Unity announced a new pricing model this week, charging developers per game install beyond certain thresholds. This move has faced severe backlash from developers, criticizing Unity's communication, clarity, trust issues, and perceived exploitation of indie teams. The Verge adds: Many developers and even publishers took to social media to register their anger and to call on Unity to reverse its decision. [...] "This decision puts studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles," read a post on X (formerly Twitter) from developer Aggro Crab. "If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our Unity expertise." Many developers shared a similar sentiment, explaining they were considering abandoning Unity as a game engine.

Other game developers, like Massive Monster, were more drastic, which, via the official account for its game Cult of the Lamb, threatened to delist the game entirely. Though the post was a tongue-in-cheek joke, it's one being repeated by other developers. "[Please] buy our game," posted the official Viewfinder account. "But don't install it after January 1, 2024." Other game makers wondered how Unity could put forth such a statement without considering all the ways it could negatively impact its users. According to a post on the Unity forums from someone who claimed to be an employee, objections were raised internally. "Know also that all of the concerns that are understandably blowing up at the moment have been raised internally by many weeks before this announcement," the alleged employee wrote. "Why it was decided to rush this out anyway in this way I can only speculate about."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple released security updates on Thursday that patch two zero-day exploits -- meaning hacking techniques that were unknown at the time Apple found out about them -- used against a member of a civil society organization in Washington, D.C., according to the researchers who found the vulnerabilities. Citizen Lab, an internet watchdog group that investigates government malware, published a short blog post explaining that last week they found a zero-click vulnerability -- meaning that the hackers' target doesn't have to tap or click anything, such as an attachment -- used to target victims with malware.

The researchers said the vulnerability was used as part of an exploit chain designed to deliver NSO Group's malware, known as Pegasus. "The exploit chain was capable of compromising iPhones running the latest version of iOS (16.6) without any interaction from the victim," Citizen Lab wrote. Once they found the vulnerability, the researchers reported it to Apple, which released a patch on Thursday, thanking Citizen Lab for reporting them. Based on what Citizen Lab wrote in the blog post, and the fact that Apple also patched another vulnerability and attributed its finding to the company itself, it appears Apple may have found the second vulnerability while investigating the first. Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton says Apple's Lockdown Mode would have blocked the exploits found in this case. Lockdown Mode is an opt-in feature introduced in iOS 16 that gives users the option to temporarily switch off or limit features for security purposes. According to Apple, it "should be used only if you believe you may be targeted by a highly sophisticated cyberattack, such as by a private company developing state-sponsored mercenary spyware."

"Given that too many schools don't teach calculus, chemistry and physics, CalTech is allowing potential undergraduates to demonstrate their ability in these fields by using Khan Academy," writes Slashdot reader Bruce66423. Los Angeles Times reports: One of Caltech's alternative paths is taking Khan Academy's free, online classes and scoring 90% or higher on a certification test. Sal Khan, academy founder, said Caltech's action is a "huge deal" for equitable access to college. While Caltech is small -- only 2,400 students, about 40% of them undergraduates -- Khan said he hoped its prestigious reputation would encourage other institutions to examine their admission barriers and find creative solutions to ease them. The Pasadena-based institute, with a 3% admission rate last year, boasts 46 Nobel laureates and cutting-edge research in such fields as earthquake engineering, behavioral genetics, geochemistry, quantum information and aerospace. "You have one of the most academically rigorous schools on the planet that has arguably one of the highest bars for admission, saying that an alternative pathway that is free and accessible to anyone is now a means to meeting their requirements," said Khan, whose nonprofit offers free courses, test prep and tutoring to more than 152 million users. [...]

The impetus for the policy change began in February, when Pallie, the admissions director, and two Caltech colleagues attended a workshop on equity hosted by the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling. They were particularly struck by one speaker, Melodie Baker of Just Equations, a nonprofit that seeks to widen math opportunities. As Baker pointed out the lack of access to calculus for many students, Pallie and her team began to question Caltech's admission requirement for the course, along with physics and chemistry. Pallie and Jared Leadbetter, a professor of environmental microbiology who heads the faculty admissions committee, began to look into potential course alternatives. Pallie connected with Khan's team, which started a second nonprofit, Schoolhouse.world, during the pandemic in 2020 to offer free tutoring. Peer tutors on the platform certify they are qualified for their jobs by scoring at least 90% on the course exam and videotaping themselves explaining how they solved each problem on it. The video helps ensure that the students actually took the exam themselves and understand the material. That video feature gave Caltech assurances about the integrity of the alternative path.

