Comment Cautiously Optimistic (Score 1) 29
I'll believe it when I see it.
Submission + - Russian Satellite's Close Shadowing of Radar Imaging Satellite Is A Big Deal (twz.com)
schwit1 writes: Russia's Kosmos 2612 came very close to ICEYE X36, which reportedly has Ukraine connections, after weeks of highly unusual maneuvering.
Kosmos 2612, may have passed within approximately 85 feet (26 meters) of a U.S.-registered satellite belonging to commercial imagery provider ICEYE. This would be an extraordinarily close and potentially dangerous pass-by for two objects in space traveling at thousands of miles per hour. For weeks beforehand, ICEYE-X36, which would be of special interest to Russia, had already found itself in increasingly close orbital alignment with its pursuer. The two satellites now look to be drifting further and further apart, but the episode has been a clear sign of what is to come as the potential for conflict in space only continues to grow.
Publicly available space tracking data from the satellitemap.space and orbitalradar.com websites show that Kosmos 2612 (also written sometimes Cosmos 2612 and abbreviated K2612) and ICEYE X36 had their especially close encounter at approximately 16:07 UTC today. Private space services company LeoLabs also told TWZ today that it could not "confirm or contradict what other data sources have stated publicly," but that it has "high-confidence that the objects came within approximately [emphasis in the original] 500 meters [1,640 feet] of each other." Kosmos 2612 had been making progressively closer passes by ICEYE X36 in recent days.
Kosmos 2612, may have passed within approximately 85 feet (26 meters) of a U.S.-registered satellite belonging to commercial imagery provider ICEYE. This would be an extraordinarily close and potentially dangerous pass-by for two objects in space traveling at thousands of miles per hour. For weeks beforehand, ICEYE-X36, which would be of special interest to Russia, had already found itself in increasingly close orbital alignment with its pursuer. The two satellites now look to be drifting further and further apart, but the episode has been a clear sign of what is to come as the potential for conflict in space only continues to grow.
Publicly available space tracking data from the satellitemap.space and orbitalradar.com websites show that Kosmos 2612 (also written sometimes Cosmos 2612 and abbreviated K2612) and ICEYE X36 had their especially close encounter at approximately 16:07 UTC today. Private space services company LeoLabs also told TWZ today that it could not "confirm or contradict what other data sources have stated publicly," but that it has "high-confidence that the objects came within approximately [emphasis in the original] 500 meters [1,640 feet] of each other." Kosmos 2612 had been making progressively closer passes by ICEYE X36 in recent days.
Comment Sides of the Table (Score 1) 330
Thank you for understanding. Aren't you dismissing a number of recent events, though?
- 2024-07-13 Assassination attempt on Donald Trump
- 2024-12-04 Assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO
- 2025-09-10 Assassination of meme guy
- 2026-05-23 Assassination attempt on Donald Trump
Apparently, there are more—so the system seems to be working according to your implied criteria.
Comment Bearing Arms (Score 2) 330
I hear this rhetoric from time to time. This is my first time clarifying.
The Second Amendment protects Americans' rights to bear arms, not Americans' rights to be personal bodyguards or vigilantes at your beck and call. The burden rests upon the offended American—in this ostensible case, you—to exercise those rights as you see fit.
Personally, I would be satisfied seeing DHS lose in a court of law, with legislation updated accordingly. If you choose to go out guns a-blazin', though, you have my moral understanding and perhaps even respect.
Submission + - Old Blood Cells Have Been Transformed Into Brain Stem Cells That Get Younger (sciencealert.com)
alternative_right writes: Now, scientists have transformed old blood cells into young brain stem cells, which continued to grow younger as they grew older.
The researchers, from the University Hospital of Bonn and the University of Bonn, in Germany, described their methods in the journal Aging Cell.
Cellular transformations can be done in two main ways. The first, more circuitous route turns a specific cell back into a pluripotent stem cell, or an embryonic "blank slate," and then into a different cell type.
The researchers, from the University Hospital of Bonn and the University of Bonn, in Germany, described their methods in the journal Aging Cell.
