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Submission + - Sony PlayStation will stop releasing games on discs in 2028 (bbc.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: New PlayStation games will no longer be released on discs from January 2028, the gaming giant has announced. Sony said in a blog post new games would still be able to be bought in shops, but they would come with a digital code. It comes just days after Rockstar announced the hotly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI would similarly launch without a physical disc. It marks a significant moment for the gaming industry, which has in recent years begun to rely more and more on digital distribution. Sony said the move came "as consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital". "This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs," it added. But it has been met with some pushback online, with gaming journalist Vikki Blake calling it a "body blow to consumer rights".

Submission + - DOT announces "Return of Supersonic Flight" for commercial airlines (faa.gov)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Gemini summarized ...

The FAA’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), released on June 30, 2026, marks the first formal regulatory step toward lifting the 53-year-old ban on civil supersonic flight over the continental United States.

Core Objectives of the Proposal
  • Replacing Speed Limits with Noise Standards: The proposal would replace the current, blanket speed-based ban (dating to 1973) with a performance-based noise standard. Aircraft would be permitted to fly at speeds exceeding Mach 1 over land, provided they do not generate surface-level noise (sonic boom overpressure) exceeding a specific threshold of 0.11 pounds per square foot (psf).
  • En-Route Focus: This specific proposal addresses en-route cruise noise. It does not set standards for takeoff and landing, which the FAA plans to address in a separate proposal later this year.
  • Implementation of Executive Order 14304: This action fulfills part of the June 2025 Executive Order signed by President Trump, which directed the FAA to modernize aviation standards to ensure the U.S. remains a leader in aerospace innovation.

Why Now?
The FAA is citing significant technological advancements as the justification for this shift, specifically:

  • Aerodynamic Innovation: New airframe designs and propulsion systems—exemplified by testing of NASA’s X-59 "quiet" demonstrator—can now break the sound barrier while reducing the sonic boom to a low-intensity "thump" that is manageable for ground-level communities.
  • Operational Techniques: The use of "Mach cutoff" flight techniques, where speed, altitude, and atmospheric conditions are synchronized to ensure sonic booms refract back into the atmosphere rather than reaching the ground.

Next Steps

  • Public Comment: The proposal (Docket FAA-2026-6935) is now open for a 45-day public comment period.
  • Future Regulations: The FAA intends to finalize both the en-route noise standards and the upcoming takeoff/landing noise standards by mid-2027.
  • International Alignment: The FAA is working alongside the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and foreign aviation authorities to ensure that these domestic standards eventually align with global frameworks for international supersonic operations.

By establishing these metrics, the FAA aims to provide manufacturers—such as those developing next-generation supersonic transports—with the clear regulatory guidance needed to finalize aircraft designs and move toward commercial certification.

Submission + - Satellite Pay-TV Provider Dish DBS Prepares for Bankruptcy Filing (cordcuttersnews.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: EchoStar Corporation’s satellite television subsidiary Dish DBS is set to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as early as Tuesday, marking a significant step in the company’s long-running effort to restructure its heavy debt load amid declining traditional pay-TV subscribers and ongoing regulatory challenges, according to the Wall Street Journal. The popular satellite TV service providing access to cable TV networks has struggled to find a way to be profitable in the world of cord-cutting. The move, which has been anticipated for months, would allow the Englewood, Colorado-based company to implement a pre-negotiated deleveraging plan while seeking to stabilize its operations in a rapidly evolving telecommunications landscape.

EchoStar, led by founder and chairman Charlie Ergen, has faced mounting financial pressure for years. The company carries approximately $25 billion in debt across its various entities, including its core satellite television businesses under the Dish Network and Sling TV brands, as well as its wireless operations through Boost Mobile. Subscriber losses in the traditional linear television segment have accelerated as consumers increasingly shift toward streaming services, cord-cutting trends, and alternative entertainment options. This erosion of the customer base has squeezed revenue and heightened the urgency for a comprehensive financial reset.

