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Submission + - Russia and Ukraine wage high-tech war in the 'death zone' (dw.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Traditional shelters and trenches no longer offer protection in this war, he said: "The entire infantry — both Ukrainian and enemy soldiers — are digging into underground tunnels to remain out of reach of attack of the drones."

To spot traces of the enemy, he said, the brigade members carefully "read signs on the ground from the sky." They hunt for subtle clues: trash left on the streets of abandoned villages, freshly churned earth in gardens, a small pile of wood in the middle of a yard.

As soon as his brigade discovers a Russian hideout, combat drones are sent there. "Russia does the same thing," Thunder said. "Whoever has the best hideouts and the upper hand with drones dominates."

Submission + - LLM Window FOMO vs. Credit Consumption

Submitted by DaPhil
DaPhil writes: Say you're an indie dev with a great idea. You work on that in your own time, and you've got yourself a costly subscription to any of the current LLM/Coding Assistant providers. You get a lot of stuff done, but then its "hit your limit" and you are forced to buy groceries. And then you wake up in the middle of the night thinking "hey my 5 hour window is up, I need to input some more stuff to maximize my investment". Needless to say, your wife and kids do not approve. So you go for one of the credit-based providers. You buy some credits and realize quickly that no matter what query you send — and how long it takes — it'll use the same amount of credits. Even "Thank you" consumes credits.That doesn't make sense either. You might want to buy a local board to do "your own stuff", but that is going to cost you 4-to-5 figures money and you're dependent on OSS models being good enough, which is very probably not the case since you are not writing the 300th instance of a shopping app. So now you're in that weird situation where you are very happy that LLMs exist, but you are very unhappy about the way you can only interact with them through, lets say, "problematic" monetary plans. What do you do?

Submission + - Has Slashdot Become More Ads Than "News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters"? 2

Submitted by FictionPimp
FictionPimp writes: Load Slashdot's front page today without an ad blocker and count what you see before scrolling.

Above the fold, there are 6 distinct ad placements: a full-width Retool banner just below the navigation, a MongoDB Atlas inline banner styled to look like a site notice sitting directly above the first story, two sidebar ad units (one for a game dev course bundle, one for business software comparison), a "Sponsored Content" slot beginning to appear at the bottom edge, and a sticky MongoDB footer bar fixed to the bottom of the screen. MongoDB alone holds two simultaneous placements on the same page load. The ratio is 6 ads to 2 stories before you even scroll.

Slashdot has carried the tagline "News for nerds, stuff that matters" since Rob Malda was running the site out of a college dorm in 1997. It is now owned by Slashdot Media, the same parent as SourceForge, and the nav bar includes a "Thought Leadership" section, which is industry parlance for paid editorial content.

None of this is unique to Slashdot. Display advertising is how independent tech publications survive. But there is a meaningful difference between ads that share a page with content and ads that outnumber and surround the content, with some of them actively designed to look like part of the editorial feed.

The question for the Slashdot community: at what point does the original promise of the site, a curated community-moderated signal in a noisy web, get buried under the noise it was supposed to filter? Should the site be rebranded: "Ads for Nerds, News if we can fit it in"?

Submission + - How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Execs

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Executives, the NY Times begins, "For more than two decades, the convicted sex offender developed a network at the tech giant, making him privy to [CEO] succession discussions and other business. [...] The files from the Justice Department show that he spent more than a decade developing a network of Microsoft executives, including Mr. Gates; Nathan Myhrvold, a former technology chief; Steven Sinofsky, who ran Microsoft’s Windows division; Linda Stone, a former technology research executive; Reid Hoffman, a Microsoft board member; and employees of Mr. Gates’s personal investment and charity funds. [...] Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s communications chief, said the company was disappointed to read emails between Mr. Epstein and “former Microsoft employees acting in their personal capacities.” Without mentioning a name, Mr. Shaw acknowledged the emails showed that a former executive — who was Mr. [Steven] Sinofsky — had shared confidential company business with Mr. Epstein."

