You can try 570 extinct operating systems at a new "virtual museum," according to a new article by ZDNet. Their reporter downloaded the ancient OS NeXTSTEP, and was "shocked" by how easy it was to run it, "and by the sheer number of operating systems to choose from." Essentially, what you do is download a zipped file, unzip it, change into the newly created directory, and run the executable. VirtualBox then opens to a Debian Linux instance, where you can select from a very long list of operating systems to run... You can run operating systems like Amiga, Apple I/II/III, Atari, Avigo, Commodore 64, Cray, DEC Alpha, Einstein, Game Boy Advance, GE 200, HP 3000, IBM 1130, iPod touch, Jupiter Ace, Lisa, Macintosh, MIPS-based SBCs, Neo, Newton, NeXT, NORC, Palm, and so many more. You can test the earliest mainframes, later mainframes and minicomputers, workstations and Unix variants, home computers, personal computer operating systems, mobile and embedded adOSes, and research-based and obscure systems. As far as Linux is concerned, you can run early Debian and its derivatives, Red Hat and its derivatives, early Slackware, and more...

There are two editions of the Virtual OS Museum: full and lite. The full edition is currently 174GB and includes everything you need to run these old-school operating systems. The full version does not require a network connection to run. The Lite version is only 14GB and requires an internet connection because it downloads the full OS image you want to use.
Gizmodo notes "this project is all the more remarkable for being the work of one man: Andrew Wartenkin, who has been collecting OS images for over two decades." Of course, Wartenkin didn't write all the emulation software himself, and he maintains a list of credits to give credit where it's due... The Museum itself runs in a virtual machine, which seems kinda fitting — it opens in a virtualized Linux installation and presents you with the full list of available operating systems.

Did you know someone has written a GUI for the Commodore 64? Neither did I! There are simulations of ancient mainframes, like the IBM 1130 (yours for the low, low price of $32,280 — or $41,230 with a disk drive — back in 1965).
There's also a YouTube channel.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00Kfor sharing the news.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google on Wednesday published exploit code for an unfixed vulnerability in its Chromium browser codebase that threatens millions of people using Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and virtually all other Chromium-based browsers. The proof-of-concept code exploits the Browser Fetch programming interface, a standard that allows long videos and other large files to be downloaded in the background. An attacker can use the exploit to create a connection for monitoring some aspects of a user's browser usage and as a proxy for viewing sites and launching denial-of-service attacks. Depending on the browser, the connections either reopen or remain open even after it or the device running it has rebooted.

The unfixed vulnerability can be exploited by any website a user visits. In effect, a compromise amounts to a limited backdoor that makes a device part of a limited botnet. The capabilities are limited to the same things a browser can do, such as visit malicious sites, provide anonymous proxy browsing by others, enable proxied DDoS attacks, and monitor user activity. Nonetheless, the exploit could allow an attacker to wrangle thousands, possibly millions, of devices into a network. Once a separate vulnerability becomes available, the attacker could use it to then compromise all those devices.

"The dangerous part here is that you can just have a lot of different browsers together that you can in the future run something on that you figure out," said Lyra Rebane, the independent researcher who discovered the vulnerability and privately reported it to Google in late 2022 in an interview. He said using the exploit code Google prematurely published would be "pretty easy," although scaling it to wrangle large numbers of devices into a single network would require more work. In the thread of Rebane's disclosure to Google, two developers said in separate responses that it was a "serious vulnerability." Its severity was rated S1, the second-highest classification.

Since its reporting 29 months ago, the vulnerability remained unknown except to Chromium developers. Then on Wednesday morning, it was published to the Chromium bug tracker. Rebane initially assumed the vulnerability was finally fixed. Shortly thereafter, he learned that, in fact, it remained unpatched. While Google removed the post, it remains available on archival sites, along with the exploit code. Google representatives didn't immediately respond to an email asking how and why it published the vulnerability and if or when a fix would become available. The exploit works by abusing Chromium's Browser Fetch API to open a service worker that remains persistently active. A malicious website can trigger it through JavaScript, creating a connection that can be used "for monitoring some aspects of a user's browser usage and as a proxy for viewing sites and launching denial-of-service attacks," reports Ars.

Depending on the browser, those connections "either reopen or remain open even after it or the device running it has rebooted," effectively turning the device into part of a "limited botnet."

