Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. OpenAI Investigated By Coalition of America’s State Attorneys General
  2. New UK Referendum Would Flip ‘Brexit’ Result of a Decade Ago, Poll Finds
  3. US Congress Lets ‘Warrantless Wiretap’ Law FISA Lapse
  4. Mystery Orb Videos, Other UFO Records Released By White House
  5. World’s First Crewed Solid-State Flight Electrifies Aviation’s Future
  6. Anthropic ‘Suspends’ All Mythos and Fable Access After US Order Limiting Foreign Access
  7. Data Center Opponents Have Blocked Or Delayed Projects Worth Nearly $130 Billion In 2026
  8. Jeff Bezos’ AI Startup Aims To Build an ‘Artificial General Engineer’
  9. Justice Department Approves Paramount’s $111 Billion Acquisition of Warner Bros.
  10. ShinyHunters Hacked 100+ Organizations By Exploiting an Oracle PeopleSoft 0-Day
  11. Google Sues Chinese Cybercrime Operation That Used Gemini AI To Send Scam Texts
  12. Touchscreen Macbook ‘100% Confirmed,’ Says Reputable Leaker
  13. Microsoft Surface Flaw Allowed Unprotected Devices To Be Bricked By a Single Packet
  14. Sam Bankman-Fried Loses Bid To Overturn Crypto Fraud Conviction
  15. Infineon to Open German Chip Fab as Part of EU Sovereignty Push

Alterslash picks up to the best 5 comments from each of the day’s Slashdot stories, and presents them on a single page for easy reading.

OpenAI Investigated By Coalition of America’s State Attorneys General

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“A coalition of state attorneys general has opened an investigation into OpenAI,” reports the Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the matter.”
OpenAI was served Friday with a subpoena seeking documents related to a broad range of its activities and impact on users, including advertising, user engagement and retention, handling of consumer data and health data, activities related to minors and seniors, deep learning models, model sycophancy and company policies, some of the people said. The subpoena, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, was sent by New York’s attorney general....

Earlier this month, Florida became the first state to file a lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman. The lawsuit claims OpenAI and Altman knowingly released an unsafe product and ignored warnings that it could harm users. Florida’s Attorney General, James Uthmeier, opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI in April over the role its chatbot played in a mass shooting that killed two people at Florida State University last year. The suspect allegedly turned to ChatGPT as a confidant and sounding board to plan the attack, and the chatbot dispensed advice for his questions…

State attorneys general have been scrutinizing OpenAI’s competitors in the AI industry as well. In December, a coalition of 42 state attorneys general led by Pennsylvania’s Dave Sunday sent a letter to companies including OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, Google and xAI. In the letter, the Attorneys General demanded safeguards to protect vulnerable users from harmful interactions with chatbots, warning that “developers may be held accountable for the outputs of their GenAI products” for “encouraging an individual to commit a criminal act.”
“We take the concerns raised by state attorneys general seriously,” OpenAI told the Journal in a statement, “and intend to engage constructively with their offices.”

The article also acknowledges that The Wall Street Journal‘s parent company “has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.”

New UK Referendum Would Flip ‘Brexit’ Result of a Decade Ago, Poll Finds

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
It’s the 10-year anniversary of Britain’s “Brexit” vote withdrawing from the European Union. But a new UK poll “shows that a new Brexit referendum would reverse the vote that led to Britain’s departure,” reports Bloomberg:
Fifty-two percent of Britons think the UK should rejoin the EU, according to an Ipsos survey of 1,137 British adults conducted between May 14 and May 20. That’s the inverse of the mood in June 2016 when a comparable share of the electorate backed Brexit… Younger voters overwhelmingly favor reversing Brexit, whereas half of those ages 55 and above oppose returning to the bloc.
“The number of people who say Brexit is going worse than they had predicted has almost doubled in the past five years,” reports The Independent, " from 27% in 2021 to 48% today — more than those saying it was going as well as or better than expected.”
[T]here is more backing for a second referendum, with 48 per cent now saying they would support one, against 27 per cent who would oppose it. Even a fifth of Reform UK voters and a quarter of those who voted Leave in 2016 would back a second vote, the study found.
Tufts University discussed the last 10 years with the European Studies chair at their international relations graduate school:
Q: Have their fears of negative financial effects been realized?

A: The figures are quite revealing: The British GDP has been reduced by 6-8%, business investment has been reduced by 12%, and trade volume has been reduced by 15%, compared to what it could have been if the U.K. had remained in the EU…

Q: What do you think happens next?

A: The United Kingdom made a choice and they might have the opportunity, at some point, to revise this choice. I hope that when they have to decide again, they will be much more informed.

If I ruled ..

By Fons_de_spons • Score: 4 Thread
If I ruled the EU, anyone leaving the EU must stay out for at least two decades. After that, the UK is welcome back but they must fit in. Euro as currency. Metric system. Drive on the right side of the road.
Sorry to all the nice and friendly people in the UK. But you need a few decades to try things that n your own. These things take time. Can’t just hop off and on depending on the mood.

Racism.

By gurps_npc • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

The entire original argument for Brexit was based on racist nationalism.

They wanted to kick the foreigners out (while still letting their own elite vacation in Europe).

They claimed that the UK could get better treaties than the Europeans did. (because the UK politicians were ‘superior’ to the Europeans)

They claimed that they could reduce regulations because those darn foreigners were making stupid regulations (they weren’t).

They were tired of those foreigners telling them what to do (national sovereignty).

