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Microsoft's Universal Print Gets 'Pull Print' Feature for Enhanced Security

2025-08-14

Microsoft's Universal Print Gets 'Pull Print' Feature for Enhanced Security

Microsoft has made its 'Pull Print' feature for Universal Print generally available, addressing the security risk of sensitive documents left unattended at printers. Users can now release print jobs from any registered printer without pre-selecting a device, simply by authenticating. Two release methods are offered: direct print and secure release (via QR code). While alternatives exist, this free addition to Universal Print is particularly attractive for Microsoft 365 organizations already using the service, significantly improving both security and convenience.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech Universal Print Print Security

Firefox Addon Devs Targeted in Ongoing Phishing Campaign

2025-08-04

Firefox Addon Devs Targeted in Ongoing Phishing Campaign

Mozilla is warning of a phishing campaign targeting Firefox add-on developers. Attackers impersonate Mozilla or AMO (addons.mozilla.org), tricking developers into clicking malicious links to supposedly update their accounts, threatening access loss otherwise. The goal is likely to compromise trusted developer accounts to distribute malicious add-ons designed to steal cryptocurrency seed phrases. Security researchers highlight the constant emergence of such malicious extensions. Mozilla acknowledges the role of add-ons in crypto scams and is improving detection, but malicious developers are constantly adapting.

(www.theregister.com)

Development

Judge Rules Anthropic's Use of Books to Train AI is Fair Use

2025-06-24

Judge Rules Anthropic's Use of Books to Train AI is Fair Use

A federal judge ruled that Anthropic's use of published books to train its AI models without authors' permission is legal, marking the first time courts have acknowledged AI companies' fair use defense in LLM training. This decision is a setback for authors suing companies like OpenAI and Meta. While not setting universal precedent, it favors tech companies. The ruling hinges on the interpretation of fair use doctrine, outdated in the age of generative AI. However, a trial will address Anthropic's use of pirated books to build its 'central library' of copyrighted works, potentially impacting damages.

(techcrunch.com)

AI

Btrfs Allocator Hints: Optimizing Mixed Storage Performance

2025-02-11

Btrfs Allocator Hints: Optimizing Mixed Storage Performance

Btrfs now features allocator hints, allowing users to specify devices for metadata and data allocation, optimizing performance in mixed storage setups (e.g., SSDs and HDDs). By prioritizing faster SSDs for metadata and slower HDDs for data, users can improve filesystem responsiveness and storage efficiency. This requires a patched kernel and command-line configuration. Improper configuration can lead to out-of-space errors; careful monitoring is recommended.

(wiki.tnonline.net)

Development mixed storage

Witness the Seven Sisters Eclipse in July 2025

2025-07-24

Witness the Seven Sisters Eclipse in July 2025

On July 20, 2025, a celestial event awaits stargazers across much of the U.S. and Canada: the moon will occult the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters. This monthly occurrence, happening since September 2023, offers a chance to witness the moon temporarily blocking these young stars. Visible to the naked eye in the early morning hours, the best viewing will be from dark locations away from city lights. Other celestial events in July 2025 include Venus, Jupiter, and Mars conjunctions with the moon.

(www.discovermagazine.com)

Misc astronomical event Pleiades lunar occultation

Ancient DNA Extraction from Paleolithic Artifacts Reveals Clues to 45,000-Year-Old Human Activities

2025-03-10

Ancient DNA Extraction from Paleolithic Artifacts Reveals Clues to 45,000-Year-Old Human Activities

A groundbreaking study successfully extracted ancient DNA from Paleolithic artifacts unearthed at the French sites of Quinçay and Les Cottés, and from Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria and Denisova Cave in Russia. Researchers developed a non-destructive DNA extraction method using sodium phosphate buffer at varying temperatures to gradually release DNA, minimizing damage to the artifacts. This method yielded both human and animal DNA, offering invaluable genetic insights into human activities and behaviors dating back 45,000 years.

