The New York Times has confirmed that its internal source code was leaked on 4chan after being stolen from the company's GitHub repositories in January 2024. BleepingComputer reports: As first seen by VX-Underground, the internal data was leaked on Thursday by an anonymous user who posted a torrent to a 273GB archive containing the stolen data. "Basically all source code belonging to The New York Times Company, 270GB," reads the 4chan forum post. "There are around 5 thousand repos (out of them less than 30 are additionally encrypted I think), 3.6 million files total, uncompressed tar."

While BleepingComputer did not download the archive, the threat actor shared a text file containing a complete list of the 6,223 folders stolen from the company's GitHub repository. The folder names indicate that a wide variety of information was stolen, including IT documentation, infrastructure tools, and source code, allegedly including the viral Wordle game. A 'readme' file in the archive states that the threat actor used an exposed GitHub token to access the company's repositories and steal the data. The company said that the breach of its GitHub account did not affect its internal corporate systems and had no impact on its operations. The Times said in a statement to BleepingComputer: "The underlying event related to yesterday's posting occurred in January 2024 when a credential to a cloud-based third-party code platform was inadvertently made available. The issue was quickly identified and we took appropriate measures in response at the time. There is no indication of unauthorized access to Times-owned systems nor impact to our operations related to this event. Our security measures include continuous monitoring for anomalous activity."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Internet service providers are again urging the Federal Communications Commission to impose new fees on Big Tech firms and use the money to subsidize broadband network deployment and affordability programs. If approved, the request would force Big Tech firms to pay into the FCC's Universal Service Fund (USF), which in turn distributes money to broadband providers. The request was made on June 6 by USTelecom, a lobby group for AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink/Lumen, and smaller telcos. USTelecom has made similar arguments before, but its latest request to the FCC argues that the recent death of a broadband discount program should spur the FCC to start extracting money from Big Tech.

"Through focusing on the Big Tech companies who benefit most from broadband connectivity, the Commission will fairly allocate the burden of sustaining USF," USTelecom wrote in the FCC filing last week. The USF spends about $8 billion a year. Phone companies must pay a percentage of their revenue into the fund, and telcos generally pass those fees on to consumers with a "Universal Service" line item on telephone bills. The money is directed back to the telco industry with programs like the Connect America Fund and Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which subsidize network construction in unserved and underserved areas. The USF also funds Lifeline program discounts for people with low incomes.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel hasn't stated any intention to expand USF contributions to Big Tech. Separately, she rejected calls to impose Universal Service fees on broadband, leaving phone service as the only source of USF revenue. The USTelecom filing came in response to the FCC asking for input on its latest analysis of competition in the communications marketplace. USTelecom says the USF is relevant to the proceeding because "the Universal Service Fund is critical for maintaining a competitive marketplace and an expanded contributions base is necessary to sustain the fund." No changes to the USF would be made in this proceeding, though USTelecom's comments could be addressed in the FCC's final report.

At a New York Yankees baseball game, one fan discovered its concession stand doesn't accept cash. "An employee directed him to a kiosk that could convert his greenbacks into plastic," reports the Wall Street Journal, where the fan, "fed $200 into the reverse ATM, which subtracted a $3.50 fee and spat out a debit card with a balance of $196.50." Paying with cash used to be a way to get a discount. These days it can often cost an extra $1 to $6 — the sort of transaction fees once limited to swiping a credit card or using an out-of-network ATM. Reverse ATMs like those at Yankee Stadium are now common at cashless venues and restaurants across the country as a way to cater to those who prefer paying in cash. People who want to pay their parking tickets, tolls, taxes or phone bills in cash, meanwhile, often learn that government agencies and businesses have outsourced that option to companies that usually charge a fee.

All that can amount to a penalty on the people who prefer paying cash. Though it is more common to buy things with cards and mobile devices, cash remains the third-most popular way to pay, accounting for 16% of all payments in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve. That's down 2 percentage points from the year before, continuing a steady decline that accelerated during the pandemic. "It's unbelievable that we actually have to tell retailers, 'This is U.S. currency and it's something that should be accepted,' " said Jonathan Alexander, executive director of the Consumer Choice in Payment Coalition, a group of businesses and nonprofits lobbying for the continued acceptance of cash.

