Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. Dinosaur Blood Found In Fossils For the First Time
  2. Democrats Take Control of US Congress As Voters Reject Trump’s Republicans
  3. Ukraine’s Drone Strikes Spur Hasty Russian Plans For Underground Data Centers
  4. iOS 27.3 Adds Vertical Tabs, Adaptive Dark Mode to Safari
  5. EU Court Advisor Warns Google AI Chatbot May Breach Copyright Rules
  6. Bethesda Confirms The Elder Scrolls 6 Is Called ‘Sentinel’
  7. Firefox’s New Mini Window Is Every Multitasker’s Dream
  8. Binance Says Hackers Used Fake Job Interviews, AI Tool to Steal $6.3 Billion In Crypto
  9. Fujifilm To Boost Tape Production 5x As AI Fuels Archiving Demand
  10. Google Will Turn Off Search For Schools That Reject AI
  11. SUSE To Cut One In Ten Employees Because of AI
  12. MIT Researchers Used GPT-6 Astra To Edit Qwen’s Open Weights Directly, Boosting Math Scores
  13. Cops Bust Botnet of 1.3 Million Android TV Boxes
  14. China Publicly Discloses Plan For a Lunar Landing Within Three Years
  15. BYD Sold More EVs Last Month Than the US Did All Quarter

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.

Dinosaur Blood Found In Fossils For the First Time

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Researchers have confirmed the presence of intact biomolecules and mineralized red blood cells inside the 115-million-year-old fossilized bones of a juvenile Aratasaurus museunacionali from Brazil. The discovery challenges assumptions about how long blood-related biomolecules can survive and could help scientists study dinosaur metabolism, blood evolution and even how traces of ancient life might be preserved on other worlds. Popular Science reports:
The evidence exists inside the fossilized limb bones of a juvenile Aratasaurus museunacionali. Discovered in 2008, A. museunacionali was an Early Cretaceous theropod that lived in present-day northeastern Brazil. The fossils suggest a dinosaur measuring over 10 feet long and weighing about 75 pounds, but given its young age, A. museunacionali likely grew even larger. After carefully examining thin slices of the fossils, paleontologists located the mineralized red blood cell molecular components, along with a complex manganese oxide called hausmannite. This material helped maintain the cellular structures of heme, a ring-shaped molecule that contains iron and binds many proteins, especially hemoglobin. The hausmannite also helped preserve additional biomolecules found in the blood, such as the amino acids in collagen. The study’s authors theorize this level of preservation could only occur following a rapid burial in an environment that was rich in microbes, but low in oxygen at the same time.
The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Democrats Take Control of US Congress As Voters Reject Trump’s Republicans

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Tuesday, November 3, was Election Day in the United States, and the results are (mostly) in: Democrats are projected to win control of both the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms. The blue wave turned out to be more of a blue tsunami, ending Republican control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Democrats flipped seven Republican-held Senate seats in the 2026 midterms, including surprise victories in traditionally Republican strongholds such as Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina. Kansas elected its first Democratic U.S. senator in nearly 100 years (94 years to be exact), while Texas and South Carolina sent Democrats to the Senate for the first time in decades. Democrats also picked up seats in Ohio, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina.

Developing…

Trump a “lame duck” president?

By Mostly a lurker • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

Those who believe a Democrat Congress (or the courts) will be able to significantly derail Trump agenda are naive. Trump ignores norms, and even laws. Trump’s ballroom project is an instructive lesson on how we can expect him to act. He will use executive orders and covert operations to initiate actions which will be challenged in the court and investigated by Congress. The Congressional investigations will be endless, involving ignored subpoenas and Republican obstruction. Actions in court will take a year or more. By the time there are decisions by the Supreme Court or Congressional votes (which Trump may or may not obey) there will usually be irreversible faits accomplis.

How vulnerable Trump is(n’t) to impeachment

By SubmergedInTech • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

He has to be aware how vulnerable he is to impeachment right now

Last I checked, there were 42 Senate races already called for Republicans. That means we Democrats will hold no more than 58. It takes *67* Senators to convict a President in an impeachment trial.

I am (pretty) sure Trump is aware that 58 is less than 67. Trump is also aware that the Republicans who would have been most likely to cross the aisle to vote with Democrats to convict are also ones we just kicked out of office, like Susan Collins.

Democrats will control the House. They can (and I’m sure will) file articles of impeachment.

Democrats will control the Senate. They can (and I’m sure will) hold a trial each time articles of impeachment are received.

Every single trial will result in acquittal, because Democrats would need to convince at least 9 Republicans to join them.

So, yes, Trump knows how vulnerable he is: not at all.

Re:How vulnerable Trump is(n’t) to impeachment

By outsider007 • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

On the other hand, he’s so toxic right now, if he were to start any more war bullshit, I think the 9 red senators who vote him out will look like heroes to their own base.

Re:News for nerds: No Stuff that matters: Yes

By ukoda • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread
I hear you but… I couldn’t have cared less about US politics until trump made the business environment so unstable that all the US companies I was doing tech contract work for halted work and switched to survival mode. Now all my tech work is for non-US companies for products sold globally, except the USA.

Kind of hoping this means the USA has hit bottom and will hold there until trump’s anti-business policies are reversed and companies can start panning for the future again. However it may be a long time, if ever, before the tech industry recovers in the US. One of the best companies I worked for gave up 6 months ago when the trump losses became too much. I am settling into roles free from US influence and can’t see myself working for one anytime soon.