(www.nature.com)

Tech non-destructive extraction Paleolithic

Signal CEO Defends App After US Gov't Messaging Blunder

2025-03-25

Signal CEO Defends App After US Gov't Messaging Blunder

Signal President Meredith Whittaker defended the messaging app's security after a US government mishap involving a journalist in a private chat about military action. She highlighted Signal's open-source, non-profit nature and its end-to-end encryption as key differentiators, positioning it as a superior alternative to WhatsApp, which collects significantly more user data. Download numbers in the US are rising, reflecting increased user preference for a privacy-focused platform.

(www.yahoo.com)

Tech

Typage: Age Encryption with Passkeys

2025-07-16

Typage: Age Encryption with Passkeys

Typage, a TypeScript implementation of the age file encryption format, now supports passkeys for enhanced security. Version 0.2.3 leverages the WebAuthn API for symmetric encryption using passkeys, offering phishing resistance. A companion CLI plugin extends this functionality to hardware FIDO2 security keys. The implementation utilizes the WebAuthn PRF extension, creating a per-file hardware binding and unlinkability. This allows for seamless encryption and decryption across devices, while maintaining strong security guarantees. The new `age-encryption.org/fido2prf` format is central to this improved security.

(words.filippo.io)

Development file encryption

WebGPU Lands in Firefox 141 on Windows!

2025-07-16

WebGPU Lands in Firefox 141 on Windows!

After years of development, WebGPU is finally shipping in Firefox 141 on Windows! WebGPU provides web content with a modern interface to the user's graphics processor, enabling high-performance computation and rendering. Mozilla believes WebGPU will significantly improve web games, visualizations, and local computation. While initially available on Windows, support for macOS, Linux, and Android is planned for the coming months. WebGPU is already available in Chrome and will soon be in Safari.

(mozillagfx.wordpress.com)

Development Graphics Processing

Sesame's Leap: Bridging the Uncanny Valley in Conversational Voice

2025-03-02

Sesame's Leap: Bridging the Uncanny Valley in Conversational Voice

Sesame's research team has made significant strides in creating more natural and emotionally intelligent AI voice assistants. Their Conversational Speech Model (CSM) uses multimodal learning to generate contextually appropriate speech by considering context, emotion, and conversation history. This technology surpasses traditional text-to-speech (TTS) models and demonstrates improvements in naturalness and expressiveness through objective and subjective evaluations. However, the model currently primarily supports English, with future plans to expand to more languages and further enhance its understanding of complex conversational structures.

(www.sesame.com)

AI AI voice conversational model multimodal learning

Windows 10's End of Life Leaves Charities in a Bind

2025-03-15

Windows 10's End of Life Leaves Charities in a Bind

With Windows 10's free security updates ending this October, millions of PCs unable to upgrade to Windows 11 face obsolescence. This poses a significant challenge for charities that rely on these older machines. They're faced with a difficult decision: provide insecure Windows 10, switch to Linux, or scrap the computers. While Linux offers a viable alternative, the learning curve for unfamiliar users, especially seniors and students, is steep and could lead to increased tech support issues. The article explores this problem, showcasing different charities' strategies and the resulting e-waste dilemma.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Tech security updates

California Lithium Battery Plant Fire Sparks Clean Energy Safety Concerns

2025-01-26

California Lithium Battery Plant Fire Sparks Clean Energy Safety Concerns

A massive fire at one of the world's largest lithium-ion battery storage facilities in Monterey County, California, burned for five days, destroying roughly 80% of the batteries. This is the fourth fire at the Moss Landing Power Plant since 2019, raising concerns about California's increasing reliance on renewable energy and battery storage. The incident has prompted calls for stricter safety regulations and more local control over siting of battery storage facilities. A state assembly member has introduced a bill requiring local engagement in permitting and establishing buffer zones around sensitive areas. While initial EPA testing showed no immediate public health threat from toxic gases released, residents remain concerned about long-term impacts.