There aren't federal laws that require businesses to accept cash. States like Colorado and Rhode Island and cities like New York banned cashless retail establishments after many stores shifted to card-only transactions to reduce the spread of Covid-19, speed up transactions and cut back on theft. In 2023, lawmakers in the House of Representatives and the Senate introduced bills requiring that businesses accept cash for all in-person purchases under $500, unless they provide devices like a reverse ATM that don't charge fees. The bills haven't passed.

Cashless businesses can be a burden for older or lower-income shoppers who are less likely to have access to digital payments. They also pose challenges for younger people who haven't yet set up credit cards or bank accounts.
The article includes the story of an 18-year-old who earned cash by babysitting, then went to a hockey game and "was charged a 50-cent fee after putting $20 into a reverse ATM...to order chicken nuggets and a bottle of water." (Others who prefer cash "say paper money is anonymous, helps them keep spending under control and is better for tips," the article adds noting that roughly six in 10 Americans use cash for at least some of their purchases, according to Pew Research Center.)

The makers of one "reverse ATM" tell the Journal that whether or not someone gets charged a fee actually depends on what state they're in — and on the preferences of the venue that installed the ATM machine.

It was "a catastrophic IT failure," writes Computer Weekly. It was nearly two years ago that Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, "declared itself in financial distress" — effectively declaring bankruptcy — after the costs on an Oracle project costs ballooned from $25 million to around $125.5 million.

But Computer Weekly's investigation finds signs that the program board and its manager wanted to go live in April of 2022 "regardless of the state of the build, the level of testing undertaken and challenges faced by those working on the programme." One manager's notes "reveal concerns that the program manager and steering committee could not be swayed, which meant the system went live despite having known flaws." Computer Weekly has seen notes from a manager at BCC highlighting a number of discrepancies in the Birmingham City Council report to cabinet published in June 2023, 14 months after the Oracle system went into production. The report stated that some critical elements of the Oracle system were not functioning adequately, impacting day-to-day operations. The manager's comments reveal that this flaw in the implementation of the Oracle software was known before the system went live in April 2022... An insider at Birmingham City Council who has been closely involved in the project told Computer Weekly it went live "despite all the warnings telling them it wouldn't work"....

Since going live, the Oracle system effectively scrambled financial data, which meant the council had no clear picture of its overall finances. The insider said that by January 2023, Birmingham City Council could not produce an accurate account of its spending and budget for the next financial year: "There's no way that we could do our year-end accounts because the system didn't work."
A June 2023 report to cabinet "stated that due to issues with the council's bank reconciliation system, a significant number of transactions had to be manually allocated to accounts rather than automatically via the Oracle system," according to the article. But Computer Weekly has seen a 2019 presentation slide deck showing the council was already aware that Oracle's out-of-the-box bank reconciliation system "did not handle mixed debtor/non-debtor bank files. The workaround suggested was either a lot of manual intervention or a platform as a service (PaaS) offering from Evosys, the Oracle implementation partner contracted by BCC to build the new IT system."

The article ultimately concludes that "project management failures over a number of years contributed to the IT failure."

Michael Geist Pig Hogger (Slashdot reader #10,379) reminds us that in Canadian law, "fair use" is called "fair dealing" — and that Canadian digital media users just enjoyed a huge win. Canadian user rights champion Michael Geist writes: The Federal Court has issued a landmark decision on copyright's anti-circumvention rules which concludes that digital locks should not trump fair dealing. Rather, the two must co-exist in harmony, leading to an interpretation that users can still rely on fair dealing even in cases involving those digital locks.