Under the new process, students would take a calculus, physics or chemistry class offered by Khan Academy and use the Schoolhouse platform to certify their mastery of the content as tutors do with a 90% score or better on the exam and a videotaped explanation of their reasoning. Proof of certification is required within one week of the application deadline, which is in November for early action and January for regular decisions. Pallie and Leadbetter also wanted to test whether the Khan Academy courses are sufficiently rigorous. Several Caltech undergraduates took the courses to assess whether all concepts were covered in enough breadth and depth to pass the campus placement exams in those subjects. Miranda, a rising Caltech junior studying mechanical engineering, took the calculus course and gave it a thumbs-up, although she added that students would probably want to use additional textbooks and other study materials to deepen their preparation for Caltech.

samleecole writes: A group of right to repair activists and consumer rights advocates are petitioning the Librarian of Congress for the right to hack McDonald's notoriously unreliable McFlurry machines for the purposes of repair, according to a copy of the petition obtained by 404 Media.

"This is a request to expand the repair exemption for consumer electronic devices to include commercial industrial equipment such as automated building management systems and industrial equipment (i.e. soft serve ice cream machines and other industrial kitchen equipment)," the proposal, written by right to repair group iFixit and the nonprofit Public Knowledge, says. In addition, iFixit got its hands on a Taylor ice cream machine and tore it down in an effort to determine why they are broken so damn often and published a new video showing the process of taking the machine apart and explaining why they're always broken when you want fast food ice cream.

New submitter Slash_Account_Dot shares a report from 404 Media, a new independent media company founded by technology journalists Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox: Customs and Border Protection (CBP), part of the Department of Homeland Security, has bought millions of dollars worth of software from a company that uses artificial intelligence to detect "sentiment and emotion" in online posts, according to a cache of documents obtained by 404 Media. CBP told 404 Media it is using technology to analyze open source information related to inbound and outbound travelers who the agency believes may threaten public safety, national security, or lawful trade and travel. In this case, the specific company called Fivecast also offers "AI-enabled" object recognition in images and video, and detection of "risk terms and phrases" across multiple languages, according to one of the documents.

Marketing materials promote the software's ability to provide targeted data collection from big social platforms like Facebook and Reddit, but also specifically names smaller communities like 4chan, 8kun, and Gab. To demonstrate its functionality, Fivecast promotional materials explain how the software was able to track social media posts and related Persons-of-Interest starting with just "basic bio details" from a New York Times Magazine article about members of the far-right paramilitary Boogaloo movement. 404 Media also obtained leaked audio of a Fivecast employee explaining how the tool could be used against trafficking networks or propaganda operations. The news signals CBP's continued use of artificial intelligence in its monitoring of travelers and targets, which can include U.S. citizens. This latest news shows that CBP has deployed multiple AI-powered systems, and provides insight into what exactly these tools claim to be capable of while raising questions about their accuracy and utility. "CBP should not be secretly buying and deploying tools that rely on junk science to scrutinize people's social media posts, claim to analyze their emotions, and identify purported 'risks,'" said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU's National Security Project. "The public knows far too little about CBP's Counter Network Division, but what we do know paints a disturbing picture of an agency with few rules and access to an ocean of sensitive personal data about Americans. The potential for abuse is immense."

An anonymous reader shares a report: MSI made a mistake of sharing an unlisted video which has now leaked out. This leak involves a product training video showing MSI's latest Intel 700 motherboard series and upcoming PC cases. While the majority of the video focuses on improvements for these motherboards, there is a slide explaining Intel's next-gen Core series in a very short form. A slide (check the linked news post) has confirmed that Intel's 14th Gen Core series will see no major core count upgrades. Only one of the upcoming K-series CPUs will see a core change for its hybrid configuration of Performance and Efficient.

