180945286
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An anonymous reader writes:
This week, tens of thousands of game developers and producers will once again gather in San Francisco, as they have since 1988, for the weeklong Game Developers Conference. But this year’s show will be missing many international developers who say they no longer feel comfortable traveling to the United States to attend, no matter how relevant the show is to their work and careers. Dozens of those developers who spoke to Ars in recent months say they’re wary of traveling to a country that has shown a callous disregard for—or outright hostility toward—the safety of international travelers. That’s especially true for developers from various minority groups, those with transgender identities, and those who feel they could be targeted for outspoken political beliefs. “I honestly don’t know anyone who is not from the US who is planning on going to the next GDC,” Godot Foundation Executive Director Emilio Coppola, who’s based in Spain, told Ars. “We never felt super safe, but now we are not willing to risk it.”
180872132
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alternative_right writes:
The government of California is implementing a law that requires operating system providers to implement some form of age verification into their account setup procedures.
Assembly Bill No. 1043 was approved by California governor Gavin Newsom in October of last year, and becomes active on January 1, 2027 (via The Lunduke Journal). The bill states, among other factors, that "An operating system provider shall do all of the following:"
"(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.
"(2) Provide a developer who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies, at a minimum, which of the following categories pertains to the user."
The categories are broken into four sections: users under 13 years of age, over 13 years of age under 16, at least 16 years of age and under 18, and "at least 18 years of age."
180439463
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alternative_right writes:
A new AI developed at Duke University can uncover simple, readable rules behind extremely complex systems. It studies how systems evolve over time and reduces thousands of variables into compact equations that still capture real behavior. The method works across physics, engineering, climate science, and biology. Researchers say it could help scientists understand systems where traditional equations are missing or too complicated to write down.
180430681
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davidwr writes:
January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!
By Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle
CC BY 4.0
On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee.
—
Last year's Slashdot coverage included Tintin, Popeye Enter Public Domain as 1929 Works Released (Jan 1) and Internet Archive Celebrates New Public Domain Works with Remixes in Short Film Contest (Feb. 8).
180414139
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atrimtab writes:
Cryptocurrency ATMs located in gas stations and convenience stores across the U.S. are increasingly associated with fraud, leaving victims with little recourse.
These machines, while advertising low service fees, often charge exorbitant transaction costs exceeding 20% by inflating the prices of current Crypto coins being bought by customers.
Victims of scams facilitated through these ATMs face challenges in recovering their funds, as Crypto ATM companies are often unwilling to reimburse losses. Law enforcement attempts to seize funds from these machines have been met with legal action from the companies, further hindering victim recovery.
Some industry insiders suggest the profitability of these Crypto ATM companies relies on illegal activity, and efforts are underway to influence state legislation, potentially making it even more difficult for victims to reclaim their money.
180371249
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schwit1 writes:
Seven German journalism students, as a continuation of their OSINT course project, tracked the movements of ships with Russian crews off the coasts of the Netherlands and Germany and linked them to swarms of drones appearing over European military airfields and other strategic sites.
The guys not only analyzed thousands of data points, but also used leaked documents, established connections with sources in European agencies, and drove 2,500 km across three countries chasing one of the ships – even launching their own drone to fly over it.
At the end of the article, there’s precise data on the vessels, so you can follow them yourself.
180322771
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weiyeh writes:
Remember when we worried about script kiddies? Meet their AI-powered, profit-optimizing successors. Researchers from Anthropic and the MATS program have released SCONE-bench, a benchmark showing that AI agents can now autonomously exploit blockchain smart contracts—and they're getting scary good at it. From the research report:
"On contracts exploited after March 2025 (beyond the models' training data), Claude Opus 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and GPT-5 developed working exploits worth a collective $4.6 million in simulated stolen funds. The top performer, Opus 4.5, successfully compromised 50% of these contracts."
180322159
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schwit1 writes:
Some fish feed by means of filtration; these include, for example, mackerel, sardines, and anchovies. They swim through the water with their mouths open and sift out the plankton with their gill arch system. "We took a closer look at the construction of this system and used it as the model for developing a filter that can be used in washing machines," says Blanke, who is a member of the transdisciplinary research areas Life & Health and Sustainable Futures at the University of Bonn.
During their evolution, these fish have developed a technique similar to cross-flow filtration. Their gill arch system is shaped like a funnel that is widest at the fish's mouth and tapers towards their gullet. The walls of the funnel are shaped by the branchial arches. These feature comb-like structures, the arches, which are themselves covered in small teeth. This creates a kind of mesh that is stretched by the branchial arches.
The filter element in the center imitates the gill arch system of the fish. The filter housing enables periodic cleaning and installation in washing machines.
"During food intake, the water flows through the permeable funnel wall, is filtered, and the particle-free water is then released back into the environment via the gills," explains Blanke. "However, the plankton is too big for this; it is held back by the natural sieve structure. Thanks to the funnel shape, it then rolls toward the gullet, where it is collected until the fish swallows, which empties and cleans the system."
This principle prevents the filter from being blocked—instead of hitting the filter head-on, the fibers roll along it toward the gullet. The process is also highly effective, as it removes almost all of the plankton from the water. Both are aspects that a microplastic filter must also be able to deliver. The researchers thus replicated the gill arch system. In doing so, they varied both the mesh size of the sieve structure and the opening angle of the funnel.
"We have thus found a combination of parameters that enable our filter to separate more than 99% of the microplastics out of the water but not become blocked," says Hamann. To achieve this, the team used not only experiments but also computer simulations. The filter modeled on nature does not contain any elaborate mechanics and should thus be very inexpensive to manufacture.