The decision could have enormous implications for libraries, education, and users more broadly as it seeks to restore the copyright balance in the digital world. The decision also importantly concludes that merely requiring a password does not meet the standard needed to qualify for copyright rules involving technological protection measures.
Canada's 2012 "Copyright Modernization Act" protected anti-copying technology from circumvention, Geist writes — and Blacklock's Reports had then "argued that allowing anyone other than original subscriber to access articles constituted copyright infringement." The court found that the Blacklock's legal language associated with its licensing was confusing and that fair dealing applied here as well...

Blacklock's position on this issue was straightforward: it argued that its content was protected by a password, that passwords constituted a form of technological protection measure, and that fair dealing does not apply in the context of circumvention. In other words, it argued that the act of circumvention (in this case of a password) was itself infringing and it could not be saved by fair dealing. The Federal Court disagreed on all points...

For years, many have argued for a specific exception to clarify that circumvention was permitted for fair dealing purposes, essentially making the case that users should not lose their fair dealing rights the moment a rights holder places a digital lock on their work. The Federal Court has concluded that the fair dealing rights have remained there all along and that the Copyright Act's anti-circumvention rules must be interpreted in a manner consistent with those rights.
"The case could still be appealed, but for now the court has restored a critical aspect of the copyright balance after more than a decade of uncertainty and concern."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: If you devoured the Childhood of Famous Americans book series as a kid and are ready for a longer read, Bill Gates has a book for you.

"I'm excited to announce my new book, Source Code, which will be published next February," Gates wrote Tuesday in a GatesNotes blog post. "It's a memoir about my early years, from childhood through my decision to leave college and start Microsoft with Paul Allen. I write about the relationships, lessons, and experiences that laid the foundation for everything in my life that followed." GeekWire explains the timing of the book release is notable: January 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the Popular Electronics magazine issue that featured the early Altair 8800 personal computer, which inspired Gates and Allen to start the company.

Proceeds from book sales will be donated to the nonprofit United Way Worldwide, in recognition of Gates' late mother Mary's longtime work as a volunteer and board member with the organization.
"Hey, this thing is happening without us," Allen famously said to Bill Gates (who had just turned 19).

When Gates finished reading the Popular Electronics article, "he realized that Allen was right," according to one biographer. "For the next eight weeks, the two of them embarked on a frenzy of code writing that would change the nature of the computer business."

In November Google agreed to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million annually "in order to be exempt from the Online News Act, which compels tech companies to enter into agreements with news publishers," writes the Canadian Press.

On Friday Google "named the organization it has selected to distribute the $100 million..." The Canadian Journalism Collective will be responsible for ensuring eligible news organizations get their share of the money. The collective is a federally incorporated non-profit organization that was created for this purpose. It was founded in May by a group of independent publishers and broadcasters... "We hope these next steps will be completed as quickly as possible, so Canadian publishers and journalists can soon begin to receive the proceeds of this new contribution model," Google said in a blog entry posted on their website Friday...

The money will be distributed proportionately based on how many full time-journalists the companies employ. Small print and digital outlets can expect to receive about $17,000 per journalist that they employ, an official with the Canadian Heritage Department has said.
Google's money will go to 1,520 news organizations, according to Google's blog post — which describes the arrangement as "addressing our concerns with the Online News Act" and "a viable path to an exemption at a clear and commercially acceptable commitment level..." As part of this transition, we have advised partners in our Google News Showcase program (our online news experience and licensing program for news organizations) will cease to operate in Canada later this year as we transition to this new contribution model. We will be maintaining some Google News Initiative programming in Canada. This includes a range of collaborative tools and resources that can support the advancement of quality journalism. However, with our monetary contribution in Canada now streamlined into the new single collective model, these investments will be non-monetary in nature.

Last week America's energy secretary cheered the startup of a fourth nuclear reactor at a Georgia power plant, calling it "the largest producer of clean energy, and the largest producer of electricity in the United States" after a third reactor was started up there in December.

From the U.S. Energy Department's transcript of the speech: Each year, Units 3 and 4 are going to produce enough clean power to power 1 million homes and businesses, enough energy to power roughly 1 in 4 homes in Georgia. Preventing 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution annually. That, by the way, is like planting more than 165 million trees every year!