So yea politics matters for nerd news right now, but hopefully one day in the future we can go back to nerd news being driven by tech events.

Re:lol, eat shit fascists

By AmiMoJo • • Score: 5, Funny • Thread

But now you aren’t going to get your $5,000!!!

Ukraine’s Drone Strikes Spur Hasty Russian Plans For Underground Data Centers

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:
[S]tate-owned telecommunications company Rostelcom has raised the possibility of moving some Russian data centers underground in talks with the nickel and palladium mining company Norilsk, according to Russian newspaper Vedomosti. The industry publication Data Center Dynamics also pointed to a recent proposal by a Russian regional governor to build data centers within open-pit coal mines while planting green public parks above as camouflage.

On November 2, Putin also signed a decree ordering Russian data center operators to set aside 10 percent of available space and capacity in case the Russian government requires it, according to independent Russian news publication Meduza. That may indicate growing Kremlin concerns about the vulnerability of Russian cloud computing infrastructure during its war with Ukraine. Putin’s decree also allows a special Russian government commission to authorize use of foreign data centers in consultation with Russia’s Federal Security Service. That marks a notable policy change because Putin and the Russian parliament previously enacted Russia’s “Sovereign Internet Law,” which has blocked Russian companies from using cloud computing infrastructure outside Russia’s borders.

Russia’s push for a sovereign and increasingly closed Internet has resulted in a highly centralized system under a few Russian tech companies like Yandex. That hyper-centralized system has now proven vulnerable during wartime, as Ukrainian drone strikes on key Russian data centers created widespread disruptions for popular payment and digital banking apps, e-commerce platforms, video streaming services, and ride-hailing and food delivery apps, among others. Yandex has also been forced to relocate all three of its main supercomputers after Ukrainian drone strikes targeted the AI data centers where they were originally housed, Meduza reported.

Hey

By RitchCraft • • Score: 3 • Thread

Russia started it. Now they reap what they sow. Impossible to feel sorry for Putin.

iOS 27.3 Adds Vertical Tabs, Adaptive Dark Mode to Safari

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Apple is adding vertical tabs and an Adaptive Dark Mode to Safari with iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3 and macOS Golden Gate 27.3. The December updates will also expand Siri’s browser controls, including organizing tabs and clearing site-specific history, with a later feature allowing Siri to understand and answer questions about content across multiple open webpages. MacRumors reports:
Vertical Tabs are located on the left side of the display and use icons by default to save space, but there is an option to make the tab bar wider to show website titles as well. Vertical Tabs work with both Topics and Tab Groups to keep things organized. Topics are created when automatic Apple Intelligence tab sorting is turned on in iOS 27. Pinning tabs by dragging, quickly swapping between Tab Groups, and other features also continue to work.

[…] Apple is adding Adaptive Dark Mode for websites that don’t have a dark mode design option by default. If you use Dark Mode and then browse to a website with a bright background color, Safari will offer an option to “Try” Adaptive Dark Mode. After tapping Try, Safari renders a Dark Mode version of the page that makes the background darker, changes text contrast, inverts logos and graphics, recolors vector artwork, lifts raised surfaces, and rebalances layered shadows.

Each website will be adapted based on what’s needed to make it readable, so not every tweak is applied to every site. You can opt to turn Adaptive Dark Mode on for all sites or on a site-by-site basis after using it. If a site has a native dark mode or has a dark design already, Adaptive Dark Mode won’t activate. Developers can also add a tag that causes Safari to ignore Adaptive Dark Mode and show the website as the developer intended.

adaptive dark mdoe

By ZERO1ZERO • • Score: 3 • Thread
I use Noir https://getnoir.app to make a more enjoyable experience on my iphone. Seems like Apple are adding this feature. Noir has some nice features, but I tried a few of these apps and Noir was the only one to get the colours such that text is readable and accurate, many apps dont convert to dark properly and things like dark blue on black become apparent. It’s not just a simple color invert.

Huh?

By BitterEpic • • Score: 1 • Thread
I think you mean that AI ingested the code of Noir and Apple accidentally re-implemented it when asking AI what feature to add.

Why?

By jenningsthecat • • Score: 3 • Thread

Developers can also add a tag that causes Safari to ignore Adaptive Dark Mode and show the website as the developer intended.

If you’re going to put power in the hands of users, go all the way and give them full control. This bullshit of treating some websites as sacrosanct works of art by full-of-themselves web developers needs to end.

Once it’s on my computer I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with it, short of violating copyright laws.

Re:Why?

By ceoyoyo • • Score: 3 • Thread

What’s stopping you?

Safari, and I’m sure most of the other browsers, let you set your own custom CSS, override any bit of the website’s CSS or HTML, and have plugins to make all of that automatic by website.

Every major OS has at least one built in rendering engine that makes it pretty trivial to write your own browser and do WTF you want.

Great

By phantomfive • • Score: 2 • Thread
And yet, they still haven’t open sourced it.

EU Court Advisor Warns Google AI Chatbot May Breach Copyright Rules

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
An adviser to the EU’s highest court says Google’s Gemini may violate publishers’ copyright when it reproduces recognizable portions of their articles or circumvents paywalls and other technical protections to generate answers. Reuters reports:
The case before the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union pitted Hungarian website operator Like Company against US-based Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini. A ruling against Google, which could force the tech giant to pay fees for the use of such content, could throw a lifeline to online media such as Like Company. They have seen traffic dwindle as news summaries written by AI chatbots like Gemini increasingly replace traditional search engines’ results, which include hyperlinks to the media websites.