(www.yahoo.com)

Tech lithium battery safety

Mastering Cryptography: A Hands-On Approach

2025-07-07

This book covers everything you need to understand complete systems like SSL/TLS: block ciphers, stream ciphers, hash functions, message authentication codes, public key encryption, key agreement protocols, and signature algorithms. Learn by doing – exploit common cryptographic flaws, forge administrator cookies, recover passwords, and even backdoor your own random number generator.

(www.crypto101.io)

Development practical

Exploiting CVE-2024-50264: A Race Against Time in the Linux Kernel

2025-09-03

Exploiting CVE-2024-50264: A Race Against Time in the Linux Kernel

This article details the author's journey exploiting the complex CVE-2024-50264 Linux kernel vulnerability using their kernel-hack-drill project. The vulnerability, a challenging race condition, presented numerous obstacles, including a UAF write occurring microseconds after kfree(), hindering cross-cache attacks. The author cleverly utilized the 'immortal' signal 33 to interrupt the connect() syscall, combined with a cross-cache attack and a novel msg_msg spraying technique, ultimately bypassing limitations and achieving privilege escalation. This challenging exploit showcases advanced reverse engineering and exploitation skills, highlighting the value of kernel-hack-drill in vulnerability research.

(a13xp0p0v.github.io)

Development Linux Kernel Vulnerability Race Condition

Optimal Debian Packaging Workflow for 2025

2025-05-26

Optimal Debian Packaging Workflow for 2025

This post outlines the optimal workflow for creating new Debian packages in 2025 while preserving upstream Git history. The goal is to simplify sharing improvements between upstream and Debian, and enhance software provenance and supply-chain security by easily inspecting every change using standard Git tools. Key elements include: using a Git fork/clone of the upstream repository; consistent use of `git-buildpackage` commands with package options in `gbp.conf`; DEP-14 tagging and branching; pristine-tar and upstream signatures; using `Files-Excluded` in `debian/copyright`; patch queues for rebasing and cherry-picking; leveraging Salsa (Debian's GitLab) for CI/CD and peer review. The process is demonstrated by packaging the `entr` command-line tool, walking through each step from repository creation to Merge Request submission on Salsa.

(optimizedbyotto.com)

Development

Music Publishers and AI Giant Anthropic Reach Copyright Deal

2025-01-03

Music Publishers and AI Giant Anthropic Reach Copyright Deal

Major music publishers sued Anthropic, an AI company backed by Amazon, for copyright infringement due to the use of copyrighted song lyrics in training its AI chatbot, Claude. A settlement has been reached requiring Anthropic to strengthen its copyright guardrails, preventing Claude from generating copyrighted lyrics. This landmark agreement marks a significant step in the ongoing debate about AI's use of copyrighted material and sets a precedent for future legal battles in this rapidly evolving field.

(www.hollywoodreporter.com)

Tech Music Copyright

Trump Tax Bill Signed Amidst Republican Celebration

2025-07-04

Trump Tax Bill Signed Amidst Republican Celebration

Amidst joyous celebrations, Republicans signed their signature tax and spending bill. House Speaker Mike Johnson, overcome with emotion, expressed his belief in America and praised the bill as an audacious plan. Republican leadership lauded President Donald Trump, crediting his agenda and the White House's influence as crucial to the bill's passage. The signing ceremony was filled with selfies, Trump-esque poses, and even featured lawmakers mimicking Trump's signature dance moves.

(apnews.com)

Misc Tax Bill Republicans

Efficient Font Caching with Service Workers

2025-09-04

This code snippet demonstrates how a service worker efficiently caches font resources. It uses `CacheStorage` to cache fonts and includes a versioning mechanism to prevent stale caches from interfering. When a font is requested, the service worker first checks the cache; if a hit occurs, it returns the font directly; otherwise, it fetches the font from the network and adds it to the cache, handling network request errors along the way. The code cleverly uses the `clone()` method to prevent resource consumption issues.

