial data were accessed, attackers mapped email addresses to public profile data and later attempted extortion. BleepingComputer reports: The company confirmed the breach on December 15, following widespread reports … ⌘ Read more

Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp To Test Premium Subscriptions
An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta plans to test new subscriptions that give people access to exclusive features on its apps, the company told TechCrunch on Monday. The tech giant said the new subscriptions will unlock more productivity and creativity, along with expanded AI capabilities.

In the coming months, Meta said it will offer a premium … ⌘ Read more

A Game Studio’s Fired Co-Founder Hijacked Its Domain Name, a New Lawsuit Alleges
Three co-founders of the game studio That’s No Moon “are suing another co-founder for allegedly hijacking the company’s website domain name,” reports the gaming news site Aftermath, “taking the website offline and disabling employee access to email accounts, according to a new lawsuit.”

Tina Kowalewski, Taylor Kuro … ⌘ Read more