Submission + - Fox to buy streaming device maker Roku for $22 billion (cnbc.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The combination will merge Fox’s sports and news networks, as well as its free ad-supported streamer Tubi, with Roku, which makes streaming devices and has The Roku Channel.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027.

Submission + - Arch Linux's AUR Sees More Than 400 Packages Compromised With Malware. (phoronix.com)

Submitted by couchslug
couchslug writes: Michael Larabel reports:

"The Arch Linux User Repository "AUR" was hit by a large-scale malware campaign this week with more than 400 of these user-supplied packages being compromised.

Since yesterday Arch Linux maintainers have been working to reset/delete all of the malicious content and banning affected accounts. Over 400 packages are believed impacted by this latest malware campaign for Arch Linux's AUR. Again, to be completely clear, this just is affecting AUR packages and not the official Arch Linux packages. "

Submission + - Scientists charged with bringing deactivated mpox virus to US, lying about it (abcnews.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Two scientists at a U.S. government lab were charged with smuggling vials of deactivated mpox virus into the country from Africa and lying about it during interviews with investigators at a Detroit airport, authorities said Tuesday.

Vincent Munster, who is chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, and Claude Kwe, who works with him. Both were stopped at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in January after a flight from Paris and nine days in the Republic of Congo.

Munster “adamantly denied” returning to the U.S. with biological materials or samples, the FBI said in a court filing. But tests subsequently revealed that Munster and Kwe were traveling with vials of deactivated mpox, the FBI said, yet they had failed to declare them or obtain the necessary permission.

Munster told investigators at the Detroit-area airport that any necessary documents were in his laptop, “but you don't need them. I do this all the time,” the FBI quoted him as saying.

“It is reasonable to believe that Munster's statements regarding the possession of the required documentation to (customs officers) were materially false,” the FBI said.

"Any deliberate effort to conceal and smuggle biological materials into the United States without proper authorization is a breach of the public’s trust and could have placed the public at risk,” said Marcus Sykes of the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services.

In 2022, the mpox virus was confirmed to spread via sex for the first time and triggered outbreaks in more than 70 countries that had not previously reported mpox.

Submission + - Thanks to robots, Ukraine is now talking about winning, not just surviving (defenseone.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: A small but growing number of European officials and analysts are saying what four years ago was unthinkable: Ukraine isn’t just surviving its grueling war with Russia, it is in some ways thriving and may even be on a path to victory.

This isn’t yet captured in headlines—for example, about last weekend’s barrage of Russian drones and missiles around Ukraine—but in the details, like how some 90 percent were intercepted.

Several long-term trends have shifted in Ukraine’s favor, and the core reason is its fierce focus on AI and robotics.

Submission + - As data centers flock to Texas, ERCOT tries to decide which are feasible (houstonpublicmedia.org)

Submitted by Tony Isaac
Tony Isaac writes: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is scheduled to vote on a new evaluation process called "Batch Zero" to manage an unprecedented influx of data centers and large energy consumers requesting connection to the state's power grid. With proposed projects currently seeking a combined 438 gigawatts of power—more than five times the electricity used during Texas's record-breaking demand—the grid operator aims to establish stricter criteria to weed out speculative or unfeasible facilities. Under the proposed system, companies will need to demonstrate readiness through land ownership, financing, and component orders, as well as make financial commitments, to ensure the grid can reliably plan for and serve legitimate economic development without overwhelming the system.

Submission + - RIP: Marcia Lucas, Oscar-Winning Star Wars Editor, Dies at 80 (thewrap.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

Marcia served as part of a three-person crew editing both "Star Wars" and "Return of the Jedi." On the first film, she worked alongside Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew and was personally responsible for editing the Battle of Yavin — otherwise known as the iconic "trench run" sequence near the end of the film. For "Return of the Jedi," Marcia shared credit with Sean Barton and Duwayne Dunham, with George citing her as responsible for the "dying and crying" scenes to Time.