“When an LLM (large language model)-driven chatbot retrieves a publication from a press publisher’s website, reuses that publication to generate an answer, and provides that answer to the user, the press publisher’s right may be infringed in certain circumstances,” Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said. Gemini’s answers fall under the publishers’ right of reproduction when chatbots access publications by unlawfully “circumventing paywalls or other technical barriers, or when they reuse “the form of expression of that publication in a recognizable manner,” he said.

Copyright rules do not protect the “mere facts” reported by press publications, but “only the specific form of expression,” he added. On the other hand, he said, the use of material protected by copyright to train LLMs — AI systems that use vast amounts of text to generate human-like responses and summarize information — is “freely permitted under the text and data mining exception.” Szpunar said there was no evidence that Google had used the Hungarian publisher’s articles to train Gemini. The court, which follows the majority of its advisers’ non-binding opinions, will rule in the coming months.
“Google’s powerful gatekeeping role in search makes this particularly important. Publishers depend on Google to reach readers, while Google increasingly delivers AI-generated answers directly to users,” said Angela Mills Wade, the council’s executive director.
“Publishers should not have to choose between search visibility and protecting their rights. Nor should Google’s control over access to audiences become leverage to secure publishers’ content for AI services,” she said.

Clash of the Titans

By Brain-Fu • • Score: 3 • Thread

One thing everybody wants: quick and accurate answers to their questions.

Of course, no publisher wants to provide this. They want to make you pay for a subscription and/or buy books or articles and also assault you with ads as your route around through their site trying to find the answer you care about.

I can’t blame the publishers....their business is selling information. If they can’t profit on that, then there will be no publishing, and that would clearly be worse.

I can’t blame Google for trying to circumvent this; their business is giving you quick access to information (in return for behavior tracking and their own ad viewing, of course).

Personally, I think the world would be a better place if we could get quick and easy answers to all of our (legal) questions. A better profit model for this is clearly what is needed. I am just hoping they can invent one as a result of this clash.

Aside: Gemini’s answers are often harmfully inaccurate, and it will directly contradict itself depending on how you phrase the question. In theory this means the publishers shouldn’t have to worry, because everybody will realize this and just stop using Gemini. In practice, the promise of a quick answer often overrides people’s skepticism and prevents them from demanding references and proof, thus sending them astray. That problem needs a solution too.

They should pay

By Local ID10T • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

A ruling against Google, which could force the tech giant to pay fees for the use of such content,

If you are going to use someone else’s content commercially, you should pay them for it. The only question should be: how much is it worth?

There is the argument that if you put it on the internet (not behind a paywall/login/etc.) then you are granting an implied license to anyone read it (you set world:read permissions on the file on your web server), but it is reasonable to require Google to pay for commercial use.

The old argument still holds that Google are exchanging value in-kind with sites by providing search indexing and directing traffic to the site, but if the AI summary uses the content, Google are providing less value than they used to do. They should pay for this difference.

It is not practical for individual sites to negotiate rates for the use of content they provide, and the balance of power would be too one-sided. It therefore falls to government to set a standardized rate for (AI) commercial use of freely provided publicly accessible information, with individual sites able to negotiate separate contracts for non-public content (things that are behind paywalls, or logins) via API, etc.

Current laws do not provide a proper framework for this, but that is something that can be fixed. The status-quo has changed, and should be rebalanced.

Bethesda Confirms The Elder Scrolls 6 Is Called ‘Sentinel’

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
During a video celebrating Bethesda’s 40th anniversary, the studio officially confirmed that The Elder Scrolls VI will be titled The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. “Thank you for 40 years of shared memories,” wrote Bethesda in a separate tweet. “We can’t wait to make even more together with The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. Development continues, and while it’ll be some time before we’re ready to share more, it feels great to finally reveal the name and location with you.” Video Games Chronicle reports:
“You know, as we’re here in the 40th anniversary, we think about all of the games we’ve made,” Bethesda’s executive producer Todd Howard said in the video, walking past a display case. “And you know, every day when I walk by this case, obviously I look at the games and think about them, but more so I think about the teams that made them, and the time and the passion that everybody put into the games. And then what they meant to all of you, and hearing from you, and the time that you spent in them, how meaningful that was to you, and to let you know when we hear that, how meaningful that is to us.

And so even though yes, we’re looking back, we’re also looking forward to all we’re doing, particularly with the Fallout franchise and obviously The Elder Scrolls. You know, everybody’s always asking about Elder Scrolls 6. And we thought, hey, given the the moment, what a perfect time to tell you what The Elder Scrolls 6 is actually called.” The video then showed the logo for the game.

Firefox’s New Mini Window Is Every Multitasker’s Dream

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Mozilla is testing a new Firefox Nightly feature called Mini Window that lets users pop an entire webpage into a small, always-on-top window stripped of most browser controls. “The idea behind the Firefox Mini Window feature is simple: allow users to move a currently open tab (or a section of a tab) into a separate mini window,” writes ZDNet’s Jack Wallen. “Think of it as moving a tab from one window to what appears like a web app.” From the report:
At first blush, there’s no address bar, controls, scroll bar, or anything else that would normally be associated with Firefox. The Mini Window appears to be a web app, without having to actually create it. However, when I hover my cursor inside the Mini Window, I do see the address bar, the back/forward/reload buttons, and the window close button — and that’s it. The browser gets out of your way, so the only thing I see is the content.