(developer.mozilla.org)

Development Fonts

Challenging Infinity: An Expedition to the Edge of the Mathematical Universe

2025-06-24

Challenging Infinity: An Expedition to the Edge of the Mathematical Universe

A group of mathematicians, meeting in the Finnish Arctic Circle, explored the mysteries of infinity within the mathematical universe. They discovered two new cardinal numbers that defy the established hierarchy, instead 'exploding' into a new class of infinities, challenging the known order of the mathematical universe. This discovery sparked a heated debate about the structure of the mathematical universe, with some arguing it represents substantial progress, while others question its validity. The core of the debate lies in the understanding of mathematical axiom systems and the exploration of the nature of infinity.

(www.quantamagazine.org)

Misc mathematical universe

Why I Ditched NixOS After a Year

2025-08-04

After a year of using NixOS, the author switched back to Arch Linux. The post details the steep learning curve and configuration complexities encountered. While NixOS offers reproducibility and consistency, the author found these advantages didn't outweigh the increased time cost and debugging challenges in daily use. The conclusion: for users who don't require extreme reproducibility, the added complexity of NixOS isn't worth it.

(www.rugu.dev)

Development

LLMs Fail at Font Identification: A Live Benchmark

2025-08-04

LLMs Fail at Font Identification: A Live Benchmark

A developer benchmarked GPT-4 and Gemini on a live, continuously updating dataset of unidentified fonts from the DaFont forum. Despite providing context like images, titles, and descriptions, both LLMs performed abysmally. This highlights limitations in even seemingly straightforward image classification tasks, suggesting LLMs are far from a universal solution. The project uses Python scripts for data scraping, GitHub Actions for automation, JSON for storage, and Observable for a dynamic dashboard.

(maxhalford.github.io)

AI Font Identification AI Limitations

Recommendarr: AI-Powered Movie & TV Recommendations

2025-03-02

Recommendarr: AI-Powered Movie & TV Recommendations

Recommendarr is a web application that leverages AI to provide personalized movie and TV show recommendations based on your Sonarr, Radarr, and Plex libraries. It directly integrates with Sonarr and Radarr to analyze your media collections, and optionally with Plex to incorporate your watch history for even better recommendations. Support for OpenAI, local models (Ollama/LM Studio), and any OpenAI-compatible API is included. Customize recommendation counts, model parameters, and more, with dark/light mode and poster image display. Easily installable via Docker or manual installation. Your data remains private; it's never sent to external servers.

(github.com)

Development AI Recommendations Media Management Personalized Recommendations

PEP: A New Ultra-Efficient Compression Format for Pixel Art

2025-08-25

PEP: A New Ultra-Efficient Compression Format for Pixel Art

PEP is a novel image compression format specifically designed for low-color pixel art (≤16 colors is optimal, up to 256 colors are supported). It uses "Prediction by Partial Matching, Order-2" compression, which is 2-10x slower than GIF, PNG, and QOI, but often compresses images 20-50% smaller than GIF/PNG (and multiple times smaller than QOI). If compressed image size matters, PEP is for you. It sits somewhere between GIF and WEBP in terms of speed/compression tradeoff. This is currently experimental, but a C header is provided for use.

(github.com)

Development

The AI Hype Bubble: Expectations vs. Reality

2025-08-25

The AI Hype Bubble: Expectations vs. Reality

Current expectations for AI are overblown, with many companies finding that AI's ROI is far lower than anticipated. A MIT report reveals that 95% of companies that have adopted AI haven't seen any meaningful return on their investment. While AI tools are widely used, they're primarily employed for simple tasks like drafting emails and basic analysis, with complex tasks still dominated by humans. Some companies are even pulling back on AI investments; for example, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is bringing back call center employees previously replaced by AI. AI valuations are overinflated, echoing the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, and the market is already showing signs of correction. While AI is important, for most companies, it's failing to deliver on its gold-plated promises.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

JWST and ALMA Detect Earliest Stages of Planet Formation Around Sun-like Star

2025-07-18

JWST and ALMA Detect Earliest Stages of Planet Formation Around Sun-like Star

Astronomers using the JWST and ALMA telescopes have discovered evidence of the earliest stages of planet formation around a Sun-like star, HOPS-315, located 1300 light-years away. They detected concentrations of hot minerals, the building blocks of planetesimals – the seeds from which planets grow. This discovery offers invaluable data for studying the initial stages of planet formation and may hold clues to how our own Solar System formed. The HOPS-315 system's similarity to our early Solar System allows for unprecedented insights into its origin and evolution.

