schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black: In its war with the Ukraine, it appears Russia is still managing to obtain black market Starlink mini-terminals for use on its drones, despite an effort since 2024 to block access. [Imagery from eastern Ukraine shows a Russian Molniya-type drone outfitted with a mini-Starlink terminal, reinforcing reports that Russia is improvising satellite-linked UAVs to extend their communication and operational range.] SpaceX has made no comment on this issue.

According to the article, Ukraine is "exploring alternative European satellite providers in response, seeking more secure and controllable communications infrastructure for military operations." While switching to another satellite provider might allow Ukraine to shut Starlink down and prevent the Russians from using it within its territory, doing so would likely do more harm to Ukraine's military effort than Russia's. There isn't really any other service comparable at this time. And when Amazon's Leo system comes on line it will face the same black market issues. I doubt it will have any more success than SpaceX in preventing Russia from obtaining its terminals.

Overall this issue is probably not a serious one militarily, however. Russia is not likely capable of obtaining enough black market terminals to make any significant difference on the battlefield. This story however highlights a positive aspect of these new constellations. Just as Russia can't be prevented from obtaining black market terminals, neither can the oppressed citizens in totalitarian nations like Russia and China be blocked as well. These constellations as designed act to defeat the censorship and information control of such nations, a very good thing.

A Soyuz launch at Baikonur damaged Russia's only launchpad capable of sending astronauts and crucial propellant to the ISS. "The rocket itself headed to space without incident, taking three astronauts -- Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev of Russia and Chris Williams of NASA -- to the space station," reports the New York Times. "But the force of the rocket's exhaust shoved a service platform used for prelaunch preparations out of its protective shelter. The platform fell into the flame trench below." From the report: Photos and videos of the launch site the next day showed the platform out of place and mangled. "It's heavily damaged," said Anatoly Zak, who publishes RussianSpaceWeb.com, a close tracker of Russia's space activities, "and so probably it will have to be rebuilt. Maybe some of the hardware can be reused. But it fell down, and it's destroyed."

This is the latest embarrassment for the once-proud Russian space program, which the United States relied on from 2011 to 2020 to get NASA astronauts to orbit. The incident also raises questions about the future of the International Space Station if the launchpad cannot be quickly repaired. In a statement issued on Friday, Roscosmos, the state corporation in charge of the Russian space program, confirmed unspecified "damage" at the launchpad. "All necessary parts needed for repairs are at our disposal, and the damage will be dealt with in the near future," it said.

At an event in Seoul on Tuesday, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z TriFold, a dual-hinged smartphone that unfolds into a 10-inch tablet (source paywalled; alternative source). It launches on Dec. 12 in Korea for about $2,450. The company plans to sell the phone in the U.S., but hasn't shared pricing. Bloomberg reports: Samsung's device has a different hinge design, folding inward from two sides whereas the Mate models take on a Z shape when being folded. When closed, the TriFold's outer screen offers similar dimensions to a regular smartphone. But when unfurled, it provides a tablet-style experience with a 10-inch display, larger than the panel on the Galaxy Z Fold 7. In the tablet-like mode, each of the device's screens can independently run a different app. This provides the equivalent of three separate 6.5-inch bar-style handsets side by side.

Using Samsung's DeX software, which has been tweaked for this particular hardware type, you can also run a desktop-like experience directly on the large inner display. (Other Samsung phones must be plugged into an external monitor to activate DeX mode.) In DeX, the TriFold can operate as many as four distinct workspaces that can each run five apps simultaneously. To preempt concerns about potential breakage, Samsung said it has refined the phone's hinges, aluminum frame and display technology to improve long-term durability. The company will also offer a one-time 50% discount on display repair costs should one eventually be needed.

At its thinnest point, the TriFold measures 3.9 millimeters (0.15 inch). Inside, it contains a 5,600 milliamp-hour battery, marking the largest capacity that Samsung has used in a folding phone so far. The battery provides as much as 17 hours of consecutive video playback with the TriFold display fully open. However, in specifications shared with Bloomberg, the company didn't say how long it expects the battery to last with typical usage.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Conversation, written by authors Adrian R. Bell, Anne Curry, and Jason Sadler: When you picture medieval warfare, you might think of epic battles and famous monarchs. But what about the everyday soldiers who actually filled the ranks? Until recently, their stories were scattered across handwritten manuscripts in Latin or French and difficult to decipher. Now, our online database makes it possible for anyone to discover who they were and how they lived, fought and travelled. To shed light on the foundations of our armed services -- one of England's oldest professions -- we launched the Medieval Soldier Database in 2009. Today, it's the largest searchable online database of medieval nominal data in the world. It contains military service records giving names of soldiers paid by the English Crown. It covers the period from 1369 to 1453 and many different war zones.