The Core i7-14700K is getting 12 Efficient cores, which is an upgrade over 8 E-cores the Core i7-13700K. The Core i9-14900K, now confirmed by MSI as well, will use the same 8P+16E configuration. This also applies to Core i5-14600K with 6P+8E config. [...] The CPU series will use the same Intel 7 process technology and will only provide higher DDR5 frequency support. The company confirms that Intel 14th Gen Core is 3% faster on average compared to current-gen series. The most important upgrade involves the Core i7-14700K which has up to 17% faster multi-threaded (MT) performance due to extra cores.

An anonymous reader shared this report from The New York Times: More than $1.7 trillion worldwide is expected to be invested in technologies such as wind, solar power, electric vehicles and batteries globally this year, according to the International Energy Agency, compared with just over $1 trillion in fossil fuels. That is by far the most ever spent on clean energy in a year. Those investments are driving explosive growth. China, which already leads the world in the sheer amount of electricity produced by wind and solar power, is expected to double its capacity by 2025, five years ahead of schedule. In Britain, roughly one-third of electricity is generated by wind, solar and hydropower. And in the United States, 23 percent of electricity is expected to come from renewable sources this year, up 10 percentage points from a decade ago... [F]rom Beijing to London, Tokyo to Washington, Oslo to Dubai, the energy transition is undeniably racing ahead...

[C]lean energy became cheap far faster than anyone expected. Since 2009, the cost of solar power has plunged by 83 percent, while the cost of producing wind power has fallen by more than half. The price of lithium-ion battery cells fell 97 percent over the past three decades. Today, solar and wind power are the least expensive new sources of electricity in many markets, generating 12 percent of global electricity and rising... The rapid drop in costs for solar energy, wind power and batteries can be traced to early government investment and steady improvements over time by hundreds of researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs around the world. "The world has produced nearly three billion solar panels at this point, and every one of those has been an opportunity for people to try to improve the process," said Gregory Nemet, a solar power expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "And all of those incremental improvements add up to something very dramatic." An equally potent force, along with the technological advances, has been an influx of money — in particular, a gusher since 2020 of government subsidies...

In the United States, President Biden signed a trio of laws during his first two years in office that allocated unprecedented funds for clean energy: A $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law provided money to enhance the power grid, buy electric buses for schools and build a national network of electric vehicle chargers... Combined, the three laws have prompted companies to announce at least $230 billion in manufacturing investments so far... The U.S. solar industry installed a record 6.1 gigawatts of capacity in the first quarter of 2023, a 47 percent increase over the same period last year. And those low costs have led many of the United States' biggest corporations, such as Alphabet, Amazon and General Motors, to purchase large amounts of wind and solar power...

Verizon's BlueJeans videoconferencing app will be shutting down just over three years after the company bought it for $400 million. 9to5Google reports: In May 2020, Verizon acquired BlueJeans, a business-focused video app that first launched in 2011. At the beginning of 2022, Google and Verizon partnered to preload the BlueJeans app on (since-discontinued) Glass Enterprise Edition 2 smart glasses sold by Verizon. More recently, BlueJeans gained a free tier this year, opening the app to many more potential customers and competing with the free consumer-ready services of Google Meet and Zoom. Suffice it to say BlueJeans didn't take off in popularity.

Today, members of Verizon's BlueJeans service were sent an email explaining that the app is being "sunset." The first phase of that shutdown process is that the free trial and the free "BlueJeans Basic" tier will no longer be available as of August 31, 2023. While not stated in the email we've received, business customers of BlueJeans will likely be given a longer period to transition off of the platform. In April 2020, CNBC reported that Verizon was going to pay around $400 million for the company.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: This is straight out of science fiction. The technology is absolutely incredible..." says a woman who received an AI-powered bionic arm. "I'm just absolutely in awe of the technology and excited about the future prospects this will give me."

The short video clip (produced by the BBC) also features the woman's doctor explaining that "the top section is customized to fit...with electrodes there recording the unique pattern of movement, that then talk to a little computer inside the forearm that then, through AI, build data and record those movements to tell the arm what to do."