That "dying and crying" is pretty significant in "Return of the Jedi," a film that hinges its third act not on a massive battle (though there's plenty of space action, too), but on a father sacrificing himself because his son believes he's not beyond redemption. In general, Marcia has been credited as, in some respects, the heart of the "Star Wars" franchise, working tirelessly to ensure that moments like Han Solo's grand return to the Rebellion at the end of the original film landed with emotional impact for the audience.

Flashback: Marcia Lucas, the 'secret weapon' behind the original Star Wars . And Raiders of the Lost Ark: "'[Marcia] was instrumental in changing the ending of Raiders, in which Indiana delivers the ark to Washington. Marion is nowhere to be seen, presumably stranded on an island with a submarine and a lot of melted Nazis. Marcia watched the rough cut in silence and then levelled the boom. She said there was no emotional resolution to the ending, because the girl disappears. 'Everyone was feeling really good until she said that,' Dunham recalls. 'It was one of those, 'Oh no we lost sight of that.' 'Spielberg reshot the scene in downtown San Francisco, having Marion wait for Indiana on the steps on the government building. Marcia, once again, had come to the rescue.'"

Submission + - Nordstjernen web browser 0.7.0 released (nordstjernen.org)

Submitted by Andreas(R)
Andreas(R) writes: Nordstjernen web browser version 0.7.0 has been released today! Nordstjernen is an independent, lightweight web browser built entirely from scratch in C. A hardened, zero-JIT HTML5 / CSS / JavaScript rendering engine with a clean-room engine — not Blink, not WebKit, not Gecko. https://nordstjernen.org/ Source code available at https://github.com/nordstjerne...

Submission + - CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on Github (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by ArchieBunker
ArchieBunker writes: Until this past weekend, a contractor for the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) maintained a public GitHub repository that exposed credentials to several highly privileged AWS GovCloud accounts and a large number of internal CISA systems. Security experts said the public archive included files detailing how CISA builds, tests and deploys software internally, and that it represents one of the most egregious government data leaks in recent history.

On May 15, KrebsOnSecurity heard from Guillaume Valadon, a researcher with the security firm GitGuardian. Valadon’s company constantly scans public code repositories at GitHub and elsewhere for exposed secrets, automatically alerting the offending accounts of any apparent sensitive data exposures. Valadon said he reached out because the owner in this case wasn’t responding and the information exposed was highly sensitive.

The GitHub repository that Valadon flagged was named “Private-CISA,” and it harbored a vast number of internal CISA/DHS credentials and files, including cloud keys, tokens, plaintext passwords, logs and other sensitive CISA assets.

Valadon said the exposed CISA credentials represent a textbook example of poor security hygiene, noting that the commit logs in the offending GitHub account show that the CISA administrator disabled the default setting in GitHub that blocks users from publishing SSH keys or other secrets in public code repositories.

“Passwords stored in plain text in a csv, backups in git, explicit commands to disable GitHub secrets detection feature,” Valadon wrote in an email. “I honestly believed that it was all fake before analyzing the content deeper. This is indeed the worst leak that I’ve witnessed in my career. It is obviously an individual’s mistake, but I believe that it might reveal internal practices.”

One of the exposed files, titled “importantAWStokens,” included the administrative credentials to three Amazon AWS GovCloud servers. Another file exposed in their public GitHub repository — “AWS-Workspace-Firefox-Passwords.csv” — listed plaintext usernames and passwords for dozens of internal CISA systems. According to Caturegli, those systems included one called “LZ-DSO,” which appears short for “Landing Zone DevSecOps,” the agency’s secure code development environment.

Philippe Caturegli, founder of the security consultancy Seralys, said he tested the AWS keys only to see whether they were still valid and to determine which internal systems the exposed accounts could access. Caturegli said the GitHub account that exposed the CISA secrets exhibits a pattern consistent with an individual operator using the repository as a working scratchpad or synchronization mechanism rather than a curated project repository.

“The use of both a CISA-associated email address and a personal email address suggests the repository may have been used across differently configured environments,” Caturegli observed. “The available Git metadata alone does not prove which endpoint or device was used.”