We created the database to challenge assumptions about the lack of professionalism of soldiers during the hundred years war and to show what their careers were really like. In response to the high interest from historians and the public (the database has 75,000 visitors per month), the resource has recently been updated. It is now sustainably hosted by GeoData, a University of Southampton research institute. We have recently added new records, taking the dataset back to the late 1350s, meaning it now contains almost 290,000 entries. [...] We hope the database will continue to grow and go on providing answers to questions about our shared military heritage. We are sure that it will unlock many previously untold stories of soldier ancestors.

Longtime Slashdot reader krouic shares a report from Europol: From November 24-28, 2025, Europol supported an action week conducted by law enforcement authorities from Switzerland and Germany in Zurich, Switzerland. The operation focused on taking down the illegal cryptocurrency mixing service Cryptomixer, which is suspected of facilitating cybercrime and money laundering. Three servers were seized in Switzerland, along with the cryptomixer.io domain. The operation resulted in the confiscation of over 12 terabytes of data and more than EUR 25 million worth of Bitcoin. After the illegal service was taken over and shut down, law enforcement placed a seizure banner on the website. Authorities allege that the mixing service laundered over 1.3 billion euros in bitcoin since 2016.

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania finds that preteens who own smartphones by age 12 have significantly higher odds of depression, obesity, and poor sleep compared to their peers. Axios reports: Kids who owned a smartphone at age 12 were found to have about 31% higher odds of depression, 40% higher odds of obesity and 62% higher odds of insufficient sleep than their peers who didn't have one. The researchers analyzed data from the National Institutes of Health-supported Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study assessments conducted between 2016 and 2022. The study included responses from 10,588 youths. Kids who had smartphones were more likely to be female, Black or Hispanic, and from lower-income households. The study has been published in the journal Pediatrics.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Flock, the automatic license plate reader and AI-powered camera company, uses overseas workers from Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms, with training material telling workers how to review and categorize footage including images people and vehicles in the United States, according to material reviewed by 404 Media that was accidentally exposed by the company. The findings bring up questions about who exactly has access to footage collected by Flock surveillance cameras and where people reviewing the footage may be based. Flock has become a pervasive technology in the US, with its cameras present in thousands of communities that cops use every day to investigate things like carjackings. Local police have also performed numerous lookups for ICE in the system.

Companies that use AI or machine learning regularly turn to overseas workers to train their algorithms, often because the labor is cheaper than hiring domestically. But the nature of Flock's business -- creating a surveillance system that constantly monitors US residents' movements -- means that footage might be more sensitive than other AI training jobs. [...] Broadly, Flock uses AI or machine learning to automatically detect license plates, vehicles, and people, including what clothes they are wearing, from camera footage. A Flock patent also mentions cameras detecting "race." It included figures on "annotations completed" and "annotator tasks remaining in queue," with annotations being the notes workers add to reviewed footage to help train AI algorithms. Tasks include categorizing vehicle makes, colors, and types, transcribing license plates, and "audio tasks." Flock recently started advertising a feature that will detect "screaming." The panel showed workers sometimes completed thousands upon thousands of annotations over two day periods. The exposed panel included a list of people tasked with annotating Flock's footage. Taking those names, 404 Media found some were located in the Philippines, according to their LinkedIn and other online profiles.

Many of these people were employed through Upwork, according to the exposed material. Upwork is a gig and freelance work platform where companies can hire designers and writers or pay for "AI services," according to Upwork's website. The tipsters also pointed to several publicly available Flock presentations which explained in more detail how workers were to categorize the footage. It is not clear what specific camera footage Flock's AI workers are reviewing. But screenshots included in the worker guides show numerous images from vehicles with US plates, including in New York, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, and California. Other images include road signs clearly showing the footage is taken from inside the US, and one image contains an advertisement for a specific law firm in Atlanta.

Three Austrian nuns in their 80s who escaped a care home and reclaimed their old convent are refusing the church's offer to stay because it requires them to quit Instagram, stop speaking to the press, and avoid legal counsel -- conditions they call a gag order. Their standoff with church authorities has now escalated to the Vatican as the nuns continue posting to their 185,000 followers. NPR reports: Before the church authorities moved the nuns into care almost two years ago, the local abbey and Archdiocese of Salzburg acquired the convent. The sisters say they were not aware they were signing away what they understood to be their lifelong right to remain in the cloister. On Friday, their superior, Provost Markus Grasl from Reichersberg Abbey, announced that the sisters can stay. But his offer comes with conditions: The nuns must cease all social media activities, stop talking to the press and forgo seeking legal advice. The nuns have rejected the proposal, and now Grasl has called on the Vatican to intercede.

In a statement released Friday, the nuns said the provost's offer is nothing short of a gag order. Speaking via Instagram, Sister Regina said, "We can't agree to this deal. Without the media, we'd have been silenced." Sister Bernadette told Instagram followers: "We need to resolve this but any agreement we reach must be in accordance with God's will and shaped by human reason." [...] The provost's proposed agreement -- which NPR has seen -- also bans laypeople from entering the cloisters, including the sisters' helpers, many of whom they've known for decades and on whom the nuns now depend for help.