The truth is:
Foreigners do not go places unless they can get jobs, which increases your economy. They are cheap labor for you to exploit, not a drain on your economy.

The larger your country/organization is, the better treaties you can negotiate.

Regulations exist because either they help your people or they help your existing corporations. Otherwise they go away.

Having foreigners telling you what to do is well worth it if YOU can also tell the foreigners what to do. Uniformity of rules makes everything easier. It is only a problem if they do not let you help make the rules.

Won’t happen.

By Rhapsody Scarlet • Score: 3 Thread

Yes the British public may now be in favour of rejoining but it’s only because they’re still deluding themselves into thinking the European Union will let them rejoin on the same terms they left on, i.e. with exemptions from giving up the Pound and adopting the Euro or joining the passport-free Schengen Area. That’s not on the table and it never will be. The United Kingdom had the best possible deal with the EU but wanted more. They played a game of chicken with the referendum but screwed themselves when it went 52/48 in favour of leaving when everyone expected to be the other way around.

Then of course there’s the issue of democracy. Any time any further referendum on this is proposed you’re told “we already voted on this” and “you’re just trying to thwart democracy”. The powerful forces who wanted the UK out of the EU got the result they wanted by promising the left behind communities a bevy of treasures if they just voted leave and now they have not only will they not get those treasures but they will never be consulted again. We had democracy once and that’s enough.

Made up numbers

By UsuallyReasonable • Score: 3 Thread

I too can make up numbers about an economy regarding what might have happened if something that happened didn’t happen. Pretty hard to tell me I’m wrong.

US Congress Lets ‘Warrantless Wiretap’ Law FISA Lapse

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
It’s the U.S. law that allows wiretaps without a warrant for surveilling foreign targets. And the U.S. Congress just let it lapse. Sort of. NPR reports:
Each year, the provision is used by American intelligence agencies to collect the electronic communications of hundreds of thousands of foreigners located outside of the United States. The government says that more than 60% of the president’s daily intelligence briefing relies on information collected under the authority. The tool officially lapsed at the end of the day on Friday. What happens now?

Intelligence collection under FISA’s Section 702 is authorized annually by a federal court — and the law allows for that collection to continue for the duration of the court’s authorization, even if the law lapses before the court’s next approval. That means companies — electronic communications service providers, in this context — will still be legally required to turn over material to intelligence agencies.

Still, some lawmakers worry that the companies compelled to turn over communications may attempt to challenge the law in court, possibly leading to an indeterminately long window during which they stop providing intel. Advocates on all sides of the surveillance fight believe those challenges are ultimately likely to fail, but those closely linked to the intelligence community emphasize that even a small pause comes with risks ahead of major events like America’s 250th celebration and the World Cup.

Irony

By ArchieBunker • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

You know they probably fucked up and forgot about it. Dear Leader doesn’t even read the briefings because they “say the same thing every day” https://abcnews.com/Politics/t…

Risk

By Iamthecheese • Score: 3, Insightful Thread
Am I supposed to see the word “risk” and ask the government to come save me? Give me liberty or give me death.

Re: Irony

By YetanotherUID • Score: 5, Informative Thread
No, Trump decided he was going to play chicken with the FISA renewal by nominating a completely unqualified partisan hack (Bill Pulte) as acting Director of National Intelligence over the objections of basically all the Democrats, as well as a significant contingent of his own party.

He lost.

Trump put a really crazy asshole

By rsilvergun • Score: 3 Thread
In charge of the intelligence apparatus. Even by Trump’s standards he was a completely incompetent toady piece of shit lunatic.

This was Congress telling Trump he couldn’t have his pick without directly opposing him because direct opposition risks a primary Challenger.

Anyway Trump backed down so it’ll get renewed here in a few weeks. Nothing to see here just a little back room politics.

It is frustrating how completely fucked up our politics are because Republican primary voters are bat shit insane. On the other hand if you’re voting Republican in this day and age you’re pretty far gone.

Mystery Orb Videos, Other UFO Records Released By White House

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
The Trump administration released another large batch of government UAP records, including videos of glowing orb-like objects appearing to split and rejoin, witness accounts, illustrations, and decades-old investigative documents. Axios reports:
The documents indicate that government agents have spent years monitoring, investigating and documenting suspected UAP incidents. At lease some of the sightings took place near sensitive government facilities, according to the reports. Videos showing red and yellow light-emitting orbs, some of which appear to split apart and then reattach as they fly across the sky. The videos were taken by witnesses whom the government deemed “credible.”

Illustrations and videos showing reenactments of what observers saw, and the positions they were in when they viewed them. Memos from government agents describing their experiences seeing flying objects. An illustration of a grayish-white balloon-like object hovering above an area near Colorado Springs, Colo. An illustration depicting a series of incidents that took place in the “western United States” where government officials reported seeing UAPs in 2023.

There also are decades-old records documenting the government’s involvement in investigating UAPs, including a 1949 letter then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote federal agents after receiving a message from an American citizen expressing their belief they’d seen a non-human-made flying object. The records released by the administration do not express any conclusions as to whether the government believes the UAPs represent the existence of alien life. They also do not indicate any conclusions as to whether UAPs represent a national security threat to the U.S.

Whatever can get faked easiest

By gweihir • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The only reason they release this nonsense now is that they need to misdirect away from Epstein, the economic catastrophe, the criminal efforts and the war with Iran and some other things they have messed up.

Credible

By Ozeroc • Score: 5, Informative Thread
The current government has no credibility so neither do their sources.