A GoFundMe campaign had raised £296,613 (about $378,121 USD) to purchase the bionic arm — and last week the grateful recipient shared a long-awaited status update. "It's here. It fits. It works...! 6 months after I first signed up in the clinic I have my bionic arm. State of the art, tailored to my body, the price of a very nice sports car. 24h in and I'm already putting it to good use. The feeling of freedom is unbeatable. Being able to carry things in 2 hands! Open a bottle! Give my husband a 2 arm hug!

"I wouldn't have been able to do this without you, you believed in me since the very beginning. You stood by me in my darkest hour. THANK YOU."

sciencehabit shares a report from Science: Water is a near-universal solvent, able to dissolve substances ranging from limestone to the sugar in your coffee. That chemical superpower originates, oddly enough, in water's electrical properties. It can oppose and almost entirely cancel electric fields -- including attractions among dissolved ions that might otherwise pull them together. Curiously, dissolving salt in water weakens that electrical response. Now, a team of physicists has figured out exactly why this happens, using state-of-the-art computer simulations bolstered by artificial intelligence (AI).

'This is a fundamental property of water and one can finally do a calculation in which this can be entirely predicted from first principles,' says Roberto Car, a physicist at Princeton University who was not involved in the work. The AI-aided approach should allow physicists to probe in other settings, he says, such as batteries and fuel cells. [...] The results show that most of the salinity effect comes from the disruption of the clustering and correlations produced by hydrogen bonding, the team reports in a paper in press at Physical Review Letters. The researchers can pull out even more detail, explaining exactly how disruptions propagating through the network of water molecules make the dielectric constant vary with the salt concentration in a complex, nonlinear way.

"They can distinguish all the different contributions and identify which effect is dominant over the other," Car says. Yuki Nagata, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, says, "This is more or less conclusive." More important than this specific result may be the AI-based method, Nagata adds. It could be used for more practical problems, such as analyzing the interactions of water with membranes or surfaces. Zhang says she's doing just that, analyzing the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen along the surface of a titanium dioxide catalyst, one potential way to generate hydrogen for fuel.

A team of Korean scientists claims to have created a room-temperature superconductor that also works at standard, ambient pressure. The work, however, is yet to be peer-reviewed. You can read their paper on Arxiv. Its abstract: For the first time in the world, we succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure. The superconductivity of LK-99 is proved with the Critical temperature (TC), Zero-resistivity, Critical current (IC), Critical magnetic field (HC), and the Meissner effect. The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure. The shrinkage is caused by Cu2+ substitution of Pb2+(2) ions in the insulating network of Pb(2)-phosphate and it generates the stress. It concurrently transfers to Pb(1) of the cylindrical column resulting in distortion of the cylindrical column interface, which creates superconducting quantum wells (SQWs) in the interface. The heat capacity results indicated that the new model is suitable for explaining the superconductivity of LK-99. The unique structure of LK-99 that allows the minute distorted structure to be maintained in the interfaces is the most important factor that LK-99 maintains and exhibits superconductivity at room temperatures and ambient pressure.

In an opinion piece for NPR, guest host and TV critic on NPR's Fresh Air, David Bianculli, raises concerns about Discovery CEO David Zaslav's track record and the future of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) under his leadership. Here's an excerpt from his piece: When the dismissal was announced recently of most of the people who have guided Turner Classic Movies brilliantly for years -- the programmers, the producers of special material, even the executives who plan the TCM film festivals and party cruises -- many people in Hollywood reacted like there'd been a death in the family. Because, to people who really love movies, that's what the news felt like. [...] Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, in explaining his TCM changes, has said that, among other things, he wants to have filmmakers appear on TCM to curate and present movies of their choosing. Nothing wrong with that. Except you don't have to replace your current management team to make that happen -- and besides, it's already happening. Earlier this year, when Steven Spielberg was promoting his new autobiographical movie The Fabelmans, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz had Spielberg on to select, present and talk about three movies of his choice.

The team that's been running TCM for years has been serving up treats like this with regularity, and with exceptional taste. There are pockets on the schedule for silent movies, for underground films, for film noir, for musicals, and so much more. And if you stay tuned between movies -- which you should -- you get even more treats. Salutes of actors by fellow actors. Short features on costume design and the uncomfortable but illuminating history of blackface in the movies. Some films are presented in newly restored form. Others are newly discovered and presented as the gems they are -- and TCM occasionally revives and showcases rare live television dramas, too. You can imagine how much I love that.