On top of that (pun intended), the Mini Window stays on top of other Firefox windows, so I can have that popped-out content always in focus while I work on other things. This feature comes in handy when I’m working with limited display space (say, on a laptop) and need to reference a page while working on another. For multitasking, it comes in very handy. […] Let’s say I’m writing a paper on Linux and need to read a particular article for background information. I could have my document open in the main window, and then open the article in question in a Mini Window. I could then reference the article without having to click back and forth between them — even when working on a smaller display.

Here’s another use case I’ve found: When using MacOS’s Stage Manager feature, I only have one window available at a time. The Mini Window bypasses that limitation, so I can have my main browser window focused as well as the page open in the Mini Window. Another handy way I like to use Mini Window is to open a favorite search engine, move it to a Mini Window, and then I have an always-ready search tool at my fingertips. I could also open my favorite AI service and use it in the same way.

Re:Reinstate Brendan Eich NOW!!!

By rambletamble • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

Brave browser steals advertiser’s tokens and inserts its own, to bring money to the organisation. It was hijacking links, and inserting its own affiliate codes .

“When you try to sell the webbrowser as a champion of integrity, this type of action makes the whole company look like a bunch of greedy knob heads.”

“Honestly brave always seemed to be a crypto scheme first, web browser second. I only know of it from redditors who would post marketing esque essays about how great it is on random tech posts. Every one of them I discovered had invested in a crypto it’s connected to "

Eich? No thanks.

Re:Ok

By smooth wombat • • Score: 3 • Thread

They’re not pop-ups. They’re overlays. ABC and Yahoo both have them for videos.

Essentially, they are the same window that Firefox will implement.

Re: Reminds me of disabling raise on click

By drinkypoo • • Score: 3 • Thread

I sometimes flick my mouse cursor out of the way and don’t want to worry about where it lands. I used to use sloppy focus but eventually went to click.

Re:Reminds me of disabling raise on click

By jenningsthecat • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

I often have multiple programs partially overlapping, and dragging the cursor from side to side raises the middle app(s) when that’s not where I’m going. I find that distracting and annoying.

It may be my ADHD. There are several other newer UI features that I detest and spend stupid amounts of time figuring out how to squelch. “Smooth” scrolling? To me it’s just the opposite - I call it jerky scrolling, and it drives me nuts. I kill that fucker wherever I can.

Then there are scrollbars that are pencil-line-thin until the cursor hits them; at which point they widen to Sharpie-line thin, which is still too narrow to be usable. Give me a scrollbar wide enough to grab, with steppers, then leave it the fuck alone so I don’t have to play whac-a-mole to use it. Ditto for window controls.

I have nine different text files describing how to get the UI (mostly) the way I want it, in a folder called Fix_UI_Fuckery. Not that I’m fussy or anything…

Re:Reminds me of disabling raise on click

By drinkypoo • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh I despise narrow scrollbars. This is one of the many sins of modern Firefox I’ve had to fix again and again. Every time I fix it, they break the fix or even undo my settings within a few months.

Binance Says Hackers Used Fake Job Interviews, AI Tool to Steal $6.3 Billion In Crypto

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Binance says hackers spent months infiltrating its systems through fake job interviews, a tampered developer tool and compromised internal AI tools before stealing $6.34 billion in crypto in the Oct. 29 attack. Co-CEO Richard Teng said Binance has replenished 98% of the affected assets, and that it is still in the process of purchasing outstanding, more illiquid assets. CNBC reports:
Preparations for the attack began in June, when a Binance Wallet DevOps engineer downloaded a tampered Homebrew installation “to install a popular AI coding tool after searching for it on a search engine,” according to a security report published by Binance Tuesday. It said it detected the suspicious activity, replaced the engineer’s device and rotated credentials as a precaution, but that by then the employee’s “role and his related colleagues on our wallet infrastructure team was exposed to the hacker.”

[…] As of Tuesday Binance has rebuilt the affected wallet system and internal AI tool, replaced compromised devices, decommissioned credentials and tokens associated with the affected engineers and expanded security scans across employee devices, Teng told “Squawk on the Street.”

“We’re also getting an independent expert to review everything that we have done, and we’ll keep strengthening our defenses as the investigation continues,” Teng said. “We’re working around the clock with law enforcement agencies and with industry partners to trace and freeze the stolen funds for that front.”

appalling security.

By bloodhawk • • Score: 3, Informative • Thread
Everything about this says Binance have appalling security practises from the engineers up. Truly scary for an organisation that deals with so much money. how the hell are their DevOps engineers allowed to install unvetted/scanned packages direct from the internet, this is pure amateur hour stuff.

total security failure

By awwshit • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread

Why can 1 person move all of the funds without any kind of check?

Still smells like an inside job

By Arrogant-Bastard • • Score: 3 • Thread
Last week I said it seemed that way, and these new details point the same direction. Of course none of this is proof, just indicative. IF Binance is telling the truth, and let’s keep in mind that they’re crypto bros so truth is a rare thing, a member of their own staff opened the door for the intrusion by doing something incredibly reckless and stupid…so reckless and stupid that I have difficulty believing it was an accident. It would be very interesting to watch that person’s trajectory for the next few years.