Why Aliens

By gurps_npc • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Why do we always think the UFO/UAP are Aliens? Here are a bunch of other explanations that are JUST as credible as Aliens:

Dragons. With Wizards riding them.

Time Traveling humans. Mostly likely drunk Fraternity brothers considering all the reports of anal probes.

Hallucinations caused by my Canadian girlfriend’s psychic powers.

Humans are drunk and/or ignorant enough to think a balloon will not appear to move even though they are in a car.

Investigation

By GeekWithAKnife • Score: 5, Funny Thread
That’s the sort of commitment we need. Years of documenting and investigating all of Epstein’s friends, accomplices, business partners and those in government that are obstructing said investigations.

Apparently there’s many thousands of mentions of current US government officials in those files in very compromising fashion.

Maybe the government can get Anthropic’s Fable 5 to do a thorough analysis and sign all the files, their dates, counts, mentions of people and interactions with all metadata into a publicly verifiable library.

After all, the current POTUS is a huge proponent of transparency and honesty. Some say the most transparent and honest president ever, in the history of all mankind. All the people that work for him say so.

Re:The alternative..

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Funny Thread

At least Jim Jones gave away the kool aid for free. Trump would charge you for it.

World’s First Crewed Solid-State Flight Electrifies Aviation’s Future

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
The Helios Horizon has completed what its developers call the first crewed, fixed-wing flight powered by solid-state batteries. New Atlas reports:
On June 5, test pilot Miguel Iturmendi lifted off from Zephyrhills Municipal Airport in Florida at the controls of the Helios Horizon — the first crewed, fixed-wing aircraft ever to fly on solid-state batteries. The flight was neither spectacular in distance nor in duration — it was a series of short tests to validate the aircraft’s weight and balance after the new batteries had been installed — but it didn’t need to be to make history. […] The Helios Horizon’s previous lithium-ion pack delivered 260 Wh/kg (watt-hours per kilogram, a measure of how much energy a battery holds relative to its weight). The new solid-state cells hit 410 Wh/kg, a 60% jump. Chief test pilot and company founder Miguel Iturmendi expects that figure to grow another 40% within two years.

Though the battery pack can be topped up over any AC outlet, no special infrastructure needed, fast-charging is also supported for up to 80% capacity in under 15 minutes. The aircraft also recovers energy in flight through wing-mounted solar panels and a regenerative system that spins the propeller as a wind turbine during glides and descents. “Regenerative flight can significantly extend the aircraft’s range,” Iturmendi said after the test flights.

The Helios Horizon itself started life as a Pipistrel Taurus motorized glider. Iturmendi’s team added proprietary battery management, a custom propulsion stack, thermodynamic controls, and solar panel wing extensions. The aircraft already holds the world altitude record for electric planes in its weight class, having reached 24,000 ft (7,315 m). The next goal is 40,000 ft (12,192 m), commercial cruising altitude, in stratospheric flights planned for later this year.

Battery energy density

By bubblyceiling • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
I think the actual news here is the 410wh/kg battery. It is a good increase over the 300wh/kg top of the line batteries available.

This is a milestone

By gweihir • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

They are not close to commercial viability. But they made another step in that direction. Some things just need time, sometimes several generations. Still worth doing.

Re:Silly.

By Tony Isaac • Score: 5, Informative Thread

I’m confused by your point about weight, because it’s exactly what is addressed in the summary.

The new solid-state cells hit 410 Wh/kg, a 60% jump.

A 60% increase in power stored “per ounce” of battery is pretty significant. This isn’t going to be the last increase, this is just the very first time solid state batteries have been used in this way.

Drone range has continued to increase. I see no reason range for planes that carry people, couldn’t also increase.

Not sure they are the first

By Faldgan • Score: 3 Thread

The Blackfly from Pivotal is crewed and fixed wing. I have passed their flight training program in 2025 and fly a Blackfly occasionally. The crewed and fixed wing part is absolutely true. I think the batteries are LiPo, which are not solid state.

Not only have they been flying crewed for years now, they have delivered aircraft to customers and are being used professionally by an EMS organization to fly the EMT to the patient for faster responses.

I am happy that Helios Horizon is flying and I think electric motor gliders are a great combination of the technology but the only thing that makes this a ‘first’ is the solid state batteries, and I don’t think that’s actually a big deal. Just adding qualifiers until you get a new combination and calling it a ‘first’ (Crewed, fixed-wing, solid state) seems mid at best.

https://aopa.org/news-and-medi…
http://pivotal.aero/
https://evtolinsights.com/pivo…

Re:Silly.

By JaredOfEuropa • Score: 4, Informative Thread
Range is still a bit of an issue, even if you’re just doing touch & go’s at your local field. You need 1 hour endurance for the lesson, 15-30 minutes alternate fuel (in case you have to divert), and 15 minutes emergency fuel (normally 45 mins, but EASA issued a waiver for electric aircraft). In practice you want an aircraft with at least 2 hours “trip fuel” (the portion used for the planned flight), so that student pilots can complete the cross-country solo flight they are required to fly. Only now are we starting to see some electric aircraft that have the battery capacity for that.

Then there’s the recharging. At the flight school I attended, the airplanes would typically go up 4 times on busy days, sometimes 5. With recharging, that drops to 2-3 flights a day (you’re not draining the battery completely on each flight). But if operating costs for electric planes are significantly lower, perhaps having a few extra planes might turn out to be economical… but it does mean you can’t pass that savings on to your students.

