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Submission + - Microsoft wants to kill Docker Desktop on Windows with WSL containers (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Microsoft has opened the public preview of WSL containers, bringing native Linux container support directly into the Windows Subsystem for Linux. The new wslc tool allows developers to build, run, and manage Linux containers without installing separate software such as Docker Desktop.

While Microsoft insists Docker Desktop, Podman Desktop, and Rancher Desktop remain important parts of the ecosystem, the direction seems obvious. If Windows eventually ships with a capable container platform built directly into WSL, many developers may decide they no longer need third-party container tools for everyday work.

The announcement also includes APIs that allow Windows applications to launch Linux containers programmatically, along with enterprise management features, improved file performance, new networking technology, and tighter integration with existing Windows tooling.

Comment Checks can be be useful. (Score 1) 163

by couchslug (#66215672) Attached to: Are Checks Sent Through the Mail Vulnerable to Theft?

Handed directly to recipient institutions or individuals they serve as a firewall against online account compromise.

Checks have use when internet is interrupted during natural disasters and I have so used them. I've never had a check problem in my many decades on the planet because I think before writing. I bank locally and those I pay are protected thereby.

Redundant payment methods including cash come in handy. I keep a couple thousand (small enough to lose, large enough to be useful) bucks handy because buying for cash is preferred at yard sales, estate sales, flea markets, Fecesbook Marketplace etc. It's nice to have an electronic fetish, but that does not address every use case.

I also have two bank accounts, one in each state where I own land. I don't believe in being one-deep where backup is an option.

Submission + - Privacy wins at SCOTUS on geofence warrants (supremecourt.gov)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The case Chatrie v. United States (No. 25-112), decided by the Supreme Court on June 29, 2026, centers on the constitutionality of "geofence warrants" under the Fourth Amendment.

The Background
The case originated from a 2019 armed robbery of a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. Lacking leads, law enforcement obtained a "geofence warrant" directed at Google. This warrant required Google to provide location data for all mobile devices within a 150-meter radius of the bank during a one-hour window around the time of the robbery.

Through a three-step process, Google provided anonymized data for devices in the area, then narrowed the data to specific users, and finally "de-anonymized" three individuals. Okello Chatrie was one of those individuals, and the resulting location history was used to identify him as the suspect and secure his conviction.

The Supreme Court's Ruling
On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled (6–3) that the government's use of a geofence warrant to acquire this location data constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment.

Reasonable Expectation of Privacy: Writing for the Court, Justice Elena Kagan held that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location information, even when that data is held by a third party like Google.

Rejection of the Third-Party Doctrine: The Court rejected the government's argument that users "voluntarily" shared their location data with Google, noting that modern cell phone use essentially requires this data collection and that such sensitive, detailed tracking creates an expectation of privacy that the Fourth Amendment protects.

The Outcome: By establishing that these actions constitute a search, the Court essentially determined that such warrants must meet constitutional standards of probable cause and particularity. The Court vacated the lower court's decision and remanded the case, instructing the lower courts to determine if the specific warrant in this instance met those Fourth Amendment requirements.

In short, the decision represents a significant victory for privacy advocates, clarifying that the digital "sweeping" of location data through geofence warrants is subject to the same constitutional protections as other government searches.

Submission + - Microsoft fake Windows error ended in a $280 million secret settlement (makeuseof.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Facing real competition from Digital Research's DR DOS, Microsoft secretly embedded a sabotaging mechanism known as "AARD code" into beta versions of Windows 3.1 to prevent it from running on Digital Research's competing DR DOS operating system.
This code triggered fake, alarming error messages to convince developers that DR DOS was unstable, effectively eliminating a significant market threat through fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Although the company disabled the feature in the final retail release, the California-based firm Caldera, Inc., which had acquired DR DOS assets, sued Microsoft for anti-competitive practices.
Microsoft settled the lawsuit out of court in 2000 for $280 million, a figure that remained sealed until it was unsealed in 2009. Nothing says taking ownership and responsibility than keeping it a sealed secret for a decade. Microsoft paid for being clumsy enough to write the intent down in an email. The lesson the industry took away wasn't "don't do it." It was "don't put it in writing." Something Bill Gates forgot with Epstein.

Submission + - LA Schools Chief Resigns Amid FBI Probe Into Failed K-12 AI Chatbot Company

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Four years after leaving Miami-Dade County Public Schools for one of the nation’s most prominent education jobs, Alberto Carvalho has resigned as superintendent of Los Angeles schools amid an FBI investigation," reports the Miami Herald. "The FBI has conducted raids on Carvalho’s Los Angeles home and office as part of a probe into a multimillion-dollar contract awarded to a failed AI-focused education company [AllHere Education]. Investigators also raided the Broward County home of a lobbyist connected to the deal. Carvalho led Miami-Dade public schools for 14 years before joining Los Angeles Unified School District in Feb. 2022. The lobbyist, Debra Kerr, had previously sold hundreds of thousands worth of textbooks to the Miami-Dade County school district and was retained as a salesperson for the startup chatbot company when it dealt with the Los Angeles district."