Cellular transformations can be done in two main ways. The first, more circuitous route turns a specific cell back into a pluripotent stem cell, or an embryonic "blank slate," and then into a different cell type.
Comment Pragmatic Approach, Unmentioned Caveat (Score 4, Interesting) 86
As usual, Torvalds' philosophy is pragmatic. I more or less agree with the gist: Look at the code, not where it came from.
Also as usual, certain details have been swept under the rug—chiefly that Torvalds' only significant vibe-coded contribution to the kernel thusfar was a ten-patch modification to page-caching that was promptly rescinded when other maintainers pointed out a race condition hidden in Claude Code's verbose output. Torvalds ultimately dumped the mess onto human coder Kiryl Shutsemau's lap.
This raises an important, obvious question.
Submission + - Woman arrested after blocking delivery robot in Philadelphia confrontation (abc13.com) 1
alternative_right writes: Philadelphia police said officers responded to the 1200 block of Filbert Street after witnesses reported a disturbance involving Carolyn Marvin and an Uber delivery robot near the famous Reading Terminal Market.
According to police, Marvin repeatedly blocked the robot's path and ignored multiple commands from officers to move.
She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
Marvin said she was protesting the use of delivery robots because she believes they are replacing human workers.
"I know they're taking the jobs of human delivery workers and so, I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front of them and preventing them from going forward," Marvin said.
According to police, Marvin repeatedly blocked the robot's path and ignored multiple commands from officers to move.
She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
Marvin said she was protesting the use of delivery robots because she believes they are replacing human workers.
"I know they're taking the jobs of human delivery workers and so, I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front of them and preventing them from going forward," Marvin said.
Comment Super (Score 3, Informative) 36
If you run X, you can restore this functionality with ksuperkey.
Submission + - 25 Years Later, a Palm OS Developer Opens His Development Archive (github.com)
ardiri writes: Palm OS developer Aaron Ardiri (slashdot.org/~ardiri) has released approximately 1 GB of historical Palm OS development resources, accumulated during the early days of handheld computing and preserved on hard drive backups for more than 25 years. The collection includes historical SDKs, developer conference presentations, technical documentation, programming examples, limited source code, and development utilities. ROM images, commercial applications, and simulator binaries have deliberately been excluded.
Ardiri previously published the source code for his Palm OS and VTOS projects, including work exploring the capabilities of early handheld devices. This latest release expands those preservation efforts beyond his own software, making a broader collection of development resources available to the retrocomputing community. The archive is available at https://github.com/ardiri/dev-... and is intended for historical preservation, education, and research, particularly as enthusiasts continue working to maintain, emulate, and revive the platform (available at https://www.ardiri.com./
Ardiri has also written an auto-biography and shas started explored the engineering principles behind these systems in his books, including Inside the Machine, which examines computer architecture from fundamental logic through modern computing systems. At a time when much of the early mobile development ecosystem has disappeared into defunct websites and aging backups, this collection offers another opportunity to preserve the tools and knowledge that helped define an important era of personal computing.
Ardiri previously published the source code for his Palm OS and VTOS projects, including work exploring the capabilities of early handheld devices. This latest release expands those preservation efforts beyond his own software, making a broader collection of development resources available to the retrocomputing community. The archive is available at https://github.com/ardiri/dev-... and is intended for historical preservation, education, and research, particularly as enthusiasts continue working to maintain, emulate, and revive the platform (available at https://www.ardiri.com./
Ardiri has also written an auto-biography and shas started explored the engineering principles behind these systems in his books, including Inside the Machine, which examines computer architecture from fundamental logic through modern computing systems. At a time when much of the early mobile development ecosystem has disappeared into defunct websites and aging backups, this collection offers another opportunity to preserve the tools and knowledge that helped define an important era of personal computing.
Comment Bleem! (Score 5, Interesting) 24
This already happened with a commercial emulator called Bleem. Long story short: Sony lost every lawsuit, but the legal fees were enough to shut down the defendants. In response to this, the United States Department of Justice exacted far-reaching reforms to ensure that in the future, no large corporation would be able to bully smaller players into bankruptcy.