Anthropic ‘Suspends’ All Mythos and Fable Access After US Order Limiting Foreign Access

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“Anthropic said on Friday it will ‘abruptly disable’ its most advanced AI models for all users,” reports Reuters, “after the U.S. government ordered it to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns. The company received the export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, without being given specific details of its national security concern, Anthropic said in a statement.”

Anthropic’s blog post writes that the directive applies to foreign nationals “whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance.”

“Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.”
We received the directive from the government today at 5:21pm (ET)… Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or “jailbreaking” Fable 5… We have not even received a disclosure of a concerning non-universal potential jailbreak that led to a harmful result. The potential jailbreaks that have been disclosed to us are either entirely benign responses or are minor findings that provide no Mythos-specific uplift.

To date, the government has only given us verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak, which essentially consists of asking the model to read a specific codebase and fix any software flaws. Our understanding is that one potential jailbreak was shared with the government. We have reviewed a report that we believe is the basis of the government’s directive and validated that the level of capability displayed there is widely available from other models (including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5), and is used every day by the defenders who keep systems safe… We are complying with the government’s legal directive and are removing access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users. However, we disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people. If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.

As we have stated publicly, we believe the government should have the ability to block unsafe deployments, as part of a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts. This action does not adhere to those principles. We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible.
Reuters notes that Amazon’s cloud unit AWS “said late on Friday that Anthropic has asked it to revoke access to the models for ‘all users in all regions.’"
Dean Ball, a former White House official who contributed to the AI Action Plan the administration issued in the summer of 2025, said in a post on X that the order suggests all “non-Americans” would be restricted from using Anthropic’s latest models, including those based in the U.S. “This means you should expect to have to prove your citizenship to use Anthropic models,” Ball said. Several key Anthropic personnel, including co-founder Chris Olah, AI researcher Andrej Karpathy and philosopher Amanda Askell, were born outside the United States.

Par for the course

By spaceman375 • Score: 3, Insightful Thread

Given that Trump fires experts and hires cronies with no qualifications for the job at hand, of course the governmental actions are heavy-handed ideological decrees with no basis in fact. Embarrassing them with the truth is a tricky response, but I applaud Anthropic’s effort.

foreign offices

By gtall • Score: 3 Thread

While based in San Francisco, they have offices all over the world. If I were them, I’d be threatening to leave the U.S. and not make an idle threat.

Re:Holy Pre-IPO Hype, Batman!

By thesandbender • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
So far most of the popular Chinese models have relied heavily on training with US Frontier models. Even as recently as Qwen 3.5 it would sometimes respond that it was ChatGPT or Gemini. Anthropic and ChatGPT even play whack a mole with accounts that are doing this and a large chunk of them have been tied to the PRC. It’s a perfectly valid approach (technically) but it’s against the ToS for the providers.

Anthropic didn’t pay the Trump tax

By teg • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Under this administration, you know the underlying cause is they didn’t pay off Trump, his family, and his cronies.

It’s sickening how corrupt the US has become. Sure, one can argue it’s been bad - but Trump has turned it up to 20, on a scale from 1-10 - just bulldozing through any limits one thought existed. “Want a pardon? Sure, buy some millions in Trump coin and it’s yours.” Or just giving himself a giant slush fund via a settlement with his underlings.

Can we be honest?

By DarthBobo • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Can we be honest for just one minute and admit that this in unlikely to be about national security, and more likely the current administration intervening in private enterprise? They have been very clear that they want to bring Anthropic to heal by threatening their business (eg, Dept of Defense declaring them a supply chain risk). Anthropic’s competitors have the direct ear of the administration and have shown themselves to be willing to act unethically to get what they want (Altman, Musk). Until we can recognize this behavior, point at it and discuss it out loud it won’t end and we will continue a slide towards oligarchy.

I used Fable for about 24 hours - it’s impressive. We used it to review a system for potential security hardening and it did a really good job, but not much better than 4.8 or gpt-5.5 running for a longer time. And it wouldn’t identify potential attack vectors. I can’t say how useful Mythos would be in the hands of an adversary, but I can say that Fable wouldn’t be a step change for anyone that can afford to burn tokens in agentic fan out pattern.

Data Center Opponents Have Blocked Or Delayed Projects Worth Nearly $130 Billion In 2026

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News:
The first quarter of 2026 produced the most blocked and delayed data center projects on record, according to a new study shared with NBC News. The study — conducted by Data Center Watch, a project of the AI intelligence firm 10a Labs that tracks local data center activity — found that data center opponents blocked or delayed at least 75 projects nationwide worth about $130 billion from January through March, the most in a three-month period since the group began tracking in 2023.

“The quarter reflected a structural shift rather than a cyclical spike: communities have internalized an opposition playbook, legislative sessions introduced formal regulatory uncertainty, and the number of active opposition groups more than doubled to 833 across 49 states,” the authors wrote, noting that the total number and value of data centers blocked or delayed during the first three months of 2026 roughly matched the total for all of 2025.

[…] The report found that legislative pushes for moratoriums on constructing data centers ballooned during the first quarter of 2026, sponsored by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The report found such proposals introduced in 14 states from January through March, with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., introducing a federal version. Though none of the proposals has been signed into law, one did reach the desk of Democratic Gov. Janet Mills in Maine. She vetoed it in April.