Iran's government "wants to charge the world's largest tech companies for using the subsea internet cables laid under the Strait of Hormuz," reports CNN. Their article also notes that Iran's state-linked media outlets "have vaguely threatened that traffic could be disrupted if firms don't pay." Lawmakers in Tehran discussed a plan last week which could target submarine cables linking Arab countries to Europe and Asia. "We will impose fees on internet cables," Iranian military spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari declared on X last week. Iran's Revolutionary Guards-linked media said Tehran's plan to extract revenue from the strait would require companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon to comply with Iranian law while submarine cable companies would be required to pay licensing fees for cable passage, with repair and maintenance rights given exclusively to Iranian firms. Some of these companies have invested in the cables running through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, but it's unclear if those cables traverse Iranian waters.

It's also unclear how the regime could force tech giants to comply, as they are barred from making payments to Iran due to strict US sanctions; as a result, the companies themselves may view Iran's statements as posturing rather than serious policy. Still, state-affiliated media outlets have issued veiled threats warning of damage to cables that could impact some of the trillions of dollars in global data transmission and affect worldwide internet connectivity... Iran's threats are part of a strategy to demonstrate its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and ensure the survival of the regime, a core objective for the Islamic Republic in this war, said Dina Esfandiary, Middle East lead at Bloomberg Economics. "It aims to impose such a hefty cost on the global economy that no-one will dare attack Iran again," she said.
The article notes that subsea cables "carry vast internet and financial traffic between Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf," and that targetting them "would affect far more than internet speeds, threatening everything from banking systems, military communications and AI cloud infrastructure to remote work, online gaming and streaming services."

CNN spoke to Mostafa Ahmed, "a senior researcher at the United Arab Emirates-based Habtoor Research Center, who published a paper on the effects of a large-scale attack on submarine communications infrastructure in the Gulf." Armed with combat divers, small submarines, and underwater drones, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) poses a risk to underwater cables, Ahmed said, adding that any attack could trigger a cascading "digital catastrophe" across several continents. Iran's neighbors across the Persian Gulf could face severe disruptions to internet connection, potentially impacting critical oil and gas exports as well as banking.

Beyond the region, India could see a large proportion of its internet traffic affected, threatening its huge outsourcing industry with losses amounting to billions, according to Ahmed... Any disruption could also slow financial trading and cross-border transactions between Europe and Asia, while parts of East Africa could face internet blackouts. And if Iran's proxies decide to employ similar tactics in the Red Sea, the damage could be far worse.

OpenAI is previewing a feature that lets ChatGPT Pro users connect bank and investment accounts through Plaid, allowing the chatbot to analyze spending, subscriptions, balances, portfolios, debt, and major financial decisions. "More than 200 million people are already going to ChatGPT every month with finance questions -- from budgeting to tips on how to cut back on spending," OpenAI said in its announcement. "Now, users can securely connect their financial accounts with Plaid to get the full view of their financial picture in the context of their personal goals, lifestyle, and priorities that they've shared with ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI's advanced reasoning capabilities." The Verge reports: When financial accounts are connected, OpenAI says that ChatGPT users can view a dashboard that details their spending history, including any active subscriptions. Users can also ask it to help with financial decisions like buying a house or signing up for credit cards and flag any changes in spending habits. This financial feature will be initially available to users in the US who subscribe to ChatGPT's $200-per-month Pro tier. "We'll learn and improve from early use before rolling it out to Plus, with the goal of making it available to everyone," says OpenAI.

To assuage concerns, OpenAI promises users "control over their data," including the ability to disconnect their bank accounts from ChatGPT at any time, though the company has up to 30 days to delete your data from its systems. You can also view and delete "financial memories" like goals or financial obligations saved by the chatbot. User control extends to whether your data is fed back into AI models -- users can enable the option to "Improve the model for everyone" to allow financial data in their ChatGPT conversations to be used for training AI, for example. OpenAI also says ChatGPT can't make any changes to your bank accounts or see "full account numbers."

A man accused of stealing hard drives containing unreleased Beyonce music, tour plans, and other materials from a rental car in Atlanta has pleaded guilty and accepted a five-year sentence, including two years in custody. Slashdot Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Kelvin Evans was by the Atlanta police department in September in connection to a July 2025 car robbery where two suitcases containing Beyonce music and tour plans were stolen from a rental car. [...] According to a July police report, Beyonce choreographer Christopher Grant and dancer Diandre Blue called 911 to report a theft from their rental vehicle, a 2024 Jeep Wagoneer, before Beyonce's Cowboy Carter tour dates in Atlanta. An October indictment stated that Evans entered the car on July 8 "with the intent to commit theft."