And that's not to mention the historic investments that [electric utility] Southern has made on the safety front, to ensure this facility meets — and exceeds — the highest operating standards in the world....

To reach our goal of net zero by 2050, we have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country. That means we've got to add 200 more gigawatts by 2050. Okay, two down, 198 to go! In building [Unit] 4, we've solved our greatest design challenges. We've stood up entire supply chains.... And so it's time to cash in on our investments by building more. More of these facilities. The Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office stands ready to help, with hundreds of billions of dollars in what we call Title 17 loans... Since the President signed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, companies across the nation have announced 29 new or expanded nuclear facilities — across 16 states — representing about 1,600 potential new jobs. And the majority of those projects will expand the domestic uranium production and fuel fabrication, strengthening these critical supply chains...

Bottom line is, in short, we are determined to build a world-class nuclear industry in the United States, and we're putting our money where our mouth is.
America's Energy Secretary told the Washington Post that "Whether it happens through small modular reactors, or AP1000s, or maybe another design out there worthy of consideration, we want to see nuclear built." The Post notes the Energy department gave a $1.5 billion loan to restart a Michigan power plant which was decommissioned in 2022. "It would mark the first time a shuttered U.S. nuclear plant has been reactivated."

"But in this country with 54 nuclear plants across 28 states, restarting existing reactors and delaying their closure is a lot less complicated than building new ones." When the final [Georgia] reactor went online at the end of April, the expansion was seven years behind schedule and nearly $20 billion over budget. It ultimately cost more than twice as much as promised, with ratepayers footing much of the bill through surcharges and rate hikes...

Administration officials say the country has no choice but to make nuclear power a workable option again. The country is fast running short on electricity, demand for power is surging amid a boom in construction of data centers and manufacturing plants, and a neglected power grid is struggling to accommodate enough new wind and solar power to meet the nation's needs...

As the administration frames the narrative of the plant as one of perseverance and innovation that clears a path for restoring U.S. nuclear energy dominance, even some longtime boosters of the industry question whether this country will ever again have a vibrant nuclear energy sector. "It is hard for me to envision state energy regulators signing off on another one of these, given how badly the last ones went," said Matt Bowen, a nuclear scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, who was an adviser on nuclear energy issues in the Obama administration.
The article notes there are 19 AP1000 reactors (the design used at the Georgia plant) in development around the world. "None of them are being built in the United States."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: "Great news, Louisiana!" tech-backed Code.org exclaimed Wednesday in celebratory LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter posts. Louisiana is "officially the 10th state to make computer science a [high school] graduation requirement. Huge thanks to Governor Jeff Landry for signing the bill and to our legislative champions, Rep. Jason Hughes and Sen. Thomas Pressly, for making it happen! This means every Louisiana student gets a chance to learn coding and other tech skills that are super important these days. These skills can help them solve problems, think critically, and open doors to awesome careers!"

Representative Hughes, the sponsor of HB264 — which calls for each public high school student to successfully complete a one credit CS course as a requirement for graduation and also permits students to take two units of CS instead of studying a Foreign Language — tweeted back: "HUGE thanks @codeorg for their partnership in this effort every step of the way! Couldn't have done it without [Code.org Senior Director of State Government Affairs] Anthony [Owen] and the Code.org team!"

Code.org also on Wednesday announced the release of its 2023 Impact Report, which touted its efforts "to include a requirement for every student to take computer science to receive a high school diploma." Since its 2013 launch, Code.org reports it's spent $219.8 million to push coding into K-12 classrooms, including $19 million on Government Affairs (Achievements: "Policies changed in 50 states. More than $343M in state budgets allocated to computer science.").

In Code.org by the Numbers, the nonprofit boasts that 254,683 students started Code.org's AP CS Principles course in the academic year (2025 Goal: 400K), while 21,425 have started Code.org's new Amazon-bankrolled AP CS A course. Estimates peg U.S. public high school enrollment at 15.5M students, annual K-12 public school spending at $16,080 per pupil, and an annual high school student course load at 6-8 credits...