More than 300 bills were introduced in statehouses across the country just in the first six weeks of 2026, the authors found, saying it marked “a clear shift from incentive-focused policies toward regulatory oversight as the scale of energy demands became clearer.” What’s more, the study found that the number of active grassroots opposition groups across the country more than doubled from 396 at the end of 2025 to 833 by March. The authors found that the states with the most opposition groups through that month were Maryland, Ohio and Texas. “In some cases,” they wrote, “opposition mobilized before any project was officially filed, the mere rumor of a data center was enough to trigger organized resistance.”

The only commentary appropriate;

By MrMacman2u • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Oh no!

Anyway.

Re:Blocks .....

By phantomfive • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Those communities will be the losers.

No LOL. These datacenters don’t employ many local residents. They wouldn’t be getting the money.

Re:Blocks .....

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Those communities will be the losers.

Because of the significantly higher power and water rates they won’t be paying, or because of the half-dozen relatively low-paying jobs that won’t be created?

Re:Is Ohio shooting themselves in the foot?

By Todd Knarr • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Yes. The construction jobs are very short-term, and once built the data centers bring huge costs (financial and otherwise) while contributing only a handful of permanent jobs. Remember, these are lights-out hands-off facilities. They’ll employ a handful of security guards and maintenance workers, the rest will all be handled remotely from Malaysia or the like.

Re:Blocks .....

By psycho12345 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Why? Data centers drive up local electric bills, the take up local water at below cost. They provide virtually no jobs. They provide constant noise pollution. They are a depreciating asset.

What benefit does it provide them???

Jeff Bezos’ AI Startup Aims To Build an ‘Artificial General Engineer’

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Jeff Bezos says his new AI startup, Prometheus, is working toward an “artificial general engineer" capable of helping design complex physical products such as robots, drugs, manufacturing systems, and rocket engines. The Verge reports:
The NYT first reported on Prometheus last November, but now Bezos is sharing more information about the startup after a $12 billion funding round, putting the company at a $41 billion valuation. Bezos serves as co-CEO of Prometheus alongside Vik Bajaj, who co-founded Alphabet’s health-focused research group, Verily. The startup currently has around 150 employees.

The tools Prometheus intends to build could help develop physical products across several industries, including robotics, drug design, and manufacturing, the NYT reports. “Blue Origin is a perfect example of a company that could benefit from the tools that Prometheus is building,” Bezos tells the NYT. “Any company that is building sophisticated devices — like rocket engines — would benefit greatly from this kind of technology.”

And who will be the accountability sink

By hwstar • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

when the bridge or building collapses, or many die due to a flaw in a drug developed by these AGE’s?

I bet it won’t be anyone in this new startup due to the corporate veil.

Drug discovery part is BS

By methano • Score: 5, Informative Thread
I’m an organic chemist. I’ve worked in drug discovery for 45 years. It’s hard. Jeff Bezos ain’t nowhere close to figuring it out. I don’t know about the other parts, but I know for sure the drug discovery stuff is bullshit.

Re:AI generates a LOT of words that need to be rea

By geekmux • Score: 5, Funny Thread

I can’t imagine a group of managers reading through 3000 pages of AI output every day..

Any PHB worth their hair points knows the ‘right’ thing to do in that scenario is to pack all that output deep into the ChatGPT bong bowl and hit Enter, sparking the Flame of Delusion..

..which of course makes the executives cheer..

Re:And who will be the accountability sink

By Inglix the Mad • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
This is similar to the radiology argument.

Company builds “AI” (it isn’t AI but let’s pretend) that can “read” images. Company goes to sell this to a hospital CEO. They say it will do the work that radiologists would do, and it only costs (X) tokens per scan. Imagine the savings! Hospital asks about liability, and here’s the kicker: The AI company says just have one of the remaining human doctors the hospital has on-site to review the scan.

Now skipping the part where it says it can do the work, it’s dumping liability on the human who now not only has to review their own work but also the AI. The AI doesn’t have to be perfect… the human has to be perfect. In a logical world the CEO would tell the company to go sell their hokum elsewhere until they’re willing to put their own reputation AND finances on the line to stand behind their work. However if the average CEO can sign a contract to pay the company 15% less than a human overall, then add that 15% to the bottom line, they’ll get a bonus, so you’d best get to work doc.

When the mistake happens, you’ll get sued… instead of the “AI” system and it just sucks to be you person who went to school to become an actual SME. We’ve already seen them blame software devs/engineers when AI writes crappy code that causes problems. You think they aren’t going to dump other bad crap on humans when the tool breaks?

Re:Based on AI flaws so far…

By geekmux • Score: 4, Informative Thread

The deadly part, isn’t when well-trained intelligent humans can call AI on it’s bullshit.

The deadly part, is when all those humans die off and get replaced with the drug-addled screen addicted generation that doesn’t even care to anymore.

When apathy dies, humanity dies.

Justice Department Approves Paramount’s $111 Billion Acquisition of Warner Bros.

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
The Justice Department has approved Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery without requiring divestitures or other concessions. The deal still faces scrutiny from state attorneys general. Politico reports:
The decision, expected to be announced Friday, paves the way for Paramount to combine with the entertainment and media company behind a vast film and television studio, CNN, and the HBO Max streaming service, which would be combined with Paramount+ to create a new offering boasting about 200 million subscribers. The deal, which would upend the Hollywood ecosystem by combining two historic rival studios, is opposed by many in the entertainment industry who fear it could lead to mass layoffs, among other concerns.