Zaslav says the TCM channel is on all the time in his office, too, and he's saying all the right things about valuing the curation of film as well as film itself. But Zaslav already has just shut down his overseas equivalent of Turner Classic Movies in the U.K. And he's the guy who, since taking over the reins at Warner Bros. Discovery, already has turned HBO Max into just Max, which makes no sense -- devaluing his own HBO brand. Zaslav's altered that Max streaming service so that, while a link to a TCM sub-menu does appear, it's buried way down in the menu. What's worse, its highlighted TCM movie offerings are almost all of the more recent, filmed in color, variety. It's presenting only a tepid taste of what TCM offers on its own 24-hour cable service. Zaslav also, since becoming CEO, has overseen the rapid, clumsy devaluation of CNN, by making poorly received moves like that Donald Trump town hall. In Zaslav's short time on the job, he's already considerably damaged CNN, one of Turner's more brilliant network ideas. I fear, with Turner Classic Movies, Zaslav is about to weaken another -- but I'd love to be proven wrong.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A cleaner at a college in New York state accidentally destroyed decades of research by turning off a freezer in order to mute "annoying alarm" sounds. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in Troy, is suing the cleaner's employer, alleging improper training. According to a lawsuit filed in the New York supreme court in Rensselaer county earlier this month, the university is seeking more than $1m in damages, the Times Union newspaper reported. "People's behavior and negligence caused all this," Michael Ginsberg, an attorney for RPI, told the Times Union. "Unfortunately, they wiped out 25 years of research."

The cleaner, who is not named in the lawsuit, was employed by Daigle Cleaning Systems and worked at RPI for several months in 2020, when the incident occurred. The lab freezer contained several cultures that were part of a research project on photosynthesis headed by the biology and chemistry professor KV Lakshmi, the BBC reported. The cultures were usually stored at -112F (-80C). On September 14, 2020, days before the freezer was unplugged, an alarm indicated that the freezer temperature was fluctuating, the lawsuit says, adding that the specimens in the freezer were still viable at that point. Covid restrictions at the time meant repairs could not be made for a week. Lab officials took precautions to preserve the cultures and explain the alarm, posting a sign explaining where the noise was coming from and how to mute it. Lakshmi also installed a lock box on the freezer's outlet and socket to stop anyone unplugging it.

But on September 17, the Daigle Cleaning Systems employee turned off the circuit breaker, causing the temperature of the freezer to rise. The next day, lab officials discovered the samples were unsalvageable. "[A] majority of specimens were compromised, destroyed and rendered unsalvageable demolishing more than 20 years of research," the lawsuit says. In an interview with university officials, the cleaner said he thought he was turning the circuit breaker on after hearing the alarms. "At the end of the interview, he still did not appear to believe he had done anything wrong but was just trying to help," the lawsuit says, saying the cleaner made an "error" when reading the panel.

YouTube has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Invidious, an open-source "alternative front-end" to the website which allows users to watch videos without having their data tracked, claiming it violates YouTube's API policy and demanding that it be shut down within seven days. From a report: "We recently became aware of your product or service, Invidious," reads the letter, which was posted on the Invidious GitHub last week. "Your Client appears to be in violation of the YouTube API Services Terms of Service and Developer Policies." The letter then delineates the policies which Invidious is accused of having violated, such as not displaying a link to YouTube's Terms of Service or "clearly" explaining what it does with user information. Invidious is open-source software licensed under AGPL-3.0, and it markets itself as a way for users to interact with YouTube without allowing the site to collect their data, or having to make an account. "Invidious protects you from the prying eyes of Google," its homepage reads. "It won't track you either!" Invidious also allows users to watch videos without being interrupted by "annoying ads," which is how YouTube makes most of its money.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Mercedes-Benz received a permit from California regulators that will allow the German automaker to sell or lease vehicles in the state equipped with a conditional automated driving system that allows for hands-off, eyes-off driving on certain highways. The California Department of Motor Vehicles said Thursday it issued an autonomous vehicle deployment permit to Mercedes-Benz for its branded Drive Pilot system. The hands-off, eyes-off system can be used on designated California highways, including Interstate 15, under certain conditions without the active control of a human driver. This means drivers can watch videos, text or talk to a passenger (or even mess around with any number of third-party apps coming to new Mercedes models) without watching the road ahead or having their hands on the wheel.