Horrible stuff

By Artem S. Tashkinov • • Score: 3 • Thread

The fact that their devops had full access to their production infrastructure and hot wallets is fucking gross negligence.

And don’t get me started on their seemingly senior devops having no qualms downloading any code from the net and running it directly on their laptops - that’s quite something.

No sandboxes, no isolated environment, no VMs - it’s just fucking crazy.

That’s not security; it’s a complete disregard for security.

Re: Who does an interview on their work computer?

By Tony Isaac • • Score: 2 • Thread

What kind of developer doesn’t have a computer of his own? That would be really weird.

Fujifilm To Boost Tape Production 5x As AI Fuels Archiving Demand

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:
In an announcement released Thursday, Fujifilm said it will invest roughly 10 billion yen (about $63 million) to increase its production capacity fivefold for an unlikely beneficiary of the AI era: magnetic tape. Fujifilm attributes the surge in archiving demand to the spread of generative AI, which the company remarked is producing “exponential growth” in data needs worldwide. The 5x increase in production capacity will be measured against fiscal year 2025 production levels.

The investment in Fujifilm’s Kanagawa Factory, Odawara site will make it “the largest investment Fujifilm has made to date in dedicated LTO tape facilities.” The project will run from fiscal years 2026 through 2028 to fund manufacturing expansion and additional personnel, primarily to produce the latest-generation “FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10” tape. […]

According to Fujifilm, “major cloud service and data center operators” have been expanding their use of magnetic tape because it can store large data volumes at relatively low cost. Tape backups can be easily disconnected and stored in a drawer, a vault, or a separate facility. Fujifilm highlights the ability to air-gap tape cartridges as a last defense for user data: “Given the sophistication of cyberattacks, magnetic tape is attracting increasing attention as a means of protecting data from threats such as ransomware.”

All your tape are belong to bost

By TwistedGreen • • Score: 3 • Thread

Take off every zig!!!

Forget the datacenters, what about ordinary users

By drnb • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread
Forget the datacenters, what about ordinary users? I still miss QIC-80 tapes. I had long since copied my 1990s QIC-80 tape backups to DVD-R and then NAS. Recently (well, 2020’ish), as my last motherboard with a floppy connector was about to go to the recycler I decided to connect a QIC-80 drive and seem how many of those old tapes were still readable. Out of 50 tapes only one was bad. And their last 5 years was sitting in a hot garage rather than a shelf inside the house.

Some modern incarnation at a comparable price point would be a welcome improvement over external 2.5in USB drives.

Google Will Turn Off Search For Schools That Reject AI

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Google will disable AI tools by default for K-12 students early next year unless school administrators explicitly enable them, but schools that choose to block AI entirely will also lose student access to Google Search. The New York Times reports:
Executives at the tech giant said they wanted to be responsive to educators and parents who have asked for more control in how children interact with A.I. But there is a catch: Schools that choose to restrict A.I. entirely will also lose access to Google search. A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine.

“Search and A.I. are deeply integrated,” said Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google. If a school has banned A.I., he added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.” […] The company’s new strategy underscores Google’s powerful role in American education. If school leaders want continued student access to search within the company’s ecosystem, they will be forced to embrace Google’s A.I.

Teach them that there is choice.

By Vitus Wagner • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread

Let’s teach students in schools that there are more search engines in internet than just google

Re:That’s a bluff Google should NOT try.

By Waffle Iron • • Score: 5, Funny • Thread

The current US Secretary of Education considers her primary task to be dismantling the Department of Education, so it seems unlikely she’d intervene.

A more pressing issue for the DoE is that Google is still using proscribed alternative terminology for SI.

Re:No they fucking are not, Chris Phillips you fuc

By LehiNephi • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread
When I hear such an obvious corporate-speak falsehood, it only piques my curiosity/skepticism/cynicism further.

I have to think that a whole lot of executives have stuck their necks out to hop on the AI hype train, and having blown^H invested hundreds of billions of dollars, are now feeling the pressure to make that bet^H “investment” pay off. And since the market isn’t organically willing to adopt AI enough to make a return on a TRILLION dollar investment, Google, Microsoft, etc have to force adoption via Gemini, Copilot, new Android versions, etc.

It’s like Windows 11 all over again.

Re:That’s a bluff Google should NOT try.

By BeaverCleaver • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

Schools might call ‘em on it. “Okay, we’ll use Duck Duck Go, or Startpage, or Dogpile, or Bing, or…”

I hope so, I really hope so.

Then again, I remember when I was a teacher a few years ago and Duckduckgo was blocked by the state education dept’s IT policy. I don’t think it was due to malice*, but still, the school was actively preventing enquiring minds from using a search engine that didn’t violate their privacy.

* Maybe not malice, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a representative from Google very kindly “helped” the poor overworked IT team configure their blacklist. And also made sure that the Google Suite and the datamining operations of Google Classroom ran awesomely on the school’s network.

Re:That’s a bluff Google should NOT try.