After an extensive review, DOJ officials determined the transaction did not pose a threat to competition and declined to challenge it, said the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. The department approved the merger without requiring any divestitures, behavioral remedies or concessions, according to one of the people. […] The DOJ’s approval does not end the merger’s legal scrutiny. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has been reviewing the transaction and could still sue to block the deal despite federal regulators signing off. A spokesperson for Bonta’s office told POLITICO earlier this week “the Paramount acquisition of Warner Brothers remains an active investigation.”

[…] Throughout those discussions, Paramount maintained that the merger would strengthen competition rather than diminish it, creating a media company better positioned to compete with streaming leaders and deep-pocketed technology rivals, according to people familiar with the matter. Hollywood workers fear the merger could trigger another wave of layoffs in an industry already reeling from years of consolidation. Critics argue that billions in promised cost savings will come at the expense of jobs, fewer opportunities for creators and greater concentration of power across film, television and streaming.

Re:Of course they did

By Local ID10T • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The market consolidation was likely inevitable. There is just not enough consumer interest to support as many media producers as we have now.

The problem is this particular ownership group is largely foreign (Saudi). Turning over control of a US news media channel to foreign government ownership is not good.

I know that News Corp (Rupert Murdoch) is foreign and they own Fox, and Wall Street Journal, and many others… but at least Murdoch is not a foreign government.

Re:Of course they did

By ISoldat53 • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
The check must have cleared.

Re:Of course they did

By jacks smirking reven • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

It’s not inevitable though, it’s the result of choices. Even the acquisition is a choice,. We could simply say “no buyout, go bankrupt” and their assets can get auctioned off piecemeal to anyone who wants to buy them.

Re:Of course they did

By garyisabusyguy • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Market consolidation and monopolies are an inevitable outcome of Capitalism, that is why capitalism is regulated in America

Those who chafe at the idea of being limited in that fashion, have worked over the last 80 years to subvert this regulation (and the taxation that goes with it), and convince the American people that Starve the Beast is the only thing that will make them truly free

The BIG LIE is that the Beast (US Government) is the only thing keeping them from being proles

Of course they did

By C_Kode • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Of course they did. This is pure blatant corruption in play. This is an attempt to take over media control so they can feed the public only what they want them to hear.

ShinyHunters Hacked 100+ Organizations By Exploiting an Oracle PeopleSoft 0-Day

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ShinyHunters claims it exploited a critical Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day to compromise more than 100 organizations, including the University of Nottingham, where it says it stole 40GB of student and billing data. “ShinyHunters posted the UK university on its data leak site on Tuesday before publishing the stolen files later that same day, presumably because the school refused to pay the extortion demand,” reports The Register. From the report:
“University of Nottingham on our leak site is one of the first publicly confirmed incidents,” a ShinyHunters spokesperson told us. “We have only just started outreach to affected orgs and are actively looking to reach an agreement with affected orgs.” They didn’t say when they planned to post the other 100 or so claimed victims.

A Google threat intelligence report published Thursday afternoon corroborated ShinyHunters’ claims to have compromised more than 100 organizations. Google said it spotted malicious activity, “consistent with the exploitation of CVE-2026-35273,” between May 27 and June 9, and notified more than 100 global orgs “whose IP addresses correlated with potentially vulnerable endpoints.” Most of these, we’re told, are based in the US and 68 percent are in the higher-education sector.
Oracle has released a “patch availability document,” but it’s unclear whether a patch is currently available.

Google Sues Chinese Cybercrime Operation That Used Gemini AI To Send Scam Texts

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch:
Google is suing to dismantle the infrastructure behind an alleged massive AI-powered cybercrime operation. On Friday, the tech giant announced a lawsuit against an alleged Chinese cybercrime network called Outsider Enterprise, which Google says uses AI in its campaigns to send scam text messages impersonating Google and other brands to steal passwords and credit card numbers.

Outsider Enterprise has financially scammed “hundreds of thousands of victims” with losses “estimated in the millions.” The group deployed 9,000 fake websites, 1 million fraudulent web domains, and 2.5 million texts sent to Android users in a two-week period, according to Google. “55,000 spam texts were flagged by Android users in just two weeks this past May — that’s more than two text spam complaints a minute,” Google said.

Google said it uses “AI-powered tools to fight AI-powered scams”, which enable the company to detect scams and alert users of suspicious calls and text messages, leading to the interception of more than 10 billion scam messages a month. The company said it has been collaborating with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon to block the scam text messages and said it is coordinating with the FBI, which is taking unspecified law enforcement actions.

Finally!

By PPH • Score: 3 Thread

Google wakes up. After allowing GMail users to spam the world with scams for years. They finally figured out that maybe this could damage their brand (not surprised if this was China’s intent).

Now pardon me while I answer this message from Charles Ndungu Thuo.

Re:Finally!

By RitchCraft • Score: 4, Funny Thread

Damn! You know Charles too!?

Some things that would be helpful

By Arrogant-Bastard • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
1. The list of “1 million fraudulent domains”. I’d like to drop that list into the appropriate configuration files. I’d also like to see which registrar(s) are involved and who’s providing DNS services for them.

2. The list of “9,000 fake websites”. Same for these, and I’d like to see who’s providing hosting for them.

This is a pet peeve of mine: reports like this come out, but the original source (Google in this case) doesn’t publish the fundamental factual information that everyone needs to defend themselves AND to gain some understanding of how the threat works, so that everyone can defend themselves against the inevitable copycats. Instead we get a bunch of corporate PR-speak, which is utterly useless. So if you’re reading this, Google: pony up.