Psych!
China and the US Say They've Agreed to Start Talks About AI (cnn.com) 183
The United States and China have agreed to "launch a dialogue" on AI, reports Reuters.
On artificial intelligence, the two sides agreed to hold a dialogue on the technology's risks and benefits, with the next round of discussions set for November, and to set up a communication channel for AI-related incidents, the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the White House said.
The White House said that the leaders had agreed to use the term "super intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence." In a separate statement, the Chinese ministry said that Beijing valued Washington's use of the new term. As AI technology continues to advance, the two sides should step up exchanges and work toward consensus in line with new developments, it said.
But CNN argues that "Despite growing calls to prevent AI development from spiraling out of control, the Trump-Xi summit has produced little substance, as many experts expected." The right thing to do on AI, [China's leader] Xi said during talks with Trump, is to "draw on each other's strengths, not guard against each other" — a reference to Beijing's concern about US containment, from existing tech export controls to potential AI restrictions. "The two sides can continue their dialogue on AI, exchange views on its risks and benefits, and jointly prevent the misuse and abuse of AI," he added. But the summit has yielded little progress on AI beyond a formal dialogue and a bilateral communication channel, proposals discussed before the two leaders' summit — underscoring the entrenched mutual mistrust amid contrasting visions on AI... Because of low levels of trust, cooperation between the two superpowers remains limited, said George Chen, chair of digital practice at The Asia Group consultancy. "Beijing continues to believe Washington seeks to contain China's rise in AI and other emerging technologies, a perception that will shape the pace and scope of future engagement for the two countries on AI," he said.
CNN also points out that while China trails the US in frontier AI models, "it's rapidly narrowing the technology gap while championing a more open ecosystem centered on accessibility and lower cost." In July, Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization — a rival grouping to the Pax Silica alliance that Trump formed last year to reduce reliance on China for AI supply chains. While over two dozen countries and the European Union signed up to Trump's Pax Silica, Xi has recruited 29 countries, including Russia, Indonesia and Pakistan, to his alternative vision of open models, which allow users to freely download, customize and run without paying hefty fees to American firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. For developers in the Global South, an inexpensive Chinese model from DeepSeek or Moonshot may be more useful than a slightly more capable system requiring an expensive subscription and access to a foreign cloud provider, said Eric Olander, editor in chief of The China-Global South Project, a research agency....
China's embrace of open systems has not always been a top-down strategy by Beijing. Restrictions on access to the most advanced chips because of US export controls, coupled with smaller capital markets, have pushed Chinese developers toward open models as a way to compete with leading US proprietary systems. That shift has proved effective. In a year, Chinese models' global usage skyrocketed from less than 15% to over 54% last week, led by DeepSeek, according to AI leaderboard data by OpenRouter, a marketplace for models. Even American firms, from Airbnb and DoorDash to Shopify, have embraced Chinese models, tapping into the advantages of open systems, including lower costs and greater flexibility for customization.
CNN adds this insight from Alex Colville, an analyst focusing on tech and security at the government-backed Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "The more capable Chinese models become, the less likely it is Beijing may leave them unrestricted."
The White House said that the leaders had agreed to use the term "super intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence." In a separate statement, the Chinese ministry said that Beijing valued Washington's use of the new term. As AI technology continues to advance, the two sides should step up exchanges and work toward consensus in line with new developments, it said.
But CNN argues that "Despite growing calls to prevent AI development from spiraling out of control, the Trump-Xi summit has produced little substance, as many experts expected." The right thing to do on AI, [China's leader] Xi said during talks with Trump, is to "draw on each other's strengths, not guard against each other" — a reference to Beijing's concern about US containment, from existing tech export controls to potential AI restrictions. "The two sides can continue their dialogue on AI, exchange views on its risks and benefits, and jointly prevent the misuse and abuse of AI," he added. But the summit has yielded little progress on AI beyond a formal dialogue and a bilateral communication channel, proposals discussed before the two leaders' summit — underscoring the entrenched mutual mistrust amid contrasting visions on AI... Because of low levels of trust, cooperation between the two superpowers remains limited, said George Chen, chair of digital practice at The Asia Group consultancy. "Beijing continues to believe Washington seeks to contain China's rise in AI and other emerging technologies, a perception that will shape the pace and scope of future engagement for the two countries on AI," he said.