Mercedes-Benz is the fourth company to receive an autonomous vehicle deployment permit in California and the first authorized to sell or lease vehicles with an automated driving system to the public, according to the DMV, which regulates autonomous vehicles in the state. The deployment permit allows Drive Pilot to be used on highways in the Bay area, central valley, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego. Drive Pilot is not the same as the fully autonomous systems developed by Waymo, Cruise, Motional and Zoox -- although some of the same principles apply. The Drive Pilot system uses a combination of sensors such as lidar, radar and camera coupled with software to handle driving tasks in certain conditions without the active control of a human driver. Mercedes' system is only available at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, during daylight hours on certain highways. The system will not engage on city or county roads, in construction zones, during heavy rain or heavy fog, on flooded roads and during weather conditions that are determined to impact performance of the system, according to the DMV.

The DMV has placed other conditions on Mercedes, including that vehicle owners must watch a mandatory video explaining the capabilities of the system and how to engage and disengage the technology before they can access it. Mercedes also has to meet a number of safety, insurance and vehicle registration requirements. Mercedes has taken a conservative approach to its Drive Pilot system, requesting approval from every U.S. state's regulatory body even in cases where there is not a direct restriction from using such technology. The automaker first deployed Drive Pilot in Germany. It received approval from Nevada earlier this year.

Twitch has reversed its recently announced rules regarding ad display on the platform after facing swift backlash from streamers and content creators. The Verge reports: On Tuesday, Twitch released new rules concerning the way streamers could display ads on the platform. The rules prohibited "burned in" video, display, and audio ads -- the first two of which were popular and common formats used throughout Twitch. Twitch apparently did not discuss the new rules with ambassadors or streamers beforehand, and many were furious about the new policies. [...] Twitch apologized for the rollout, explaining that it would rewrite the rules for greater clarity. Now it seems that rewrite has turned into a full rescinding of the rules totally.

From the company's Twitter thread: "Yesterday, we released new Branded Content Guidelines that impacted your ability to work with sponsors to increase your income from streaming. These guidelines are bad for you and bad for Twitch, and we are removing them immediately. Sponsorships are critical to streamers' growth and ability to earn income. We will not prevent your ability to enter into direct relationships with sponsors -- you will continue to own and control your sponsorship business. We want to work with our community to create the best experience on Twitch, and to do that we need to be clear about what we're doing and why we're doing it. We appreciate your feedback and help in making this change."

Twitch has updated the page outlining its ads policy with the section related to what kinds of ads are prohibited or allowed completely removed. Here's an archived version with the old rules and the new, updated page. The new rules would have been potentially devastating for creators, charities, esports broadcasts, and brands. Now, what seemed like another attempt to take a portion of streamer earnings has backfired.

Microsoft has warned investors about a "non-public" draft decision by Irish regulators against LinkedIn for allegedly dodgy ad data practices, explaining it had set aside some cash to pay off any potential fine. From a report: How much? Oh, a mere $425 million. The software giant said the funds were connected to a 2018 investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) looking into whether LinkedIn's targeted advertising practices violated the the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). At the time of the complaint, the 2016 law had been recently implemented and the watchdog was just settling into its role as EU overlord of judging data practices of the tech giants. Microsoft denies it broke any GDPR rules and said it "intends to defend itself vigorously in this matter."

Ars Technica profiles Scott Shapiro, the co-author of a new book, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age in Five Extraordinary Hacks.

Shapiro points out that computer science "is only a century old, and hacking, or cybersecurity, is maybe a few decades old. It's a very young field, and part of the problem is that people haven't thought it through from first principles." Telling in-depth the story of five major breaches, Shapiro ultimately concludes that "the very principles that make hacking possible are the ones that make general computing possible.