Re:Some things that would be helpful

By Narcocide • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

2. The list of “9,000 fake websites”. Same for these, and I’d like to see who’s providing hosting for them.

Spoiler alert! That’s gonna turn out to also be Google.

Touchscreen Macbook ‘100% Confirmed,’ Says Reputable Leaker

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A leaker with a strong Apple rumor track record says a touchscreen MacBook is “100% confirmed. If true, it would mark a major reversal for Apple, which has long argued that the Mac is built for indirect input rather than reaching up to touch a vertical screen. MacRumors reports:
Instant Digital has a good track record for Apple rumors and has provided some strikingly accurate information in the past, so it’s always worth noting what they have to say about Apple’s plans. The claim is also backed by several recent reports. […] Touchscreen support is expected to be one of several major upgrades coming to Apple’s next-generation high-end MacBook Pro models. Other rumored features include M6 Pro and M6 Max chips, an OLED display, a Dynamic Island (i.e., no notch), and a thinner design. The new laptops could also adopt MacBook Ultra branding.

Notably, macOS 27 Golden Gate also introduces a more touch-friendly interface, since Apple’s Sidecar feature now allows users to tap and interact with macOS interface elements using a finger on their iPad. Apple apparently is not going to advertise the new MacBook Pro/Ultra as a touch-first device like the iPad — it will be “touch-friendly, not touch-first,” according to [Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman]. In that sense, Apple will let customers use touch and mouse gestures interchangeably for all functions.
Further reading: Steve Jobs Was Wrong About Touchscreen Laptops (2012)

Re:Question ?

By dargaud • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Because it makes your screen all dirty and gives you gorilla arms. Any other stupid questions ? PS: I’ve been known to punch colleagues who touch my screen after I told them not to.

Re:Question ?

By ZERO1ZERO • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
don’t touch your screen then. You realise that you don’t have to touch the screen, it’s only an option for people that want to be able to ?

Re:Question ?

By fahrbot-bot • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Because it makes your screen all dirty and gives you gorilla arms. Any other stupid questions ? PS: I’ve been known to punch colleagues who touch my screen after I told them not to.

Those punches would be more effective if you had gorilla arms. Just sayin’. :-)

Re:Question ?

By smooth wombat • Score: 4, Funny Thread
if expense is the concern, don’t buy a mac book

Fixed it for you.

Re:Question ?

By thegarbz • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

and more expensive?

he said about buying a Macbook without even a hint of irony.

Microsoft Surface Flaw Allowed Unprotected Devices To Be Bricked By a Single Packet

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Longtime Slashdot reader Dotnaught shares a report from The Register:
For the past 90 days, Microsoft has been quietly patching a firmware flaw in Surface devices that allowed the hardware to be bricked with a single packet, though only for those who have disabled Secure Core and Secure Boot. And the company’s Copilot AI software inadvertently helped identify the faulty firmware.

According to Jack Darcy, a security researcher based in Australia, his instance of Microsoft Copilot stumbled across the bug after being asked to adjust the screen backlighting on a Surface device. The Copilot-conjured Python script ended up rendering the researcher’s laptop inoperable by overwriting the embedded controller firmware. “Copilot autonomously created and executed four progressively aggressive Python scripts during a probe for backlight control values that sent raw SSAM ioctl commands (SSAM_CDEV_REQUEST = 0xC028A501) directly to the SAM microcontroller through the SAM software path,” Darcy explained to The Register.

[…] “We appreciate the work of Jack Darcy and The Register for reporting this issue under a coordinated vulnerability disclosure,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. “Our investigation found that a deprecated UEFI interface could trigger a boot loop on some devices. To trigger this loop, the user must have administrator privileges and have already disabled the Secure Boot security feature. We have released updates to address the issue for most impacted devices.”

That means managed devices are not at risk. But those using Linux, or Windows users who have disabled Secure Core and Secure Boot for gaming, or who use custom Windows drivers, or who have USB boot enabled, may still be vulnerable if their systems haven’t received the update. We’re uncertain about the range of Surface devices affected. Our source said it appears to be all of them (Surface Laptops 3-6, Surface Book 1-3) except for Surface Go models. ARM variants, however, have not been tested.
The report notes that Microsoft is planning to move the Surface stack to a more secure architecture based on Rust code.
“Our most recent Surface for Business hardware features a major architectural shift in terms of improved reliability and security that spans our embedded controller, UEFI, but also some of our drivers,” said David Abzarian, chief architect for Microsoft Surface. “We’re investing in the most secure foundation for a PC by building our embedded controller firmware from the ground up in Rust (as part of leveraging and contributing to the Open Device Partnership (ODP)) in addition to a rewrite of the UEFI DXE Core in Rust; these projects are known as Secure EC and Project Patina respectively.”

“We’re also not only shipping some of our drivers written in Rust, but also helping co-develop the framework Windows Drivers in Rust (WDR) to help enable a broad set of partners in the Windows ecosystem to capitalize on these benefits. I will also note that all of these efforts are open-source promoting one of our key security principles around transparency.”

Amazing…

By Junta • Score: 3 Thread

In a sane world, you might expect the Windows ‘integrated’ AI to be wired up to just… adjust the brightness..

But *fine*, you don’t wire it up, you might then at least hope the AI to say “That capability is not enabled, but here is some help text telling you to do it”.

But nope, “That sounds like something an ioctl would do, and I don’t know the ioctl per se, but let’s just submit random bullshit ioctls and *maybe* it will happen to do as user requested?”

