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Microsoft's AI Copilot Uncovers 20 Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in Bootloaders

2025-04-05
Microsoft's AI Copilot Uncovers 20 Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in Bootloaders

Microsoft's AI-powered Security Copilot unearthed 20 previously unknown vulnerabilities in the GRUB2, U-Boot, and Barebox open-source bootloaders. These flaws, ranging from buffer overflows and integer overflows to side-channel attacks, could allow attackers to bypass security protections and execute arbitrary code, potentially installing stealthy bootkits. While exploitation may require physical access, the possibility remains a concern. Patches have been released; users are urged to update immediately.

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(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
Tech

Redefining the 'Right to be Left Alone': A Romantic Ideal of Privacy

2025-04-22
Redefining the 'Right to be Left Alone': A Romantic Ideal of Privacy

Lowry Pressly's new book, *The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life*, challenges our narrow understanding of privacy. Pressly argues that contemporary conceptions focus too heavily on data control and surveillance avoidance, neglecting a deeper meaning: the protection of the unknown and unknowable. He advocates for a more expansive, romantic ideal of privacy, one that safeguards individual agency and potential, not just information control. Using historical examples like early photography's infringement on personal autonomy and the internet's data deluge, Pressly builds a case for the 'right to oblivion,' urging a more comprehensive understanding of privacy for individual and societal flourishing.

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(www.thenation.com)
Misc agency

Microsoft's Hidden Easter Egg: A Retro Tech War Story

2025-04-26

This article unravels the story behind a hidden "MICROSOFT!" Easter egg embedded in early versions of Microsoft's BASIC interpreters. From the 1975 Altair BASIC to Commodore PET's Commodore BASIC V2, Microsoft cleverly concealed this message to assert code ownership. The egg resurfaced across various platforms, even leading to a second, more overt Easter egg in the TRS-80 Color Computer. The article delves into authorship, removal reasons, and its intriguing place in computer history, showcasing the competition and technical details of early tech companies.

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(www.pagetable.com)
Tech Easter Egg

ChompSaw: A Safe Power Tool for Kids

2025-07-11
ChompSaw: A Safe Power Tool for Kids

Designed by Kausi Raman and Max Liechty, the ChompSaw is a safe power tool for kids, specifically designed to cut cardboard. Unlike dangerous jigsaws, the ChompSaw uses an oscillating cutter hidden beneath a protective cover, preventing finger contact. Waste cardboard is collected in a built-in bin, promoting recycling. While priced at $250, it offers a safe and fun way for children to explore power tools, transforming Amazon boxes into creative projects.

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(www.core77.com)
Hardware power tools cardboard cutting

TrendFi: AI-Powered Investing That Makes Crypto Easy

2025-06-19
TrendFi: AI-Powered Investing That Makes Crypto Easy

Busy professionals and novice investors alike rave about TrendFi! This AI-driven investment tool provides reliable signals to predict market trends, reducing investment stress. Users praise its ease of use and its ability to improve their cryptocurrency trading success, particularly in altcoins. Unlike other services, TrendFi builds confidence by showcasing the AI's past trades and performance.

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(trend.fi)
AI AI investing

Zig's Native x86 Backend Achieves 70% Faster Compilation

2025-06-09

The Zig compiler team announced that its native x86 backend is now production-ready, delivering significant speed improvements. Compared to the LLVM backend, the Zig backend boasts a 70% compilation speedup, reducing build times from 75 seconds to 20 seconds on large projects. This is attributed to optimizations in code generation and parallelization. Future plans include aarch64 support. This release also includes improved UBSan error messages for better debugging and enhanced cross-compilation support for FreeBSD and NetBSD.

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(ziglang.org)
Development x86 Backend

Supercomputer Simulations Reveal Stunning Details of Neutron Star-Black Hole Collisions

2025-06-19
Supercomputer Simulations Reveal Stunning Details of Neutron Star-Black Hole Collisions

Scientists used supercomputers to simulate neutron star-black hole collisions, revealing that before the collision, the neutron star is torn apart by the black hole's gravity, generating Alfvén waves and a final burst of radio waves lasting about a second. The collision also produces the universe's strongest shock waves and may form a brief black hole pulsar, emitting high-energy X-rays or gamma rays. This research, leveraging the powerful GPU computing capabilities of the Perlmutter supercomputer, provides crucial clues for detecting these most violent events in the universe.

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(www.caltech.edu)
Tech supercomputer simulation

GPT-4.5: Ahead of Its Time, but Not a Breakthrough

2025-03-02
GPT-4.5: Ahead of Its Time, but Not a Breakthrough

OpenAI's GPT-4.5 release was underwhelming despite its massive size (estimated 5-7 trillion parameters). Unlike the leap from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4, improvements are subtle, focusing on reduced hallucinations and enhanced emotional intelligence. The article argues GPT-4.5 serves as a stepping stone, underpinning future model training. It highlights the need for balancing different scaling approaches and integrating techniques like reinforcement learning for significant breakthroughs. GPT-4.5's true impact will be felt when integrated into various systems and applications, not as a standalone product.