The stolen hard drives contained "watermarked music, some unreleased music, footage plans for the show and past and future set list," according to a police report. Clothing, designer sunglasses, laptops and AirPods headphones were also stolen, Grant and Blue said. Local law enforcement searched for the location of one of the stolen laptops and the AirPods to try and locate the property. One police officer wrote in the report: "I conducted a suspicious stop in the area, due to the information that was relayed to me. There were several cars in the area also that the AirPods were pinging to in that area also. After further investigation, a silver [redacted], which had traveled into zone 5 was moving at the same time as the tracking on the AirPods."

Evans was arrested several weeks after Grant and Blue filed a report, and was publicly named as the suspect in September. He was released on a $20,000 bond a month later. At the time of his arrest, Atlanta police said that the stolen property had not been recovered. It is unclear whether it has since been found. Bruce66423 commented: "Just for stealing a couple of suitcases from a car. Funny how the elite punish those who inconvenience them. Can you imagine an ordinary victim see their offender get that sort of sentence?"

A Georgia data center developed by QTS used nearly 30 million gallons of water through two unaccounted-for connections before residents complained about low water pressure and the county utility discovered the issue. "All told, the developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nearly $150,000 for using more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water," reports Politico. "That is equivalent to 44 Olympic-size swimming pools and far exceeds the peak limit agreed to during the data center planning process." From the report: The details were revealed in a May 15, 2025 letter from the Fayette County water system to Quality Technology Services, which outlined the retroactive charge of $147,474. The letter did not specify how many months the unpaid bill covered, but when asked about it Wednesday, Vanessa Tigert, the Fayette County water system director, said it was likely about four months. A QTS spokesperson said the timeframe was 9-15 months. Once the data center was notified, it paid all retroactive charges, a QTS spokesperson said in an email, noting the unmetered water consumption occurred while the county converted its system to smart meters.

The Fayette County water system confirmed the data center's meters are now fully integrated and tracked. Tigert, the water system director, blamed the issue on a procedural mix-up. "Fayette County is a suburb, it's mostly residential, and we don't have much commercial meters in our system anyway," she said. "And so we didn't realize our connection point wasn't working." The incident became public last week when a county resident obtained the 2025 letter to QTS through a public records request and posted it on Facebook, prompting outrage from residents concerned about the data center's water consumption. [...]

Tigert, who sent the 2025 letter to QTS, said the utility didn't know about the water hookups because the connection process "got mixed up" as the county transitioned to a cloud-based system while also trying to accommodate an industrial customer. Tigert also said her staff is small and at capacity. "Just like any water system, we don't have enough staff. We can't keep staff," she said. "I've got one person that's doing inspections and plan review, and so he's spread pretty thin." She said it's possible her staff did know about hookups but that she hadn't been able to locate the inspection report. "I may have hit 'send' too soon," she said about the 2025 letter to QTS. While the utility charged the data center a higher construction rate for the unapproved water consumption, Tigert confirmed the utility did not penalize or fine the data center. For what it's worth, the Blackstone-owned company says its data centers use a closed-loop cooling system that does not consume water for cooling. The reason for last year's high water use, according to QTS, was the temporary construction work such as concrete, dust control, and site preparation.

Once the campus is fully operational, it should only use a small amount of water for things like bathrooms and kitchens. But that point could still be years away, as construction and expansion in Fayetteville may continue for another three to five years.

Microsoft is winding down Xbox Copilot on mobile and ending development of Copilot on console, reversing plans to bring the gaming-focused AI assistant to current-generation Xbox consoles this year. "The move follows [new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's] reorganization of the Xbox platform team earlier on Tuesday, which added executives from Microsoft's CoreAI team -- where Sharma worked before taking over Xbox -- to the Xbox side of the company," reports The Verge.

Sharma said in a post on X: Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers. Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get the business back on track. As part of this shift, you'll see us begin to retire features that don't align with where we're headed. We will begin winding down Copilot on mobile and will stop development of Copilot on console. Since taking over for former Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in February, Sharma has scrapped the Microsoft Gaming brand and cut the price of Xbox Game Pass.