Caturegli said he validated that the exposed credentials could authenticate to three AWS GovCloud accounts at a high privilege level. He said the archive also includes plain text credentials to CISA’s internal “artifactory” — essentially a repository of all the code packages they are using to build software — and that this would represent a juicy target for malicious attackers looking for ways to maintain a persistent foothold in CISA systems.

“That would be a prime place to move laterally,” he said. “Backdoor in some software packages, and every time they build something new they deploy your backdoor left and right.”

In response to questions, a spokesperson for CISA said the agency is aware of the reported exposure and is continuing to investigate the situation.

“Currently, there is no indication that any sensitive data was compromised as a result of this incident,” the CISA spokesperson wrote. “While we hold our team members to the highest standards of integrity and operational awareness, we are working to ensure additional safeguards are implemented to prevent future occurrences.”

A review of the GitHub account and its exposed passwords show the “Private CISA” repository was maintained by an employee of Nightwing, a government contractor based in Dulles, Va. Nightwing declined to comment, directing inquiries to CISA.

CISA has not responded to questions about the potential duration of the data exposure, but Caturegli said the Private CISA repository was created on November 13, 2025. The contractor’s GitHub account was created back in September 2018.

The GitHub account that included the Private CISA repo was taken offline shortly after both KrebsOnSecurity and Seralys notified CISA about the exposure. But Caturegli said the exposed AWS keys inexplicably continued to remain valid for another 48 hours.

CISA is currently operating with only a fraction of its normal budget and staffing levels. The agency has lost nearly a third of its workforce since the beginning of the second Trump administration, which forced a series of early retirements, buyouts, and resignations across the agency’s various divisions.

The now-defunct Private CISA repo showed the contractor also used easily-guessed passwords for a number of internal resources; for example, many of the credentials used a password consisting of each platform’s name followed by the current year. Caturegli said such practices would constitute a serious security threat for any organization even if those credentials were never exposed externally, noting that threat actors often use key credentials exposed on the internal network to expand their reach after establishing initial access to a targeted system.

“What I suspect happened is [the CISA contractor] was using this GitHub to synchronize files between a work laptop and a home computer, because he has regularly committed to this repo since November 2025,” Caturegli said. “This would be an embarrassing leak for any company, but it’s even more so in this case because it’s CISA.”

Submission + - NetHack 5.0 Released (nethack.org)

Submitted by MilenCent
MilenCent writes: Venerable 39-year-old roguelike game and computer geek touchstone NetHack has released version 5.0! In addition to play changes it's left for players to discover, this version updates the code to compile with C99, makes it much easier to cross compile the code for other systems than the one running, and now uses Lua for its dungeon generation. Happy hacking!

Submission + - Spirit Airlines Goes Out Of Business (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by rufey
rufey writes: Spirit Airlines, the no-thrills discount airline providing service in the United States with bright yellow planes ceased operations on May 2nd, leaving 17,000 employees without a job and thousands of travelers either stranded (if currently traveling) or having their future flights cancelled.

From a statement released by Spirit Airlines: "The wind-down follows the Company’s extensive and comprehensive efforts to restructure the business and pursue transactions to strengthen Spirit’s financial position and create a sustainable path forward. Unfortunately, despite the Company’s efforts, the recent material increase in oil prices and other pressures on the business have significantly impacted Spirit’s financial outlook. With no additional funding available to the Company, Spirit had no choice but to begin this wind-down."

This is the first US based airline in 25 years to go out of business rather than being absorbed by another carrier.

Submission + - There Are Signs of a Massive AI Backlash (futurism.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: The public outrage over the tech industry’s obsession with AI is starting to boil over — and the pitchforks are coming out.

Most recently, a man allegedly lobbed a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house. Days earlier, a councilman in Indianapolis said that somebody had fired a dozen bullets at his house, with a handwritten note reading “No Data Centers” left on his doorstep.

A similar story is playing out across swathes of rural America, with small towns continuing a years-long effort to keep environmentally damaging data centers that put a huge strain on water availability and the power grid out of their communities.

Earlier this week, voters in a small town in Missouri led a revolt, firing half of their city council over a recently-approved $6 billion data center deal.

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