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(www.interconnects.ai)
AI

Suprnova Founder: From Torrent Empire to YouTube Megachannel

2024-12-24

Twenty years ago, the torrenting world was rocked by the sudden shutdown of Suprnova.org. Its founder, Andrej Preston (aka Sloncek), recently spoke to TorrentFreak, recounting his journey from a 15-year-old building a torrenting empire to shutting it down amidst copyright concerns, and ultimately transitioning to YouTube, where he built "The Infographics Show," boasting over 14 million subscribers. He admits his younger self was naive regarding copyright and business, but he's proud of Suprnova's scale and the person it shaped him into. This experience instilled valuable project management and content creation skills, leading to his YouTube success. He also offers insightful perspectives on copyright, online entertainment, and the future impact of AI-generated content.

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(torrentfreak.com)
Misc Torrent

Fortnite Gets Exclusive Premiere of Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld

2025-05-05
Fortnite Gets Exclusive Premiere of Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld

The first two episodes of the animated Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld series will premiere exclusively on Fortnite's Star Wars Watch Party island on May 2nd, two days before its Disney+ release. Linking Epic Games and MyDisney accounts will reward players, including a First Order Stormtrooper outfit. This collaboration represents a pioneering effort in social entertainment between Disney and Epic Games, promising more interactive experiences to come. The six-episode series follows Asajj Ventress and Cad Bane.

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(www.ign.com)
Game Fortnite

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-06-12
arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved share arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners who adhere to them. Got an idea to enhance the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

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(arxiv.org)
Development

Grimm's Fairy Tales: Not Folk, Yet Transcending the Personal

2025-03-17
Grimm's Fairy Tales: Not Folk, Yet Transcending the Personal

This article delves into the origins and impact of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Contrary to popular belief, the Grimm brothers didn't solely collect pure folklore; their sources were largely middle-class, infused with German Romantic nationalism. The article analyzes the creation process, exploring themes of social rules, class disparity, and psychological undertones within the tales. It argues that the continuous adaptation and reinterpretation of these stories transcend individual authorship, making them enduring cultural symbols.

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(www.lrb.co.uk)
Misc Grimm's Fairy Tales Folklore German Romanticism

AI Voice Cloning Scams Expose Flaws in Evidence Rules

2025-03-11

An AI voice cloning scam highlights the challenges posed by rapidly advancing voice synthesis technology. A father nearly fell victim to a fraudster who convincingly imitated his son's voice. This case exposes weaknesses in current Federal Rules of Evidence, which allow authentication of voice recordings based solely on witness identification – a process now unreliable due to sophisticated AI voice cloning. Studies show people struggle to distinguish real voices from AI-generated clones, demonstrating the high realism of current technology. The article advocates amending evidence rules to give judges more discretion in admitting or excluding potentially fabricated audio evidence, adapting to the evolving landscape of AI.

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(www.lawfaremedia.org)
Tech voice cloning evidence law

2PB of Traffic: The Cost of a Simple Auto-Updater Bug

2025-04-29
2PB of Traffic: The Cost of a Simple Auto-Updater Bug

A simple bug in the auto-updater of the screen recording app Screen Studio caused it to repeatedly download a 250MB update file every 5 minutes for a month, resulting in 9 million downloads and over 2 petabytes of Google Cloud traffic. Thousands of users had the app running in the background, leading to massive bills and internet service disruptions for some users. This incident highlights the importance of setting cloud cost alerts, writing code carefully, and regularly checking cloud resources.

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(pietrasiak.com)
Development auto-updater cloud computing costs

GitHub's Billionth Repo: A Milestone Marked by 'shit'

2025-06-11
GitHub's Billionth Repo: A Milestone Marked by 'shit'

GitHub celebrated the creation of its one billionth repository, revealing it to be named 'shit'. This event sparked discussions, highlighting GitHub's massive scale as the world's largest code hosting platform, while also prompting conversations about repository naming conventions. While the name is somewhat vulgar, it underscores the vibrancy and creativity within the GitHub community.