The microplastics that it filters out of the washing water collect in the filter outlet and are then suctioned away several times a minute. According to the researcher, who has now moved to the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, they could then, for example, be pressed in the machine to remove the remaining water. The plastic pellet created in this manner could then be removed every few dozen washes and disposed of with general waste.
180124643
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alternative_right writes:
For years, NASA has monitored a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.
This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for decades, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.
The space agency's satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.
180076618
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An anonymous reader writes:
Russian telecom operators have begun cutting mobile internet access for 24 hours for citizens returning to the country from abroad, in what officials say is an effort to prevent Ukrainian drones from using domestic SIM cards for navigation. “When a SIM card enters Russia from abroad, the user has to confirm that it’s being used by a person — not installed in a drone,” the Digital Development Ministry said in a statement earlier this week.
Users can restore access sooner by solving a captcha or calling their operator for identification. Authorities said the temporary blackout is meant to “ensure the safety of Russian citizens” and prevent SIM cards from being embedded in “enemy drones.” The new rule has led to unexpected outages for residents in border regions, whose phones can automatically connect to foreign carriers. Officials advised users to switch to manual network selection to avoid being cut off.
180075578
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smooth wombat writes:
Within the past year, stories have been posted on Slashdot about people helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs at U.S. corporations, companies knowingly helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs, how not to hire a North Korean for a remote IT job, and how a simple question tripped up a North Korean applying for a remote IT job. The FBI is even warning companies that North Koreans working remotely can steal source code and extort money from the company, money which goes to fund the North Korean government. Now, five more people have plead guilty to knowingly helping North Koreans infiltrate U.S. companies as remote IT workers.
The five people are accused of working as “facilitators” who helped North Koreans get jobs by providing their own real identities, or false and stolen identities of more than a dozen U.S. nationals. The facilitators also hosted company-provided laptops in their homes across the U.S. to make it look like the North Korean workers lived locally, according to the DOJ press release.
These actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un’s regime $2.2 million in revenue, said the DOJ.
Three of the people — U.S. nationals Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar, and Alexander Paul Travis — each pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.
Prosecutors accused the three of helping North Koreans posing as legitimate IT workers, whom they knew worked outside of the United States, to use their own identities to obtain employment, helped them remotely access their company-issued laptops set up in their homes, and also helped the North Koreans pass vetting procedures, such as drug tests.
The fourth U.S. national who pleaded guilty is Erick Ntekereze Prince, who ran a company called Taggcar, which supplied to U.S. companies allegedly “certified” IT workers but whom he knew worked outside of the country and were using stolen or fake identities. Prince also hosted laptops with remote access software at several residences in Florida, and earned more than $89,000 for his work, the DOJ said.
Another participant in the scheme who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy and another count of aggravated identity theft is Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors accuse of stealing U.S. citizens’ identities and selling them to North Koreans so they could get jobs at more than 40 U.S. companies.
180064580
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schwit1 writes:
Harvard physicists unveil system to solve long-standing barrier to new generation of supercomputers
The dream of creating game-changing quantum computers — supermachines that encode information in single atoms rather than conventional bits — has been hampered by the formidable challenge known as quantum error correction.
In a paper published Monday in Nature, Harvard researchers demonstrated a new system capable of detecting and removing errors below a key performance threshold, potentially providing a workable solution to the problem.
"For the first time, we combined all essential elements for a scalable, error-corrected quantum computation in an integrated architecture," said Mikhail Lukin, co-director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative, Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor, and senior author of the new paper. "These experiments — by several measures the most advanced that have been done on any quantum platform to date — create the scientific foundation for practical large-scale quantum computation."
In the new paper, the team demonstrated a "fault tolerant" system using 448 atomic quantum bits manipulated with an intricate sequence of techniques to detect and correct errors.
The key mechanisms include physical entanglement, logical entanglement, logical magic, and entropy removal. For example, the system employs the trick of "quantum teleportation" — transferring the quantum state of one particle to another elsewhere without physical contact.
"There are still a lot of technical challenges remaining to get to very large-scale computer with millions of qubits, but this is the first time we have an architecture that is conceptually scalable," said lead author Dolev Bluvstein, Ph.D. '25, who did the research during his graduate studies at Harvard and is now an assistant professor at Caltech. "It's going to take a lot of effort and technical development, but it's becoming clear that we can build fault-tolerant quantum computers."
180058876
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ewhac writes:
Coming on the heels of FFmpeg having to cope with slop bug reports from Google (without attendant fixes), the Network Time Foundation, the stewards of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) and reference software implementation that keeps billions of computers' internal clocks set to the correct date and time, is having a donation drive. Depending on which page you look at (ntp.org or nwtime.org), the Foundation's goal is to raise a king's ransom of... $11,000.00. Yes, eleven thousand dollars.
180055384
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fjo3 writes:
A country-music song featuring a male singer's voice generated by artificial intelligence reached the top of the US charts for the first time this week.
"Walk My Walk" by Breaking Rust — an artist with no identity but widely reported by US media to be powered by generative AI technology — made it to the top spot on Billboard magazine's chart ranking digital sales of country songs, according to data published Monday.
180051834
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Ryanair is trying to force users to download its mobile app by eliminating paper boarding passes, starting on November 12. As announced in February and subsequently delayed from earlier start dates, Europe’s biggest airline is moving to digital-only boarding passes, meaning customers will no longer be able to print physical ones. In order to access their boarding passes, Ryanair flyers will have to download Ryanair’s app.
“Almost 100 percent of passengers have smartphones, and we want to move everybody onto that smartphone technology,” Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said recently on The Independent’s daily travel podcast. Customers are encouraged to check in online via Ryanair’s website or app before getting to the airport. People who don’t check in online before getting to the airport will have to pay the airport a check-in fee.