CNN also points out that while China trails the US in frontier AI models, "it's rapidly narrowing the technology gap while championing a more open ecosystem centered on accessibility and lower cost." In July, Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization — a rival grouping to the Pax Silica alliance that Trump formed last year to reduce reliance on China for AI supply chains. While over two dozen countries and the European Union signed up to Trump's Pax Silica, Xi has recruited 29 countries, including Russia, Indonesia and Pakistan, to his alternative vision of open models, which allow users to freely download, customize and run without paying hefty fees to American firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. For developers in the Global South, an inexpensive Chinese model from DeepSeek or Moonshot may be more useful than a slightly more capable system requiring an expensive subscription and access to a foreign cloud provider, said Eric Olander, editor in chief of The China-Global South Project, a research agency....
China's embrace of open systems has not always been a top-down strategy by Beijing. Restrictions on access to the most advanced chips because of US export controls, coupled with smaller capital markets, have pushed Chinese developers toward open models as a way to compete with leading US proprietary systems. That shift has proved effective. In a year, Chinese models' global usage skyrocketed from less than 15% to over 54% last week, led by DeepSeek, according to AI leaderboard data by OpenRouter, a marketplace for models. Even American firms, from Airbnb and DoorDash to Shopify, have embraced Chinese models, tapping into the advantages of open systems, including lower costs and greater flexibility for customization.
CNN adds this insight from Alex Colville, an analyst focusing on tech and security at the government-backed Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "The more capable Chinese models become, the less likely it is Beijing may leave them unrestricted."
Submission + - Researchers Found a New Way to Break RSA that Doesn't Require Factoring the Key (cybersecuritynews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Security researchers have demonstrated a faster way to undermine certain RSA deployments without factoring the public modulus, challenging the assumption that RSA’s practical strength always tracks the cost of integer factorization.
The attack converts temporary access to a raw, unpadded RSA signing or decryption service into a lasting capability to forge signatures or decrypt chosen ciphertexts offline.
Laura Shea, Miro Haller, Adam Suhl, Nadia Heninger and Emmanuel Thomé implemented the technique against a 1,024-bit RSA key. Their computation consumed 1,380 CPU core-years over five months and required 232 oracle queries. By comparison, factoring a 1,024-bit RSA modulus is estimated to require roughly 500,000 to one million core-years.
The method, called eNFS by the researchers, belongs to the number field sieve family. Instead of the general number field sieve used to factor RSA moduli, it approaches the faster “special” number field sieve complexity by replacing part of the usual mathematical work with answers from the signing oracle. Crucially, it never recovers the prime factors or RSA private key.
The attack unfolds in stages. An approximately 1,200-core-year precomputation depends only on the public modulus and exponent. The attacker then submits selected values to the raw RSA oracle. Once those responses are collected, access can disappear: forging any chosen signature or decrypting a target takes about another 180 core-years and can be repeated offline.
The underlying algorithm is not new. Antoine Joux, David Naccache and Emmanuel Thomé introduced it in 2007, but the new work provides its first implementation and large-scale 1,024-bit demonstration. The code builds heavily on CADO-NFS while adding the engineering needed for polynomial selection, sieving, linear algebra, root extraction, and descent at this scale.
This is not a universal RSA break. The attacker needs temporary access to a raw exponentiation oracle, a capability that conventional RSA signatures using PKCS#1 v1.5 or RSA-PSS padding normally do not expose. More plausible targets include HSM interfaces permitting raw PKCS#11 RSA operations and blind-signature protocols such as Privacy Pass, where blinded requests can provide the required oracle behavior.