French prosecutors say police detained a 15-year-old suspected of using the alias "breach3d" in connection with a cyberattack on France Titres (ANTS), the state agency that handles passports, ID cards, and other secure documents. The breach allegedly involved 12 million to 18 million lines of data offered for sale online, potentially affecting up to a third of France's population if the records are unique. The Register reports: It formally opened (PDF) a judicial investigation on April 29, covering alleged fraudulent access to a state-run automated data processing system and the extraction of data from it. Each offense carries a potential prison sentence of seven years and a maximum ~$350,000 fine. Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau has requested that the minor, whose pronouns, like their name, were also not specified, be formally charged and placed under judicial supervision.

[...] France's approach to punishing minors via its legal system is typically geared toward re-education and rehabilitation rather than prison time. While those aged between 13 and 16 can face time in juvenile detention, it is often used as a last resort measure. The maximum sentences and fines for the charges the 15-year-old in this case faces are upper limits imposed on adult offenders, and would likely be lowered substantially in cases involving a minor, like this one.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 writes: California's long-delayed high-speed rail project is now facing renewed scrutiny after state leaders revealed a dramatically higher price tag, now estimated at roughly $231 billion, nearly seven times the original $33 billion projection approved by voters in 2008. The revised figures have reignited talks in Sacramento over whether the project can realistically be completed, how long it will take, and whether the state can continue to fund it at this scale.

Senator Strickland pointed to comments from Lou Thompson, former chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority peer review group, who recently criticized the latest draft business plan. Thompson wrote that the 2026 draft plan "has reached a dead end," arguing that the project has drifted far from its original vision due to escalating costs, delays, and unfunded gaps. Under current projections, assuming funding and construction proceed as planned, service between San Francisco and Bakersfield could begin around 2033, while the full Los Angeles to San Francisco connection could extend to 2040.

Sony is reportedly rolling out a 30-day online check-in requirement for some digital PS4 and PS5 games, meaning players could temporarily lose access if their console does not reconnect to renew the license. Tom's Hardware reports: In the info page of an affected game, you'd see a new validity period and a "remaining time" deadline. At first, this seemed like a software bug, but now PlayStation Support has confirmed its authenticity to multiple users. PlayStation owners are furious about the change.

From what we've seen, this DRM is intended for digital game copies. It works by instating a mandatory online check-in where you have to connect to the internet within a rolling 30-day window or risk losing access to the game. Afterward, you can still restore access, but you'll need an internet connection to renew the game's license first. So far, it seems like only games installed after the recent March firmware update are affected.

Affected customers report that setting your PS4 or PS5 as the primary console doesn't alleviate this check-in policy either. No matter what, any game you download from now on will feature this new requirement, effectively eliminating the concept of offline play for even single-player titles.

IPv6 usage briefly reached 50% across Google services for the first time, marking a major milestone for a protocol created in 1998 to solve IPv4's address shortage. Tom's Hardware reports: [...] IPv6 was dismissed early on as a headache-inducing, hard-to-implement complication that would hardly ever gain any traction -- despite offering 2^128 possible numbers, solving all network number assignments in one fell swoop. That changed over time by force of necessity, and Google's tracking graph shows that for a brief moment in time on March 28, 50% of worldwide users accessed the service over an IPv6 connection, marking a historic first. APNIC's stats show that the protocol is in use by 43% of the world, with Asia and the Americas inching ever close to those 50%. Cloudflare, meanwhile, shows that 40% of traffic is done in IPv6, an actually impressive figure if you consider it's measuring actual transferred packets rather than just counting addresses.

The tried-and-true IPv4 and its well-known 123.456.789.123 format from 1980 offers ~4.3 billion addresses in theory, and around 3.7 billion in practice. That always sounded like a lot, but nobody could have predicted just how rapid the explosion of the Internet would be. IANA, the entity controlling the North-American IPv4 space, ran out of IPv4 addresses around 2011, while its European equivalent RIPE NCC could spare no more four-octet addresses nearly seven years ago in 2019. Asian, African, and Latin-American IP registries equally ran out during that timeframe.

Some Japanese bullet trains will soon support premium private suites this October, featuring windows with embedded 5G antennas for steadier onboard Wi-Fi and NTT noise-cancelling cabin tech to reduce train noise. The 5G window antennas are designed to maintain line-of-sight connections as trains race past base stations at up to 285 km/h. The Register reports: Rail operator JR Central announced the new tech late last month and will initially deploy a couple of the suites on six trains. The carrier explained that the antennas come from a Japanese company called AGC that weaves microscopic wires through glass to form an antenna. JR Central will connect the windows to an on-train Wi-Fi router.