Killer Poke

By jpatters • Score: 5, Funny Thread

POKE 59458,62

Re:Amazing…

By omnichad • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Just for fun, I asked Gemini and it says:

To adjust the screen brightness on a Microsoft Surface (or any Windows laptop), you can use the WMI API (Windows Management Instrumentation) with WmiMonitorBrightnessMethods or the UWP BrightnessOverride class.

So yeah, it’s wild how these LLMs lose the plot and just start bashing square pegs into round holes.

Raises hand …

By fahrbot-bot • Score: 3 Thread

I’m not much of a laptop user, and haven’t seen many Surface devices, but all the laptops I’ve seen have functions keys to adjust the screen brightness. Is this something different or doesn’t Surface have some tactile way to accomplish this?

Sam Bankman-Fried Loses Bid To Overturn Crypto Fraud Conviction

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Sam Bankman-Fried lost his appeal to overturn his FTX fraud conviction and 25-year sentence. Reuters reports:
In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said prosecutors’ evidence against Bankman-Fried “was, conservatively stated, robust.” “While he was publicly reassuring customers, investors and regulators that FTX customer funds were safe, he was simultaneously using FTX as his own personal piggy bank, spending customer funds on real estate, political contributions, and investments,” Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote on behalf of the panel.

Bankman-Fried’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. They may next ask all the active judges on the 2nd Circuit to hear the case, or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. Bankman-Fried is also seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump, according to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 for “masterminding one of the largest financial frauds in American history,” wrote US District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He was convicted on all charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering.

Bribes

By angryman77 • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Just bribe Trump. It’s been shown to work many times already.

If he can scrape up enough for a bribe…

By haruchai • Score: 3 Thread

then Trump will pardon him on the way out. Might do for Ghislaine too

Re:Bribes

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Pardons are set at $1 million. https://www.congress.gov/119/m…

Re:Bribes

By smooth wombat • Score: 4, Informative Thread
Then again, he didn’t issue ‘pre-emptive’ pardons for his family, friends, crackhead son, etc yet,

The only reason Biden issued those pardons was because Trump was bragging about how he was going to weaponize the DOJ to go after people.

As for the clemencies, that does not absolve the person of the crime they committed. All it does is show mercy on them.

Compare that to all the January 6th terrorists who have been pardoned. And now there’s talk of paying them for their troubles. No, not the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund*. There is still talk of paying these people for their crimes.

* Anti-weaponization is straight out of Orwell. Or the Soviet Union. Take your pick. Apparently imprisoning people who attack police aren’t criminals in his eyes.

Re: Bribes

By angryman77 • Score: 4, Informative Thread
Biden said more than once he wouldn’t pressure the DoJ to prosecute Trump if he was elected President.

Trump said more than once he would pressure the DoJ to prosecute anyone and everyone that he sees as his personal enemies if he was to be re-elected as president.

When Biden was elected, he didn’t pressure the DoJ to go after Trump. Some states did, for illegal shit he did before, after and during his first term, but Biden didn’t.

When Trump was re-elected he resumed using the DoJ as his personal legal hit squad.

Given the actual context of both situations, and the events that occurred, your statements are are incredibly detached from reality.

Infineon to Open German Chip Fab as Part of EU Sovereignty Push

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Infineon is set to open a $5.8 billion power-chip fab in Dresden on July 2, backed by about $1.1 billion in EU Chips Act subsidies. The plant will make power semiconductors for AI data centers and could eventually add up to $5.8 billion in annual revenue as demand for AI infrastructure strains global electricity systems. Bloomberg reports:
Infineon, traditionally a chipmaker for the automotive industry, has increasingly benefited from soaring demand for power chips used in AI data centers, which will be produced at the new facility. “The AI data centers currently being built and planned around the world will consume twice as much electricity in 2030 as they do today,” [said Chief Operating Officer Alexander Gorski]. “That’s as much as the entire Federal Republic of Germany.”

Chip production at the Dresden fab will be scaled over time depending on demand, potentially adding as much as 5 billion euros in revenue per year, Gorski said, declining to comment on when full capacity will be reached. The company has invested around 2 billion euros on construction and the remaining amount will be spent over time to add more machines to the fab, he added.

The new facility is “a key catalyst,” Bank of America analysts including Didier Scemama wrote in a note last week. Demand from Al customers is materially above Infineon’s current capacity, they said, adding the imbalance could improve in the 2027 and 2028 financial years. The analysts raised their Al power revenue forecast for the company by 500 million euros to 4.5 billion euros for 2028.

Infineon expects data center-related revenue to rise from around 1.5 billion euros in fiscal 2026 — roughly 10% of sales — to 2.5 billion euros in 2027, it said last month. The hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in AI are driving the rapid expansion of data center capabilities around the world. Infineon doesn’t produce advanced AI chips, like those designed by Nvidia. But the power semiconductors it plans to produce in Dresden are still needed for AI infrastructure.

Nice

By Tailhook • Score: 3 Thread

Great. New fab in the West. It’s just power stuff; silicon carbide FET and whatnot. Still, if concern for “sovereignty” is what it takes for bedroom community Europe to get off the dime, then good for them. Better than being industrial vassals of the US, China and Russia, which is where they’ve been heading. Feel free to make more “sovereign” fabs.

Re:Germany’s an interesting choice

By angel’o’sphere • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Germany has not many muslim immigrants.
Most muslims are borne here. And: as they are not refugees from Palestina or Iran: they are not more anti semit than anyone else. If they were: they would have been sent back “home”.

Stupid idiot. How can one be such an idiot?