By Crudely_Indecent • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread

Adding the query parameter “udm=14” to google search results removes the ai overview, so it is absolutely possible to search google without ai.

https://www.google.com/search?…

SUSE To Cut One In Ten Employees Because of AI

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
SUSE plans to cut roughly 10% of its 1,900-person workforce, with CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen saying “automation and AI” are reducing the need for some roles and allowing the open source software company to operate with less overhead and flatter management structures. “We are announcing a reduction of SUSE’s global workforce of approximately 10 percent,” said Van Leeuwen in an email. “These decisions are painful for our people, our culture, and our open source community, but they are necessary for us to adapt and build a sustainable, resilient SUSE for the long term.” The Register reports:
Van Leeuwen says the business, bought by Swedish private equity provider EQT, decided to cut jobs after scrutinizing its “future strategy, required capabilities, and team structures.” The rest of the organization will get a look at the fiscal year 2027 strategy on November 16. He said in the message to staff: “What is clear is that automation and AI are fundamentally shifting how software companies operate. AI capabilities are advancing exponentially, forcing us to radically reimagine our work. We have seen this trend already both inside our sector and in the wider economy. This means that the organizational design and cost base that SUSE is built on today will not carry us forward successfully.

“We are adapting. Across SUSE, modern tooling is already changing our daily workflows, enabling teams to move faster with less operational overhead and flatter reporting lines. The requirement for some existing roles has greatly diminished. Other roles will evolve over the next few years. This means we are accelerating investments in high priority areas, and deprioritizing others. These are hard, painful decisions to make, but necessary for our future.”

[…] The specific roles at risk of redundancy were not outlined but SUSE claims it has considered where the people in those positions are “able to evolve, what they can stop doing, what they need to do more of - and decisions have been made on that basis.” Staff caught up in the redundancies will be informed by November 4, employee representatives nominated the following day, and one to one meetings will begin at the start of next week. Van Leeuwen says in the internal memo that the job cuts are a “reflection of shifting organizational needs, not your talent or commitment. You have tackled hard infrastructure and open source challenges that power critical enterprise systems around the world. “Any organization will be fortunate to have your expertise.”

Yes, AI, of course.

By fuzzyfuzzyfungus • • Score: 3, Interesting • Thread
It’s good to know that this is purely a matter of technological change; no need to look at the classic “get picked up be PE chop shop”/“gradually get stripped for parts” hypothesis. Seems very credible.

How does that work?

By jenningsthecat • • Score: 3 • Thread

… “automation and AI” are reducing the need for some roles and allowing the open source software company to operate with less overhead and flatter management structures.

I fail to understand how AI can flatten management structures. I can see the argument for reduced head count, but I would have thought relying on AI for mission-critical work would require more oversight and review and testing, and therefore more levels of management. Which might, of course, largely or entirely offset the saving associated with reduced head count. For that reason, I also find their “less overhead” claim to be a bit questionable.

Then there’s the cost of “compute”, as the cool kids call it. Is SUSE going to pay for hardware and management of its own AI servers and models? Or will it outsource some or all of it? Either way there’s a cost involved, and it would be interesting to see their estimates of both that cost, and the saving from “rightsizing” or whatever other euphemism they might use.

… private equity provider EQT …

Found the parasite! Its presence probably explains a lot.

On the plus side, in looking for more info I discovered that BOFH is still a thing: https://www.theregister.com/ta…

MIT Researchers Used GPT-6 Astra To Edit Qwen’s Open Weights Directly, Boosting Math Scores

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat:
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) reported today that they used OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra language model to raise a small, open source Qwen model’s math score roughly sixfold by directly editing its weights — the numerical parameters that govern its behavior. Rikiya Takehi, Jayden Teoh, Alex Zhang and Omar Khattab described their work in a research blog post published November 2. They call the approach “weight-space programming” and tested Astra’s ability to interpret and alter networks without using conventional training procedures to generate the edits.

In the strongest language-model example, Astra’s intervention raised Qwen3.5-0.8B’s MATH-500 score from 7.9% to 48.1% while touching approximately 0.016% of its weights. The improvement came primarily from correcting repetitive reasoning—a distinction that shaped both the technical findings and the debate over their implications. Their experiments explored a broader possibility: AI systems that inspect, repair and construct other neural networks by working directly on their internal machinery.
“This is cool as heck!” wrote Yuchen Jin, a technical staffer at Databricks and former co-founder and CTO of Hyperbolic Labs who was unaffiliated with the research, on X. “Imagine using a large LLM to directly edit a smaller model’s weights and dramatically improve its capabilities. It’s like gene editing for neural networks. Even cooler than distillation!”

Voyage AI staff researcher Chandan Singh, formerly of Microsoft AI, also reacted to the findings: “For anyone questioning whether this post is overhyped, I think they are actually *underselling* the approach.”

Oh great

By TwistedGreen • • Score: 5, Funny • Thread

They’re breeding.

I for one…

By garyisabusyguy • • Score: 3 • Thread

welcome our endlessly optimizing overlords, and look forward to being optimized myself

Misleading presentation

By Samantha Wright • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread

When editing Qwen, Astra actually wrote and used a Python program to do the dirty work and required some trial and error. This is something humans are already doing; it just doesn’t receive much publicity. Raw reading and writing was only done in other parts of the paper, for smaller tasks like detecting the purpose of a game-playing network and correcting a simple vehicle control feedback loop. Though the Qwen edit was successful (after some 50 tests), a similar edit on a smaller Gemma network to remove sycophancy wasn’t.

See summary on honnibal.dev for a breakdown.