AGC says rival tech relies on 5G signals reaching a train and then bouncing around inside before reaching the Wi-Fi unit. The company says antennas woven into train windows maintain line of sight to nearby 5G base stations. That matters because JR Central's Shinkansen can achieve speeds of up to 285 km/h, which means they speed past cellular network base stations so quickly that it's frequently necessary to reconnect to another radio. AGC says keeping a line of sight connection means its antennas allow increased 5G signal strength, so Wi-Fi service on board trains should be more stable and speedy.

The sound-deadening kit JR Central will deploy is called Personalized Sound Zone (PSZ) and comes from Japan's tech giant NTT. The tech uses the same principles applied to noise-cancelling headphones -- determine the waveform of sound and project an inversion of that waveform that cancels out ambient noise.

"RGB LED TVs have been the talk of the TV world this year," argues The Verge, with models coming from all the manufacturers." And the first one of 2026 is here — the UR9 from China's Hisense — "the first look at the viability of the new backlight technology outside of demo rooms." They call it "a step above the traditional mini-LED TVs of years past." and "a great first shot against OLED's bow." HDR is colorful and accurate, it has great brightness, and it is capable of showing colors beyond the P3 color space for movies and TV shows that have wider color. But at $3,500, the 65-inch model I reviewed is priced comparably to high-end OLEDs from LG and Samsung, which is tough competition... One of the touted benefits of RGB LED TVs is their ability to achieve 100 percent of the BT.2020 color space... [But] even if a TV is capable of extending beyond P3 and into BT.2020 colors (which the UR9 absolutely is), with most movies and TV shows it doesn't matter. It's also a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation — we need TVs that can accurately display BT.2020 before the color space is fully adopted by TV and movie creators, but if there's no content, why get a BT.2020 TV?
BGR points out this new mini LED TV also "includes a DisplayPort (DP) connection alongside HDMI."

"Well, technically, it's a USB-C port that delivers full DisplayPort functionality, but it's labeled as DisplayPort." The TV also has three HDMI 2.1 ports, making it a great choice for game consoles and PCs. And while HDMI 2.1 supports 4K/120Hz, the Hisense UR9S will deliver 4K/170Hz or 4K/180Hz visuals [a higher refresh rate] when connected to a gaming PC via DisplayPort. Better yet, the TV is AMD FreeSync-compatible, and Hisense plans on adding Dolby Vision 2 HDR in future firmware.

The Hisense UR9S will be available in four sizes: 65, 75, 85, and 100 inches. It's worth mentioning that the two largest sizes will max out at 180Hz for the refresh rate, while the 65 and 75-inch screens come in at 170Hz. This is exciting news for serious gamers looking for the best gaming TVs and a huge step forward in the evolution of panel tech. RGB Mini LED TVs were showcased by a handful of manufacturers at CES 2026, including Samsung, Sony, and LG; so Hisense will certainly have some competition.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: President Javier Milei of Argentina promoted a cryptocurrency last year that quickly skyrocketed in value then cratered just as fast, costing investors millions of dollars and setting off a scandal and an investigation. Mr. Milei said he was simply highlighting a private venture and had no connection to the digital coin called $Libra. New evidence is now raising questions about his assertion. Phone logs from a federal investigation by Argentine prosecutors into the coin's collapse show seven phone calls between Mr. Milei and one of the entrepreneurs behind the cryptocurrency on the night in 2025 when Mr. Milei posted about $Libra on X. The contents of the calls, which took place before and after Mr. Milei's post, are not known.

But the phone logs -- which were obtained by The New York Times and first reported by a local cable news channel, C5N -- suggest a greater degree of communication between Mr. Milei and the entrepreneurs who launched the token than what the president has publicly acknowledged. Newly uncovered messages also suggest Mr. Milei received regular payments from one of the entrepreneurs while he was a congressman. Mr. Milei has not publicly commented on the call logs and other documents, and he did not respond to a request for comment. He is named as a person of interest in the federal prosecutor's continuing investigation into the digital coin, according to court documents reviewed by The Times, but has not been formally charged with any crime. The latest revelations have revived a scandal that threatens the very foundation of a president who rose to power and was elected president in 2023 by attacking a political class he called corrupt.