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(github.com)
Development Repository Milestone

Indian Court Orders Block of Encrypted Email Provider ProtonMail

2025-04-29
Indian Court Orders Block of Encrypted Email Provider ProtonMail

An Indian court has ordered a nationwide block of the encrypted email service ProtonMail following a complaint from a design firm alleging obscene emails were sent via the platform. The firm claims ProtonMail refused to cooperate in identifying the sender. This is not the first attempt to block ProtonMail in India; last year, a similar attempt was thwarted by Swiss authorities. ProtonMail argues that blocking the service doesn't stop cybercrime but harms legitimate users' ability to communicate securely.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech

KeyPub.sh: A Privacy-Focused SSH Key Verification Service

2024-12-23

KeyPub.sh is a free, publicly available service requiring no installation or configuration. It leverages your existing SSH public key as your identity, linking it to your email address for simplified authentication. Users register and manage their SSH keys via a simple email verification process, controlling the visibility of their email address. This provides a lightweight, privacy-respecting alternative to OAuth for CLI applications, eliminating the need for developers to build user verification systems while empowering users with control over their privacy.

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(keypub.sh)
Development SSH key authentication

Moral Panics and Copaganda: How Data is Manipulated

2025-05-15
Moral Panics and Copaganda: How Data is Manipulated

This article exposes how moral panics are used to inflate law enforcement budgets and intensify punitive measures. Using California's shoplifting crisis as an example, it shows how media-fueled panic led to massive funding increases for law enforcement, while ignoring root social causes. The author points out how selective reporting of anecdotes and isolated data points distorts public perception of crime, creating a false sense of crisis even when crime rates are declining. This 'copaganda' tactic uses truthful elements to manipulate the narrative, resulting in misallocation of resources and the perpetuation of social problems.

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(www.teenvogue.com)
Misc moral panic copaganda

Relicensing Open Source Projects: A Study of Elasticsearch, Redis, and Terraform

2024-12-31
Relicensing Open Source Projects: A Study of Elasticsearch, Redis, and Terraform

Facing economic pressure, some companies are relicensing their popular open source projects to more restrictive licenses to generate more revenue, leading to project forks. CHAOSS studied Elasticsearch, Redis, and Terraform, finding that forks often exhibit greater organizational diversity than the originals, especially under neutral foundations like the Linux Foundation. While relicensing had minimal impact on contributors to the original projects, it significantly affected users. This research is the first step in a larger ongoing project; future analysis will incorporate more data and projects for a deeper understanding.

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(thenewstack.io)
Development open source license project fork organizational diversity

86-DOS: The Untold Story Behind the PC Revolution

2025-08-28
86-DOS: The Untold Story Behind the PC Revolution

In April 1980, a young programmer at Seattle Computer Products (SCP), Tim Paterson, began developing a small disk operating system, codenamed QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), for the new Intel 8086-based board. This project, initially designed as a quick fix for SCP's 8086 computer, unexpectedly evolved into Microsoft's MS-DOS, dominating the PC industry for over a decade. The article details QDOS's development, including the controversy surrounding its compatibility with CP/M's API, and Microsoft's acquisition of QDOS and its renaming to MS-DOS. The simplicity and CP/M-inspired API of QDOS, despite the resulting controversy, allowed for a quick release and made it a cornerstone of the PC era.

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(nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com)
Tech

Fauna Database Shutting Down, Core Tech Going Open Source

2025-03-19
Fauna Database Shutting Down, Core Tech Going Open Source

Fauna, a document-relational database service, announced it will be sunsetting its service in the coming months. Unable to secure the funding needed for global expansion in the current market, the company made the difficult decision to cease operations. However, Fauna is committing to open-sourcing its core database technology, drivers, and CLI tooling, making its unique transactional features, document-relational data model, and FQL language available to the wider developer community. Existing customers will receive migration support to ensure a smooth transition.

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(fauna.com)
Development

$8M+ Annual Funding: Unraveling the Brain's Sensorimotor Integration

2025-04-26
$8M+ Annual Funding: Unraveling the Brain's Sensorimotor Integration

The Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (SCENE) launches with over $8 million in annual funding to investigate how the brain efficiently integrates sensory and motor information. This interdisciplinary project, uniting leading neuroscientists and machine learning experts, leverages principles of ecological psychology, focusing on how the brain encodes affordances – opportunities for action in the environment. Research will span multiple species, from rodents and bats to humans, aiming to uncover fundamental principles of cognition and bridge gaps in our understanding of the brain.

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(www.simonsfoundation.org)
Tech Brain Cognition

Chrome 136 Finally Kills 23-Year-Old Browser History Sniffing Vulnerability

2025-04-12
Chrome 136 Finally Kills 23-Year-Old Browser History Sniffing Vulnerability

A 23-year-old vulnerability allowing websites to sniff users' browsing history through CSS :visited pseudo-class is finally being eradicated in Chrome 136. Previous attempts to mitigate the issue, which involved checking link colors to determine if a page had been visited, proved insufficient. Chrome 136 introduces a novel 'partitioning' mechanism, linking visited history to the link URL, top-level domain, and frame origin, preventing cross-site access to browsing history. This breakthrough represents a significant leap forward in browser privacy and concludes a decades-long arms race between attackers and defenders.