The researchers estimate 2^{90} work and 2^{43} oracle queries against 2,048-bit RSA in this model, versus the commonly assigned 112-bit factoring strength. They project roughly 2^{119} work for 4,096-bit RSA, leaving it short of a modern 128-bit security target. Those costs remain beyond attackers, but could matter to well-resourced adversaries and protocols with long-lived public keys.
Organizations do not need to abandon correctly padded RSA immediately. Operators should disable unnecessary raw RSA mechanisms, audit HSM policies, limit oracle exposure, and rotate vulnerable blind-signature keys more frequently.
Protocol designers can investigate zero-knowledge proofs of well-formed requests, while longer-term migration should favor modern signature schemes and post-quantum cryptography rather than treating larger RSA keys as a permanent solution.
The attack converts temporary access to a raw, unpadded RSA signing or decryption service into a lasting capability to forge signatures or decrypt chosen ciphertexts offline.
Laura Shea, Miro Haller, Adam Suhl, Nadia Heninger and Emmanuel Thomé implemented the technique against a 1,024-bit RSA key. Their computation consumed 1,380 CPU core-years over five months and required 232 oracle queries. By comparison, factoring a 1,024-bit RSA modulus is estimated to require roughly 500,000 to one million core-years.
The method, called eNFS by the researchers, belongs to the number field sieve family. Instead of the general number field sieve used to factor RSA moduli, it approaches the faster “special” number field sieve complexity by replacing part of the usual mathematical work with answers from the signing oracle. Crucially, it never recovers the prime factors or RSA private key.
The attack unfolds in stages. An approximately 1,200-core-year precomputation depends only on the public modulus and exponent. The attacker then submits selected values to the raw RSA oracle. Once those responses are collected, access can disappear: forging any chosen signature or decrypting a target takes about another 180 core-years and can be repeated offline.
The underlying algorithm is not new. Antoine Joux, David Naccache and Emmanuel Thomé introduced it in 2007, but the new work provides its first implementation and large-scale 1,024-bit demonstration. The code builds heavily on CADO-NFS while adding the engineering needed for polynomial selection, sieving, linear algebra, root extraction, and descent at this scale.
This is not a universal RSA break. The attacker needs temporary access to a raw exponentiation oracle, a capability that conventional RSA signatures using PKCS#1 v1.5 or RSA-PSS padding normally do not expose. More plausible targets include HSM interfaces permitting raw PKCS#11 RSA operations and blind-signature protocols such as Privacy Pass, where blinded requests can provide the required oracle behavior.
The researchers estimate 2^{90} work and 2^{43} oracle queries against 2,048-bit RSA in this model, versus the commonly assigned 112-bit factoring strength. They project roughly 2^{119} work for 4,096-bit RSA, leaving it short of a modern 128-bit security target. Those costs remain beyond attackers, but could matter to well-resourced adversaries and protocols with long-lived public keys.
Organizations do not need to abandon correctly padded RSA immediately. Operators should disable unnecessary raw RSA mechanisms, audit HSM policies, limit oracle exposure, and rotate vulnerable blind-signature keys more frequently.
Protocol designers can investigate zero-knowledge proofs of well-formed requests, while longer-term migration should favor modern signature schemes and post-quantum cryptography rather than treating larger RSA keys as a permanent solution.
Comment Re:Beau's on vacation (Score 1) 2
Thanks for the explanation! I'm glad I wasn't the only one who noticed.
Comment Transformed YouTube Links (Score 1) 1
Is that a known issue? The next_url query parameter seems to contain the originals.
Submission + - Ruby on Rails Creator Abandons Ruby During Keynote Speech (youtube.com) 1
Grady Martin writes: David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails, announced during a keynote speech at Rails World 2026 on Wednesday that his current project, HEY, has begun migrating from Ruby to a vibe-coded rewrite in Rust. His speech also touched on human productivity and the importance of optimization, noting that agentic developers can “do whatever the fuck [they] want” to achieve the latter. He closed the hour with a Malcom in the Middle meme and commanded the audience: “Don't be a loser”.