Email released by the DOJ related to Microsoft included: 1. Epstein being tipped off to the announcement of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's planned resignation announcement in Aug. 2013 by a forwarded email from the President of bgC3 [aka Gates Ventures], a personal service company for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, on a day that saw Microsoft stock soar 7%., 2. Epstein being given a heads up by a redacted sender about a rumored 2011 Bill Gates return to Microsoft that never panned out, 3. Epstein being told in a 2013 Steven Sinofsky email about Ballmer's desire to buy a phone company that included some other juicy insider tidbits (when Microsoft's Nokia purchase was announced the following year, Microsoft stock sank 6%). In other correspondence, Sinofsky — who headed Microsoft's Windows Division — thanked Epstein for his advice in negotiating a $14 million exit package from Microsoft and later forwarded Epstein old internal email from top execs discussing the poor sales of the Microsoft Surface tablet.

In one Microsoft-related Epstein email, former Harvard President Larry Summers — who recently announced he's giving up his Harvard teaching appointments — sent Epstein a terse two-word email dissing Melinda Gates' Women in Tech initiative. "I'm gagging," Summers wrote, attaching an article about Gates' efforts (a search didn't find any reply from Epstein). Summers came under fire in 2005 when he said that women lack natural ability in math in science. Summers earlier resigned his OpenAI Board seat amid fallout over his Epstein ties that came to light following the DOJ's release of documents last November, which included the revelation that Summers and his wife were invited to dine with Bill and Melinda Gates at Epstein's NYC mansion in 2013 , Melinda's one and only Epstein encounter. Interestingly, Microsoft President Brad Smith — who coincidentally helped negotiate Microsoft's $14M exit package for Epstein-advised Sinofsky — cautioned OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about naming Summers to the OpenAI Board in November 2023. “Your future would be decided by Larry [Summers],” Smith texted. “He’s smart but so mercurial [...] too risky.” The advice went unheeded, with Altman saying the choice of Summers was non-negotiable.

Submission + - Workers who love 'synergizing paradigms' might be bad at their jobs (phys.org) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like "synergistic leadership," or "growth-hacking paradigms" may struggle with practical decision-making, a new Cornell study reveals. Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, research by cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell introduces the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR), a tool designed to measure susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organizational rhetoric.

Submission + - The stunning privacy cost of LinkedIn verification (thelocalstack.eu)

Submitted by Arrogant-Bastard
Arrogant-Bastard writes: Blogger "rogi" decided to verify themself on LinkedIn — and then dug into the privacy policy not just of LinkedIn, but of the company they use for this purpose...and then of the companies and governments the data is shared with. It's an extensive, alarming, and well-written trip down the rabbit hole of the user verification.

Submission + - Something big is happening in AI — and most people will be blindsided (fortune.com) 1

Submitted by ZipNada
ZipNada writes: Let me give you an example so you can understand what this actually looks like in practice. I’ll tell the AI: “I want to build this app. Here’s what it should do, here’s roughly what it should look like. Figure out the user flow, the design, all of it.” And it does. It writes tens of thousands of lines of code. Then, and this is the part that would have been unthinkable a year ago, it opens the app itself. It clicks through the buttons. It tests the features. It uses the app the way a person would. If it doesn’t like how something looks or feels, it goes back and changes it, on its own. It iterates, like a developer would, fixing and refining until it’s satisfied. Only once it has decided the app meets its own standards does it come back to me and say: “It’s ready for you to test.” And when I test it, it’s usually perfect.

I’m not exaggerating. That is what my Monday looked like this week.

I’ve always been early to adopt AI tools. But the last few months have shocked me. These new AI models aren’t incremental improvements. This is a different thing entirely.

The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from “helpful tool” to “does my job better than I do”, is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in 10ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less. The market was spooked enough this month that it wiped out $1 trillion worth of software value in just a week. And given what I’ve seen in just the last couple of months, I see more disruption, and soon.

Submission + - Munich makes digital sovereignty measurable with its own score (heise.de)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The city of Munich has developed its own measurement instrument to assess the digital sovereignty of its IT infrastructure. The so-called Digital Sovereignty Score (SDS) visually resembles the Nutri-Score and identifies IT systems based on their independence from individual providers and "foreign" legal spheres. The Technical University of Munich was involved in the development.

