The GitHub Secure Open Source Fund launched this week with an initial commitment of $1.25 million, reports TechCrunch, using "capital from contributors including American Express, 1Password, Shopify, Stripe, and GitHub's own parent company Microsoft." GitHub briefly teased the new initiative at its annual GitHub Universe developer conference last month, but Tuesday it announced full details and formally opened the program for applicants, which will be reviewed "on a rolling basis"... Read more ›
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America's Justice Department "has ordered all consensual searches by drug enforcement agents conducted at the nation's airports stopped," reports Georgia's local TV station Atlanta News First — after their series of investigations "uncovered how the agents often search innocent passengers at airport gates, looking for cash." On Thursday, the department made public a November 12, 2024, directive from the deputy attorney general to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that... Read more ›
3
"Scientists have found what seems to be the oldest direct evidence of hot water flowing on Mars during its ancient past," reports Space.com. "The discovery could further indicate that the Red Planet, despite its arid and desolate appearance today, may have been capable of supporting life long ago." The evidence was delivered to Earth and sealed within the well-known Martian meteorite NWA7034, found in the Sahara Desert in 2011. Due... Read more ›
56
Slashdot reader Bruce66423 shared this report from the Guardian: Staff have resigned at Starling Bank after its new chief executive demanded thousands of workers attend its offices more frequently, despite lacking enough space to host them. In his first major policy change since taking over from the UK digital bank's founder, Anne Boden, in March, Raman Bhatia has ordered all hybrid staff — many of whom were in the office... Read more ›
0
NBC News reports that a newly identified chemical byproduct "may be present in drinking water in about a third of U.S. homes, a study found." "Scientists do not yet know whether the byproduct is dangerous. But some are worried that it could have toxic properties because of similarities to other chemicals of concern." The newly identified substance, named "chloronitramide anion," is produced when water is treated with chloramine, a chemical... Read more ›
107
The Rust community has "recognized the unsafety of Rust (if used incorrectly)," according to a blog post by Amazon Web Services. So now AWS and the Rust Foundation are "crowdsourcing an effort to verify the Rust standard library," according to an article at DevClass.com, "by setting out a series of challenges for devs and offering financial rewards for solutions..." Rust includes ways to bypass its safety guarantees though, with the... Read more ›
30
Microsoft-owned GitHub published a blog post asking "Does GitHub Copilot improve code quality? Here's what the data says." Its first paragraph includes statistics from past studies — that GitHub Copilot has helped developers code up to 55% faster, leaving 88% of developers feeling more "in the flow" and 85% feeling more confident in their code. But does it improve code quality? [W]e recruited 202 [Python] developers with at least five... Read more ›
53
June, 2023: "Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings." November, 2024: "The Business-School Scandal That Just Keeps Getting Bigger." A senior editor at the Atlantic raises the possibility of systemic dishonesty-rewarding incentives where "a study must be even flashier than all the other flashy findings if its authors want to stand out," writing that "More than a year since all of this began, the evidence of fraud... Read more ›
0
Meta wants to force Apple and Google to verify the ages of people downloading apps from their app stores, reports the Washington Post — and now Meta's campaign "is picking up momentum" with legislators in the U.S. Congress. Federal and state lawmakers have recently proposed a raft of measures requiring that platforms such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram block users under a certain age from using their sites. The push... Read more ›
0
CNN reports that investigators "are trying to crack the mystery of how two undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea were cut within hours of each other." But there's now two competing viewpoints, "with European officials saying they believe the disruption was an act of sabotage and U.S. officials suggesting it was likely an accident." The foreign ministers of Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were... Read more ›
0
Slashdot reader jjslash shared this report from TechSpot: The SilverStone FLP01 made quite the impression when it was shared on X for April Fools' Day 2023. Loosely modeled after popular desktops from yesteryear like the NEC PC-9800 series, the chassis features dual 5.25-inch faux floppy bays that could stand to look a bit more realistic. Notably, the covers flip open to reveal access to a more modern (yet still legacy)... Read more ›
9
Instead of focusing on chatbots, a new study reveals an automated way to breach LLM-driven robots "with 100 percent success," according to IEEE Spectrum. "By circumventing safety guardrails, researchers could manipulate self-driving systems into colliding with pedestrians and robot dogs into hunting for harmful places to detonate bombs..." [The researchers] have developed RoboPAIR, an algorithm designed to attack any LLM-controlled robot. In experiments with three different robotic systems — the... Read more ›
36
"You can use any Linux distribution inside of the Windows Subsystem for Linux" Microsoft recently reminded Windows users, "even if it is not available in the Microsoft Store, by importing it with a tar file." But being an official distro "makes it easier for Windows Subsystem for Linux users to install and discover it with actions like wsl --list --online and wsl --install," Microsoft pointed out this week. And "We're... Read more ›
15
"The past 15 years were unique in ways that might be a bad predictor of our future," writes the Washington Post, with a surge in the number of internet users since 2010, and everyone spending more time online. But today, "lots of smart people believe that artificial intelligence will upend how you find information. Googling is so yesterday." Sam Altman, the top executive overseeing ChatGPT, has said that AI has... Read more ›
19
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNET: Meta says it's taken down more than 2 million accounts this year linked to overseas criminal gangs behind scam operations that human rights activists say forced hundreds of thousands of people to work as scammers and cost victims worldwide billions of dollars. In a Thursday blog post, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp says the pig butchering scam operations — based... Read more ›
0
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Past corporate-sponsored Hour of Code tutorials for the nation's schoolchildren have blurred the lines between coding lessons and product infomercials. So too is the case again with this year's newly-announced Hour of Code 2024 flagship tutorials, which include Microsoft Minecraft, Amazon Music, and Transformers One movie-themed intros to coding. The press release announcing the tutorials from tech-backed nonprofit Code.org, which organizes the Hour of Code... Read more ›
71
Neuralink, the brain chip startup founded by Elon Musk, says it has received approval to launch its first clinical trial in Canada for a device designed to give paralysed individuals the ability to use digital devices simply by thinking. Reuters reports: [T]he Canadian study aims to assess the safety and initial functionality of its implant which enables people with quadriplegia, or paralysis of all four limbs, to control external devices... Read more ›
2
A team of undergraduate students from the University of Southern California's Rocket Propulsion Lab set multiple amateur spaceflight records with their rocket, Aftershock II. "The student-made missile soared 90,000 feet (27,400 meters) beyond the previous record-holder -- a rocket launched more than 20 years ago," reports Live Science. From the report: The students launched Aftershock II on Oct. 20 from a site in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The rocket stood... Read more ›
18
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE: It's early on a Sunday morning in late 1994, and you're shuffling your way through Fitzrovia in Central London, bloodstream still rushing after a long night at Bagley's. The sun comes up as you come down. You navigate side streets that you know like the back of your hand. But your hand's stamped with a party logo. And your brain's kaput. Coffee...... Read more ›
47
Longtime Slashdot reader mspohr shares a report from Gizmodo: Hackers for the Chinese government were able to deeply penetrate U.S. telecommunications infrastructure in ways that President Joe Biden's administration hasn't yet acknowledged, according to new reports from the Washington Post and New York Times. The hackers were able to listen to phone calls and read text messages, reportedly exploiting the system U.S. authorities use to wiretap Americans in criminal cases.... Read more ›
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06.07.2026 14:09
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