Clankers Building Clankers

By SlashbotAgent • • Score: 3 • Thread

I’ve read the books and I’ve seen the films. Once the clankers start repairing and building themselves, the humans are in extreme danger.

fine-print: it didn’t actually get better at math

By cathector • • Score: 3 • Thread

their blog post ( https://rikiyat.github.io/blog… ) caveats that the large improvement in math scores was more like a significant bug was fixed:

> Fixing loops, however, is not the same as making a model better at math: it lets the model finish answers it could already work out.

once the bug was fixed, efforts to improve math capability were far less dramatic.

still tho, modifying a model this way instead of via traditional training is pretty interesting.

Cops Bust Botnet of 1.3 Million Android TV Boxes

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
A coalition of security firms working with Japan’s National Police Agency has disrupted a botnet of more than 1.3 million Android devices across 200+ countries. “We assess with high confidence that the backdoor and botnet were intentionally developed, deployed, and operated for financial gain by Videostrong Technology,” the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a blog post. The Register reports:
Videostrong Technology is a hardware manufacturer based in Shenzhen, China. It builds Android devices, including home TV boxes and projectors. According to Google, Videostrong deliberately embedded the XCPE backdoor in device firmware and sold access to criminal affiliates, allowing them to install additional malware modules on devices shipped to unsuspecting customers. When buyers connected these devices to their home networks, the preinstalled backdoor allowed operators to create proxy networks and hide malicious traffic using the customers’ internet connections without their knowledge.

The firmware’s pre-installed management agent purported to be a standard remote-management client, according to TrendAI. It pulled updates from a GitHub page, and connected to a Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) server that gave the operator full remote control of each box, allowing them to install and remove apps, change settings, and push updates to the infected devices. Between June 3 and October 1, TrendAI documented more than 3.8 million distinct home and mobile IP addresses connected to the operation.

The coalition also disrupted the command-and-control domains used to manage the affiliate modules. “Because these affiliates each have diversified distribution channels for their modules beyond XCPE, we assess that taking down their C2 domains will sever access to at least 10 million additional compromised devices,” according to GTIG. Google said it had since cut ties with Videostrong, and banned the OEM from making devices with preloaded Google apps.

Cool, now do LG

By Hentes • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

Cool, now do LG, and every other TV manufacturer. They are all doing this.

Are You a Bot?

By bill_mcgonigle • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread

Allegedly this is how many AI companies are scraping the web for training data.

No IP ranges to effectively blacklist.

Specific details would be nice

By Dagmar d’Surreal • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread

Would anyone happen to know the OUIs used by this company? Ten million plus devices means it might be worth our time to just go ahead and blacklist those things enterprise-wide.

Re:Easy answer

By TWX • • Score: 5, Funny • Thread

I like the sticker, "DANGER: Do not connect this machine to the Internet no matter how much it asks”

Re:The only solution is

By Gilmoure • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread

Do not buy any TVs.

Got it!

China Publicly Discloses Plan For a Lunar Landing Within Three Years

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At the Seventh Manned Spaceflight Conference in Beijing, Chinese space officials publicly outlined the most detailed roadmap yet for landing astronauts on the Moon “before 2030.” Ars Technica reports:
China’s lunar landings will involve a lunar-orbit rendezvous similar to what NASA did in the 1960s and early 1970s with the Apollo program. However, lacking a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V vehicle, the crew and lunar lander will launch separately to the Moon. According to slides shared on social media, the current plan involves:

- An uncrewed test of the Long March 10A rocket (a single-stick variant, with no boosters) and the Mengzhou spacecraft to low-Earth orbit. Target: early 2027
- An uncrewed test of the larger Long March 10 rocket (a core stage with two boosters) and the Lanyue lunar lander, including descent/ascent from Moon’s surface. Target: 2028
- A concurrent launch of two Long March 10 rockets, one carrying uncrewed Mengzhou and the other the Lanyue vehicle; they will dock in lunar orbit. Target: 2029
- Dual launch of Long March 10 rockets, this time with crew on the Mengzhou spacecraft, leading to crewed landing mission. Target: “Before 2030”

The public release of this new information provides a timeline for gauging China’s technical progress in its efforts to land humans on the Moon before 2030 and beat NASA and the United States back to the lunar surface. Notably, the plan (for now, at least) omits a mission similar to Apollo 8 or Artemis II, which involved a crew flying out to the Moon and either entering orbit or passing close by before returning to Earth. The Mengzhou vehicle should still get a workout closer to Earth with humans on board as part of missions carrying astronauts to Tiangong, China’s space station in low-Earth orbit.

Great! A space race is better than WW3

By butt0nm4n • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

Get as many people on the moon as we can to look back on earth and see how small, vulnerable and precious our planet is.

Then perhaps we can get some global leaders more interested in preserving it than having gold ballrooms and wasteful wars to pad their egos.

Re:Why?

By AmiMoJo • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread

Right, we can learn about longer term habitation on other worlds in low gravity, and about collecting resources. The Moon has water and H3 and other stuff.

This time the effort of getting there will probably be more sustainable, because China is unlikely to give up even if the US somehow gets back there first, and because the whole industry is more sustainable now.

Re:Great! A space race is better than WW3

By greytree • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread
Keeping Iran from having nuclear weapons is a good contribution to preserving our planet.

It is only a wasteful war because Trump and Hegseth are too stupid to do it properly.

Re:Great! A space race is better than WW3

By Misagon • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread

And if Trump hadn’t previously withdrawn from an agreement that would have limited Iran’s nuclear program, the war would probably not have happened either.

Re:Great! A space race is better than WW3

By gtall • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread

So, what is your plan, General? Invade a country of 93.4 million people who have history of not buckling under to anyone? You first.