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(www.theregister.com)
Tech

Rapa Nui's Surprising Connections: Radiocarbon Dating Rewrites Polynesian History

2025-07-10
Rapa Nui's Surprising Connections: Radiocarbon Dating Rewrites Polynesian History

New research using radiocarbon dating challenges the long-held belief that Easter Island (Rapa Nui) developed in isolation after its initial settlement. The study reveals a complex pattern of cultural exchange and interaction between Rapa Nui and other Polynesian islands. While the initial Polynesian settlement expanded westward to eastward, the study shows that the complex ritual sites known as marae originated on Rapa Nui before spreading westward. This indicates a dynamic exchange of cultural ideas, challenging the previously accepted linear model of Polynesian development and highlighting Rapa Nui's significant role in shaping the region's cultural landscape.

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(phys.org)
Tech Easter Island Polynesia

DuckDuckGo Adds AI Image Filter to Search

2025-07-19
DuckDuckGo Adds AI Image Filter to Search

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has rolled out a new setting allowing users to filter out AI-generated images from search results. This follows user feedback indicating AI images often obstruct finding relevant real-world images. Users can find a new 'AI images' dropdown in the image search tab, choosing to 'show' or 'hide' AI content. DuckDuckGo states the filter relies on manually curated open-source blocklists, offering significant reduction in AI image results, though not perfect. Future additions to the filter are planned.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech AI images search filter

Disney Data Breach: 25-Year-Old Pleads Guilty to Stealing 1TB of Confidential Data

2025-05-03
Disney Data Breach: 25-Year-Old Pleads Guilty to Stealing 1TB of Confidential Data

A 25-year-old California man, Ryan Mitchell Kramer, pleaded guilty to hacking a Disney employee's computer and stealing over 1 terabyte of confidential data. He disguised malware as an AI art generator, gaining access to the victim's computer and subsequently stealing data from numerous Disney Slack channels. This included employee personal information, internal communications, and recruitment data. Kramer then threatened the victim and publicly released the stolen information. Disney and the FBI are investigating the incident.

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(variety.com)
Tech

The Amiga 600: Commodore's Epic Fail, Now a Retro Gem

2025-03-16
The Amiga 600: Commodore's Epic Fail, Now a Retro Gem

The Amiga 600, one of Commodore's last Amigas, epitomized the company's downfall. Launched in 1992, it featured outdated 1985 technology, lacked competitiveness in price and expandability, and suffered from inferior graphics compared to PCs. This article delves into the reasons for its failure, contrasting it with the more successful Amiga 500. Despite its initial flop, the Amiga 600's compact size has made it a popular choice among retro enthusiasts today. The author analyzes Commodore's strategic missteps and the Amiga 600's technical shortcomings, highlighting how a once-failed product has become a nostalgic icon.

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(dfarq.homeip.net)
Hardware

Apple Considered Portless iPhone 17 Air: A Glimpse into the Future?

2025-03-17
Apple Considered Portless iPhone 17 Air: A Glimpse into the Future?

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple considered releasing the iPhone 17 Air without a USB-C charging port. While ultimately scrapped, the idea remains on the table for future models. The iPhone 17 Air will "foreshadow a move to slimmer models without charging ports." Apple executives see this as a potential sea change; if successful, they intend to pursue portless iPhones more broadly. This represents a significant design shift, potentially ushering in a new era of portless smartphones.

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(www.macrumors.com)
Tech Portless iPhone

Waymo to Use Robotaxi Data for Generative AI, Raising Privacy Concerns

2025-04-07
Waymo to Use Robotaxi Data for Generative AI, Raising Privacy Concerns

Waymo plans to use data from its robotaxis, including interior camera video linked to rider identities, to train generative AI models, according to a leaked draft privacy policy. This data may also be used for personalized ads, raising concerns about the repurposing of rider behavior inside autonomous vehicles. While users can opt out of data sharing, the practice still sparks debate. Waymo, currently the only autonomous vehicle company generating revenue from robotaxi rides in the US (over 200,000 weekly rides), is still likely losing money, prompting exploration of alternative revenue streams like in-vehicle advertising and AI data sales. This may be a strategy to address its financial challenges.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech

Practical Process Control: Mastering PID Control

2025-03-18

This comprehensive guide delves into the practical aspects of process control, focusing on PID controller design, tuning, and advanced control architectures. Starting with process dynamic modeling (including case studies on heat exchangers, gravity-drained tanks, and jacketed stirred reactors), it systematically explains proportional, integral, and derivative control, along with the role of various filters. The guide also covers handling integrating processes, cascade control, feedforward control, and advanced control strategies in real-world applications like distillation columns, providing a complete practical handbook for engineers.

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(controlguru.com)
Development process control PID control
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