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: A YouTuber who posted a Fourth of July video in which passengers on a low-flying helicopter shot fireworks at a speeding Lamborghini is facing a federal charge tied to the stunt.

Suk Min Choi, 24, who runs a YouTube channel under the name Alex Choi, was charged Thursday with causing the placement of an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft, the Justice Department announced. He arranged to have the helicopter fly over the El Mirage Dry Lakebed near Los Angeles in June 2023 for a video titled "Destroying a Lamborghini With Fireworks," according to a complaint filed in the Central District Court of California. The video, released on July 4, shows scenes akin to an action film as Choi laughs while driving the Lamborghini and helicopter-launched fireworks ricochet off the car, enveloping it in sparks...

Choi faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, according to the Justice Department.
More details from NBC Los Angeles: Federal authorities said radar data from the day of the video shoot showed that the helicopter left an airport in Pacoima, California, around 1:53 p.m. and turned toward El Mirage Lake, a dry lake in California, where the video was filmed. The helicopter's transponder was then turned off, according to the affidavit. The helicopter reappeared on the radar and flew back to the airport just before 9 p.m., the document says.

The pilot initially told an FAA inspector that he did not know anything about the El Mirage video, according to the affidavit. In a follow-up call, he told inspectors that he did not want Choi to know he was speaking with them and said "Choi was doing unsafe activities involving cars and aircraft." In January, the FAA issued an emergency order revoking the pilot's private pilot certification, the affidavit says.

America "is now adding less wind capacity each year" than it was before the passage of a climate-protecting bill in 2022, according to the New York Times.

Since then "solar panel installations are indeed soaring to record highs in the U.S., as are batteries that can store energy for later. But wind power has struggled, both on land and in the ocean." Some factors behind the wind industry's recent slowdown may be temporary, such as snarled supply chains. But wind power is also more vulnerable than solar power to many of the biggest logistical hurdles that hinder energy projects today: a lack of transmission lines, a lengthy permitting process and a growing backlash against new projects in many communities... [M]any areas are now crowded with turbines and existing electric grids are clogged, making it difficult to add more projects. Energy companies want to expand the grid's capacity to transport even more wind power to population centers, but getting permits for transmission lines and building them has become a brutal slog that can take more than a decade... Because they can reach the height of skyscrapers, wind turbines are more noticeable than solar farms and often attract more intense opposition from local communities.

The wind industry has also been hampered by soaring equipment costs after the pandemic wrecked supply chains and inflation spiked. While those factors initially hurt solar, too, the solar industry has adjusted much faster, with China nearly doubling its manufacturing capacity for panels over the past two years. Wind supply chains, which are dominated by a few manufacturers in China, Europe and the United States, have yet to fully recover. The cost increases have been devastating for offshore wind projects in the Northeast, where developers have canceled more than half the projects they planned to build this decade. Wind isn't languishing only in the United States. While a record 117 gigawatts of new wind capacity came online last year globally, virtually all of that growth was in China. In the rest of the world, developers weren't installing wind turbines any faster than they were in 2020...

It's still possible that wind power could rebound. In fact, some experts argue that the recent slowdown is only a temporary artifact of tax policy... [John Hensley, vice president for markets and policy analysis at the American Clean Power Association, a renewable industry trade group] said that U.S. wind manufacturing was beginning to ramp up thanks to new tax incentives, while costs were starting to come down. Last year, orders for new turbines increased by 130%, although many of them won't be delivered until 2025 or later. Some states are now trying to make it easier to build renewable energy: Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota have all passed laws making it harder for local governments to restrict wind and solar. The federal government has issued new rules to accelerate the planning of transmission lines.

Demand for wind could also rise as a growing number of states, tech companies and hydrogen producers are trying to secure clean electricity around the clock, rather than just a burst of solar power in the daytime.
Many plans for moving America off fossil fuels "envision a large expansion of both solar and wind," the article points out, "because the two sources generate electricity at different hours and can complement each other. A boom in solar power alone, which runs only in daytime, isn't enough."

Carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere are accumulating "faster than ever" and have reached unprecedented levels, with a peak of 426.9 ppm recorded at NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in May 2024, said scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego. CBS News reports: "Over the past year, we've experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms," NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. "Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever." The researchers measured carbon dioxide, or CO2, levels at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. They found that atmospheric levels of the gas hit a seasonal peak of just under 427 parts per million in May -- an increase of 2.9 ppm since May 2023 and the fifth-largest annual growth in 50 years of data recording.

It also made official that the past two years saw the largest jump in the May peak -- when CO2 levels are at their highest in the Northern Hemisphere. John Miller, a NOAA carbon cycle scientist, said that the jump likely stems from the continuous rampant burning of fossil fuels as well as El Nino conditions making the planet's ability to absorb CO2 more difficult. The surge of carbon dioxide levels at the measuring station surpassed even the global average set last year, which was a record high of 419.3 ppm -- 50% higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution. However, NOAA noted that their observations were taken at the observatory specifically, and do not "capture the changes of CO2 across the globe," although global measurements have proven consistent without those at Mauna Loa. "Not only is CO2 now at the highest level in millions of years, it is also rising faster than ever," Ralph Keeling, director of Scripps' CO2 program, said in the release. "Each year achieves a higher maximum due to fossil-fuel burning, which releases pollution in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Fossil fuel pollution just keeps building up, much like trash in a landfill."

"We are living in unprecedented times. ... This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold," Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus, added.

Yelp can pursue a lawsuit accusing a reputation management company of fraudulently advertising its ability to remove "bad" reviews from the business review website. From a report: In a decision late Thursday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said Yelp can pursue trademark infringement and unfair competition claims against ReviewVio, which operates as Dandy. Yelp said ReviewVio's ads, which include the Yelp logo, harmed its reputation by suggesting that businesses could pay for artificially inflated star ratings.

This allegedly undercut honest businesses that will not pay to remove negative reviews, and undermined the usefulness of Yelp's website to consumers. Yelp also said it lost ad revenue from businesses that paid for "review gating," which the company prohibits, or incorrectly believed that Yelp endorsed the practice.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has released Ubuntu Core 24, a version of its operating system designed for edge devices and the Internet of Things (IoT). The new release comes with a 12-year Long Term Support commitment and features that enable secure, reliable, and efficient deployment of intelligent devices.

Ubuntu Core 24 introduces validation sets for custom image creation, offline remodelling for air-gapped environments, and new integrations for GPU operations and graphics support. It also offers device management integrations with Landscape and Microsoft Azure IoT Edge. The release is expected to benefit various industries, including automation, healthcare, and robotics, Canonical said.

A 27-year old Tamagotchi mystery was solved this week when a collector figured out how to unlock secret characters on the Mothra Tamagotchi, released in Japan in 1997. From a report: A Discord user named rhubarb_pie found out how to unlock the "Moll & Lora" twins as playable characters, which were previously seen in the handheld pet-raising-simulator as medical nurses who healed your character when it was sick. The Tamagotchi Wiki states they had previously been obtained through a "battery glitch," but rhubarb_pie figured out how to unlock them as playable characters through the normal course of gaming.

As a reminder, Tamagotchis are virtual pets made by Bandai and introduced in 1996 that were incredibly popular at the time and inspired a ton of clones. There have been many different versions of Tamagotchi since its original release, which included the Mothra Tamagotchi, which was tied to the Japanese release of the movie Rebirth of Mothra II. Mothra is a giant flying moth that exists in the Godzilla cinematic universe. There is an entire community of Tamagotchi collectors, enthusiasts, and reverse engineers, and for several decades players had wondered whether Moll & Lora could be unlocked as playable characters on the Mothra Tamagotchi. "After years of debate whether this was even possible, I have proven that, in fact, you can raise the Twin characters Moll & Lora on the Mothra," rhubarb_pie wrote in a lengthy guide to unlocking the characters posted on Discord Wednesday. "The ROM for the Mothra was dumped about a month ago and I figured out how everything worked by studying the code."