(www.sciencealert.com)

Tech

The Yin and Yang of Programming: Reconciling Recursion and Iteration

2025-02-27

The Yin and Yang of Programming: Reconciling Recursion and Iteration

This paper explores the balance between recursion (Yin) and iteration (Yang) in functional programming. The authors argue that while purely functional languages are elegant, they lack the convenience of iteration; conversely, iterative languages, while practical, can lead to complex and hard-to-understand code. To address this, they propose a compromise: introducing controlled, declarative iteration into the purely functional language PyFL. This approach retains the advantages of functional programming while adding iterative flexibility, demonstrating its strengths in AI and other domains, effectively balancing Yin and Yang.

(billwadge.com)

Development iteration

Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers Were Less Violent Than We Thought

2025-03-21

Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers Were Less Violent Than We Thought

New research challenges long-held assumptions about the violence of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. By analyzing archaeological and ethnographic data, researchers found that the violent death rate among prehistoric hunter-gatherers was significantly lower than previously estimated, contradicting the common belief that humans are inherently bellicose. While they were more violent than modern societies, this violence stemmed primarily from the lethality of human conflict, not the frequency. The study also highlights the significant role of antisocial individuals in violence and how hunter-gatherer societies controlled violence through cooperation and social norms. This research has significant implications for our understanding of human violence and the potential for peace.

(worksinprogress.co)

Tech human violence prehistoric society hunter-gatherers

Web Interaction Paradigm Shift: Invoker Commands Explained

2025-02-25

This explainer details a new proposal for web interaction: Invoker Commands. By adding `commandfor` and `command` attributes to `` elements, it assigns behavior to buttons in a more accessible and declarative way, reducing the amount of JavaScript required. The proposal defines a `CommandEvent`, allowing developers to customize interactions. Built-in support for `` and `` elements is included, with a focus on accessibility and security. It also supports custom commands and provides ample example code demonstrating how to simplify web interaction development using this proposal.

(open-ui.org)

Development

Shanghai's Dual Faces: A Tale of Two Sides of the Huangpu River

2024-12-17

Shanghai's Dual Faces: A Tale of Two Sides of the Huangpu River

This article recounts the author's observations of Shanghai's architecture, focusing on the contrast between Puxi and Pudong. Starting with a 2005 visit, the author describes being captivated by Pudong's rapidly rising skyscrapers. Today, Pudong boasts the Oriental Pearl Tower, Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai World Financial Center, and Shanghai Tower, forming a stark contrast to the historical European-style buildings of Puxi. The author argues these structures are not just feats of engineering, but also symbols of China's economic development and cultural transformation, reflecting Shanghai's unique duality: a blend of historical heritage and modern dynamism.

(arun.is)

Design Shanghai architecture Pudong development urban development

Linux Distro Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: Days to Compromise

2025-03-19

Linux Distro Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: Days to Compromise

Researchers discovered vulnerabilities in the software infrastructure of Linux distributions, enabling attackers to compromise entire systems within days. Unlike complex supply chain attacks targeting dependencies, this research focused on the distributions' infrastructure itself, such as Fedora's Pagure and openSUSE's Open Build Service. By exploiting argument injection vulnerabilities, attackers could easily bypass security controls and inject malicious code. This highlights the significant supply chain security risks faced even by major open-source projects, underscoring the need for enhanced security audits and protections for software infrastructure.

(fenrisk.com)

Tech software vulnerabilities

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