Of you could inflict some serious Christian War Crimes on them in the hopes they will buckle and won’t hold a grudge for the next 100 years. Hint: look at the history of the Middle East and how long their grudges last.

Or you could bomb the rubble some more and watch Iran take out what is left of the U.S. bases in the region and destroy the region’s oil economy. Frankly, it would do a world of good for global warming, so that might be a good idea....except for the number of dead people around the Gulf and beyond.

All la Presidenta has succeeded in doing is spending down our treasury and the U.S. munitions piles, and simultaneously given the Iranian regime a new lease on life. Prior to this, the Iranian people were thinking about putting the heads of Iranian leadership and their stooges (Rev. Guard, Basij) on pikes. Now, that crowd looks like it will be there for at least the next 100 years.

Is there anything el Bunko cannot bankrupt, financially and morally?

BYD Sold More EVs Last Month Than the US Did All Quarter

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek:
The world’s leading EV maker is showing no signs of slowing down. BYD sold 490,168 new energy vehicles (NEVs) in October, up 11% from the prior year and the company’s highest monthly total in 2026. BYD’s battery electric vehicles drove the growth, with a record 305,743 units sold, up 37% year over year and marking the first time its EV sales have crossed the 300,000 mark. To put that into perspective, just over 262,500 EVs were sold in the US in the entire third quarter combined, according to Kelley Blue Book estimates.
By the end of the year, BYD expects overseas shipments to reach about 2 million vehicles. “In 2027, that number is expected to rise to more than 2.5 million vehicles,” adds Electrek.

Re:they will keep selling them

By nickovs • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

Speaking of the 1970s, back then the whole US car industry (and large swaths of the European industry too) said that Japanese cars were poor quality and would never make it in the open market. They were very wrong and suffered the consequences.

There’s plenty not to like about the way that the Chinese EV business operates. Their factories were massively subsidised by state intervention so their cost doesn’t reflect the full cost of the capital expense that goes into them and the exports are priced based on a glut of supply.

That said, the world would be wrong to write them off as cheap crap. Their mass market small cars aren’t made for the US customer, but don’t think that they can’t make cars like that if they think that they will make a killing (financially or strategically) by doing so.

Re:they will keep selling them

By phantomfive • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

I think for the most part in the US, the EV market is saturated…

At the current price point. When they cost $15,000 each, that will open a new market segment.

Re:they will keep selling them

By serviscope_minor • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

Unless you have offstreet parking

The USA is so spread out that everyone needs to drive gasoline cars everywhere yet somehow so compact no one has a drive to charge an EV.

Re:they will keep selling them

By Narcocide • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread

It’s less of a problem than you’d think, and 45 minutes is an exaggeration; the other thing about dense urban environments is you typically don’t have that far of a commute, so you don’t end up having to charge it nightly or even weekly, necessarily, and almost never from practically 0% either, as this straw-man argument typically continues.

Re:they will keep selling them

By MikeS2k • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

Yea I looked up what it would take to get an EV as a Brit who doesn’t have a house with a driveway (which is common in my area, most houses here are Victorian slum terraces straight out of 1984); also no work charging despite I work for local govt.

On prices (imagine £ = $ here, it’s not far off) I would have to use public chargers; the price round me is 75p a KW/H for fast charge, 40p a KW/H for normal charge. With a battery of 60KWH, I’d pay £45 and have to wait 15 - 30 mins. 60kw/h * 4 miles = about 240 miles. Which is less miles per £ than even our very high current fuel prices get me.
Or the normal charge; I would have to sit around and wait multiple hours every 5 days or so, to pay £20 for the 240 miles which is on par with fuel.

Plus the interest costs on buying a brand new EV vs buying a second hand car with cash. If you are a poorer person and don’t own a home with a driveway, I can’t see how owning an EV is economically viable at all.

Perhaps for those more middle-class where it seems the only vehicle choices people ever make are a) a brand new EV or b) a brand new 4 litre SUV or luxury sedan; an EV can make sense.

But if you are poorer, I can buy a second hand 1.2L hatchback for £3000, and fuel per mile costs the same as the 5 hour charging option for an EV. Hell the interest on a “car note” for an EV will pay for my fuel alone.

Plus the “nicities” of owning a gas car; the heat is considered wasted when it comes to efficienty but in the miserable British winter, I’d have the heat on high, further reducing range in an EV. If I’ve been lazy and didn’t feel like getting fuel one day, I can quickly fill up with fuel in 5 minutes the next morning before work. If I’m paying more money for an EV I don’t want less.

One issue is EV zealots will have their EV, their off peak 5p/kwh electricity plans, and their solar panels, so they can charge their EV for under $1 as opposed to the $50 I’d have to pay. But they think because EV’s work for them, they never think about how it would work for the other guy. If an EV works for them it must work for everyone right?

For an EV to work economically for me then fast chargers would have to be 10p/kwh absolute maximum, plus a second hand EV market also. If the tech improves so they could make an EV hatchback with some sort of solar skin that could add a 600W charge; imagine that too.

The tech is improving so I would never say “EV will never be good enough even in 1000 years” like some clowns used to say (remember the videos showing the energy density of Lead Acid batteries vs Gasoline, “proving” therefore that the laws of physics batteries will never be feasible for cars ever?) but at the moment it doesn’t work out for most poorer citizens