In September and October 2025, the IT Department already conducted a first comprehensive test. Out of a total of 2780 municipal application services, 194 particularly critical ones were selected and evaluated based on five categories. The analysis already showed a high degree of digital sovereignty: 66 percent of the 194 evaluated services reached the highest levels (SDS 1 and 2), only 5 percent reached the critical level 4, and 21 percent reached the most critical level 5. The SDS evaluates not only technical dependencies but also legal and organizational risks.

Submission + - Why is China building so many coal plants despite its solar and wind boom (yahoo.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Even as China's expansion of solar and wind power raced ahead in 2025, the Asian giant opened many more coal power plants than it had in recent years — raising concern about whether the world's largest emitter will reduce carbon emissions enough to limit climate change.

More than 50 large coal units — individual boiler and turbine sets with generating capacity of 1 gigawatt or more — were commissioned in 2025, up from fewer than 20 a year over the previous decade, a research report released Tuesday said. Depending on energy use, 1 gigawatt can power from several hundred thousand to more than 2 million homes.

Overall, China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online, a sharp uptick from previous years, according to the joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which studies air pollution and its impacts, and Global Energy Monitor, which develops databases tracking energy trends.

“The scale of the buildout is staggering,” said report co-author Christine Shearer of Global Energy Monitor. “In 2025 alone, China commissioned more coal power capacity than India did over the entire past decade.”

Comment How is that even news? (Score 1) 115

by Aviation Pete (#65952698) Attached to: Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption

Both this (Meta able to read Whatsapp messages) and the article before (PR China spying on UK leadership) fit very well with their respective usual behavior. Anyone who is surprised by that has been living under a very large rock for a looong time. What was missing so far is proof of the alledged misdeeds.

Submission + - Germany is facing calls to withdraw its billions of euros' worth of gold from US (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Z00L00K
Z00L00K writes: Germany holds the world’s second biggest national gold reserves after the US, of which approximately €164bn (£122bn) worth – 1,236 tonnes – is stored in New York.

Emanuel Mönch, a leading economist and former head of research at Germany’s federal bank, the Bundesbank, called for the gold to be brought home, saying it was too “risky” for it to be kept in the US under the current administration.

“Given the current geopolitical situation, it seems risky to store so much gold in the US,” he told the financial newspaper Handelsblatt. “In the interest of greater strategic independence from the US, the Bundesbank would therefore be well advised to consider repatriating the gold.”

Submission + - China Clamps Down on High-Speed Traders, Removing Servers (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: China is pulling the plug on a key advantage held by high-frequency traders, removing servers dedicated to those firms out of local exchanges’ data centers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Commodities futures exchanges in Shanghai and Guangzhou are among those that have ordered local brokers to shift servers for their clients out of data centers run by the bourses, according to the people, who said the move was led by regulators.

The changes threaten a speed advantage that high-frequency traders, made famous by Michael Lewis’ bestseller , and quant hedge funds have long used to beat rivals. By using servers located in the exchanges’ own data centers, these firms can get slightly quicker execution than others — an edge in markets where every millisecond counts.

Futures exchanges have made preliminary plans to add two milliseconds of latency to any servers that connect from third-party computer rooms, two of the people said. It’s not clear if other exchanges are considering the same approach.

The delay will be in addition to the time lag trading firms experience from moving servers away from exchanges, the people said.

A delay of just a few milliseconds would be imperceptible to most investors but it could be enough to impact global firms’ high-frequency trading in stock index futures, convertible bonds and commodities. Some of their trading strategies may not be viable without the fastest access, though it’s unclear how the firms might adapt as they try to stay a step ahead of rivals.

China’s stock exchanges define high-frequency trading as more than 300 orders and cancellations per second through one account or more than 20,000 requests in a single day. Such accounts dropped 20% in 2024 to about 1,600 as of June 30 that year, the China Securities Regulatory Commission has said.

The attempt to shift high-frequency traders away from exchanges comes after Beijing’s years of unease with these firms, who add liquidity to markets but also enjoy execution advantages that are unthinkable for mom-and-pop investors.

Two years ago, regulators imposed tighter rules on automated stock trading. Officials have also threatened to raise fees on high-frequency traders, although so far they haven’t done so.

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