"So you can't get rid of one without the other because you cannot patch metacode." Shapiro also brings some penetrating insight into why the Internet remains so insecure decades after its invention, as well as how and why hackers do what they do. And his conclusion about what can be done about it might prove a bit controversial: there is no permanent solution to the cybersecurity problem. "Cybersecurity is not a primarily technological problem that requires a primarily engineering solution," Shapiro writes. "It is a human problem that requires an understanding of human behavior." That's his mantra throughout the book: "Hacking is about humans." And it portends, for Shapiro, "the death of 'solutionism.'"
An excerpt from their interview: Ars Technica: The scientific community in various disciplines has struggled with this in the past. There's an attitude of, "We're just doing the research. It's just a tool. It's morally neutral." Hacking might be a prime example of a subject that you cannot teach outside the broader context of morality.

Scott Shapiro: I couldn't agree more. I'm a philosopher, so my day job is teaching that. But it's a problem throughout all of STEM: this idea that tools are morally neutral and you're just making them and it's up to the end user to use it in the right way. That is a reasonable attitude to have if you live in a culture that is doing the work of explaining why these tools ought to be used in one way rather than another. But when we have a culture that doesn't do that, then it becomes a very morally problematic activity.

The judge's opinion noted the plaintiff's counsel had submitted a motion to dismiss "replete with citations to non-existent cases... Six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations... The bogus 'Varghese' decision contains internal citations and quotes, which, in turn, are non-existent."

Eugene Volokh's legal blog describes what happened next: Thursday, plaintiff's counsel filed an affidavit in response, explaining that he was relying on the work of another lawyer at his firm, and the other lawyer (who had 30 years of practice experience) also filed an affidavit, explaining that he was relying on ChatGPT... ("The citations and opinions in question were provided by Chat GPT which also provided its legal source and assured the reliability of its content...")
Their affidavit said ChatGPT had "revealed itself to be unreliable," while adding that they had "never utilized ChatGPT as a source for conducting legal research prior to this occurrence and therefore were unaware of the possibility that its content could be false." The affidavit adds that the lawyer "greatly regrets having utilized generative artificial intelligence to supplement the legal research performed herein and will never do so in the future without absolute verification of its authenticity."

To support their position, their affidavit ends with this appendix — a ChatGPT transcript: [Q:] ls varghese a real case

[A:] Yes, Varghese v., China Southern Airlines Co Ltd, 925 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2019) is a real case.

[Q:] What is your source

[A:] I apologize for the confusion earlier. Upon double-checking, I found that the case Varghese v. China Southern Airlines Co. Ltd., 925 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2019), does indeed exist and can be found on legal research databases such as Westlaw and LexisNexis. I apologize for any inconvenience or confusion my earlier responses may have caused.

[Q:] Are the other cases you provided fake

[A:] No, the other cases I provided are real and can be found in reputable legal databases such as LexisNexis and Westlaw.
"Judge Castel appeared to be unimpressed, and yesterday issued an order ordering the law firm and the second lawyer to show cause why they shouldn't be sanctioned."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader davide marney for submitting the story.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Ten lighthouses that for generations have stood like sentinels along America's shorelines protecting mariners from peril and guiding them to safety are being given away at no cost or sold at auction by the federal government. The aim of the program run by the General Services Administration is to preserve the properties, most of which are more than a century old. The development of modern technology, including GPS, means lighthouses are no longer essential for navigation, said John Kelly of the GSA's office of real property disposition. And while the Coast Guard often maintains aids to navigation at or near lighthouses, the structures themselves are often no longer mission critical.

Yet the public remains fascinated by the evocative beacons, which are popular tourist attractions, beloved local landmarks and the subject of countless photographers and artists, standing lonely but strong against tides and storms, day and night and flashing life-saving beams of light whatever the weather. "People really appreciate the heroic role of the solitary lighthouse keeper," he said, explaining their allure. "They were really the instruments to provide safe passage into some of these perilous harbors which afforded communities great opportunities for commerce, and they're often located in prominent locations that offer breathtaking views."

The GSA has been transferring ownership of lighthouses since Congress passed the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act in 2000. About 150 lighthouses have been transferred, 80 or so given away and another 70 auctioned, raising more than $10m. This year, six lighthouses are being offered at no cost to federal, state or local government agencies, non-profits, educational organizations or other entities that are willing to maintain and preserve them and make them publicly available for educational, recreational or cultural purposes. [...] Some past lighthouse sales have ended up with them converted into private residences.