Speaking to NPR on Monday, the provost's spokesperson, crisis PR manager Harald Schiffl, said that the provost does not understand why the nuns reject his offer and that, in response, he has requested the Vatican authorities responsible for religious orders to step in. The Vatican has not commented on the situation. So while they await news from Rome, the sisters continue to follow the papal Instagram account. Schiffl says the terms relating to the nuns' social media use are reasonable: "The abbey wishes to discontinue the sisters' social media accounts because what they show has very little to do with real religious life."

"The car-sharing company, first launched in the U.S. in 2000, has been active in the UK since 2010 and has just under half a million members," writes Slashdot reader guesstral. "'I'm writing to let you know that we are proposing to cease the UK operations of Zipcar,' wrote Zipcar UK's general manager, James Taylor, in an email to members today. He went on to say that Zipcar will temporarily suspend new bookings after December 31, pending the outcome of a consultation with its 71 staff members." From the BBC: In its most recent company accounts for 2024, Zipcar blamed the "cost of living crisis," which was affecting UK customers, for revenues falling to 46 million pounds to 53 million the year before, while its after-tax losses had widened to 11.6 million pounds. According to the same accounts, Zipcar membership fees cover the cost of fuelling or charging the vehicle and, as energy costs continued to rise last year, it has added to financial pressures on the company. The company would also be liable for the incoming congestion charge in London that is expanding to include electric vehicles from 26 December, although this was not referenced in Zipcar's email to membership or company accounts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: South Korean e-commerce platform Coupang over the weekend said nearly 34 million Korean customers' personal information had been leaked in a data breach that had been ongoing for more than five months. The company said it first detected the unauthorized exposure of 4,500 user accounts on November 18, but a subsequent investigation revealed that the breach had actually compromised about 33.7 million customer accounts in South Korea. The breach affected customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses, and certain order histories, per Coupang. More sensitive data like payment information, credit card numbers, and login credentials was not compromised and remains secure, the company said. [...] Police have reportedly identified at least one suspect, a former Chinese Coupang employee now abroad, after launching an investigation following a November 18 complaint.

New York has become the first state in the nation to enact a law requiring retailers to disclose when AI and personal data are being used to set individualized prices [non-paywalled source] -- a measure that lawyers say will make algorithmic pricing "the next big battleground in A.I. regulation."

The law, enacted through the state budget, requires online retailers using personalized pricing to post a specific notice: "THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA." The National Retail Federation sued to block enforcement on First Amendment grounds, arguing the required disclosure was "misleading and ominous," but federal judge Jed S. Rakoff allowed the law to proceed last month.

Uber has started displaying the notice to New York users. Spokesman Ryan Thornton called the law "poorly drafted and ambiguous" but maintained the company only considers geographic factors and demand in setting prices. At least 10 states have bills pending that would require similar disclosures or ban personalized pricing outright. California and federal lawmakers are considering complete bans.

Singapore's Ministry of Education has announced that secondary school students will be banned from using smartphones and smartwatches throughout the entire school day starting January 2026, extending current restrictions beyond regular lesson time to cover recess, co-curricular activities, and supplementary lessons. Under the new guidelines, students must store their phones in designated areas like lockers or keep them in their school bags.

Smartwatches also fall under the ban because they enable messaging and social media access, which the ministry says can lead to distractions and reduced peer interaction. Schools may allow exceptions where necessary. Some secondary schools adopted these tighter rules after they were announced for primary schools in January 2025, and the ministry reports improved student well-being and more physical interaction during breaks at those schools. The ministry is also moving the default sleep time for school-issued personal learning devices from 11pm to 10.30pm starting January.

Microsoft has acknowledged that a recent Windows preview update, KB5064081, contains a bug that renders the password icon invisible on the lock screen, leaving users to click on what appears to be empty space to enter their credentials.

The issue affects Windows Insider channel users who installed the non-security preview update. The company's suggested workaround is straightforward if somewhat absurd: click where the button should be, and the password field will appear. Microsoft said it is working to resolve the issue.

The Santa Monica City Council has unanimously voted to order Waymo to halt overnight charging operations at two outdoor depots near Broadway and 14th Street after months of resident complaints about constant beeping from reverse sensors, noise from charging equipment, traffic congestion and flashing lights between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. As many as 56 autonomous vehicles charge at the two sites. It's unclear whether Waymo or its Virginia-based charging operator Volterra intends to comply.

The Los Angeles Times reported that neither company planned to, claiming city officials misunderstood their existing permit rights. Waymo told the newspaper it had adjusted operations in response to neighbor feedback and would continue seeking community input, though the company did not address the order directly. Local law enforcement has gotten involved after at least one person attempted to disrupt operations at the facilities on several occasions.

The dispute points to a broader challenge facing the autonomous vehicle industry: charging depots need to be close to service areas to minimize deadhead miles (distance traveled without revenue-generating passengers), but situating them in residential neighborhoods creates exactly these kinds of conflicts.