In What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools?, The New Yorker's Jessica Winter points out that "Carvalho, who has denied any wrongdoing, is also on the board of [tech-backed nonprofit] Code.org [recently rebranded to CodeAI], purveyors of Mix & Move with AI," Code.org's signature tutorial for its 2025 Hour of AI, which was built on the Carvalho-endorsed Music Lab, Code.org's signature tutorial for its 2024 Hour of Code that was developed with Amazon ("Code.org has mastered the art of bringing joy and curiosity into the classroom," Carvalho gushed in a press release, "while preparing students with essential computer science skills, and Music Lab is the perfect example.”). Winter is not as big a fan of the nonprofit's edtech software as Carvalho, writing that the "Certificate of Completion," her 3rd grader brought home from school for "demonstrating an understanding of the basic concepts of Artificial Intelligence" was for "playing a computer game produced by the nonprofit Code.org in partnership with Amazon Future Engineer, called Mix & Move with AI, in which the student 'designs' a cartoon dancer and 'remixes' a popular song—available, needless to say, on Amazon Music. The game is an inane drag-and-drop affair that has little to do with A.I.; the certificate, it turned out, was merely a memento of a pointless and deceptive branding exercise [Amazon is a $30+ million Code.org Lifetime Supporter]."

Carvalho has been scrubbed from the Code.org Board of Directors page — archive.org webpage captures suggest a change was made on Wednesday, three days after his Sunday resignation and on the same day that Carvalho's replacement was named by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Curiously, the Miami Herald earlier reported a firm registered to current Code.org Board Member and former Broward County (FL) Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie is listed as a creditor in bankruptcy files for AllHere Education, the provider of LAUSD's failed "Ed" AI chatbot that's at the center of the FBI investigation.

And on Tuesday — two days after Carvalho's resignation — LAUSD banned screen time before the second grade and enacted limited use for older students, among the strictest policies in the nation, reflecting growing backlash from parents and educators concerned about an over-reliance on computers and technology in K-12 learning.

Comment Why should a mere eight-mile gas pipeline be news? (Score 3) 46

It's the most efficient, safest way to move fuel without burdening rail and road nets with LNG tankers which are large mobile fire and explosion hazards.

That's why there are well over two million miles of natgas pipeline in the US so far. Eight miles should impress no one. Andrew Carnegie drilled natgas wells and built a twenty mile pipeline to Pittsburgh steel plants in the 1880s.

Comment Discretionary income is situational. (Score 1) 113

by couchslug (#66211974) Attached to: Polestar Banned From Selling Cars In US From Model Year 2027

~$25K is about ten grand less than the average used car price in many non-rich US states so it's obviously affordable for many, self included, of modest incomes.

I only make ~$70K but live below my means using enabling skills in an enabling location. I don't piss away money on new vehicles as a matter of economic principle.

Submission + - Non-invasive stimulation of the brain ends Opioid addiction, cigarette craving (jpost.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Doctors at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa have successfully treated their first Israeli opioid addiction patient using an experimental noninvasive brain technology, easing him through withdrawal in just 20 minutes.

'H., a 40-year-old family man from northern Israel, was injured in his neck several years ago. Because of the injury, he relied on painkillers and eventually became addicted to them....

'The patient himself reported a craving score of zero out of 10 for using the drug, and even another side effect, a drastic drop in the desire for cigarettes, from three packs a day to just a few cigarettes, and with no urge to use alcohol. In other words, in a treatment that lasted about 20 minutes net, our patient was completely freed from an extreme dependence that had accompanied him every day for years. This is nothing less than a medical and therapeutic revolution.”'

Submission + - Max Planck Slapped With Paper Retractions by Suspected Rogue Algorithm (science.org) 1

Submitted by He Who Has No Name
He Who Has No Name writes: Being a titan in the history of physics, the 1918 Nobel Laureate in Physics, having the smallest rational physical measurement (the Planck Length) named after you, and being deceased for 79 years is all apparently still not enough to prevent your work from being threshed and hit with retractions by an algorithm. Science.org has a succinct article that explains it:

"In early May, Yves Gingras, a historian of physics at the University of Quebec (UQ) at Montreal, was browsing Retraction Watch, a website that catalogs fraud, data manipulation, and other scientific sins. He noticed a link that read, “Retractions by Nobel Prize winners.” Were there really Nobel laureates whose papers had been withdrawn from the scientific literature?
After clicking, Gingras froze. “That’s impossible,” he recalls thinking. The fourth name on the list, with two retracted papers, was Max Planck—a legendary pioneer of quantum mechanics and the 1918 Nobel laureate in physics. Gingras had never heard a whiff of scandal about Planck, who was almost as widely revered for his character as his physics. In 1933, for example, he bravely confronted Adolf Hitler over Nazi Germany’s discriminatory laws against Jews."

The Springer Nature, the current-day owner of the journal Naturwissenschaften in which the papers were published 86 years ago, appears to have set an algorithm loose on their library, hunting for plagiarism and other reasons to retract papers... and failed to tell it to leave historic cornerstone works and authors alone.

"The retraction of the second Planck paper, published in 1940, left Gingras and Khelfaoui even more baffled. It also cited copyright violation—yet the piece had never appeared elsewhere. Then Khelfaoui noticed something that added to suspicions that an algorithm was at work. [...] In November 1940, philosopher Aloys Müller criticized Planck’s views in a Naturwissenschaften piece titled “Naturwissenschaft und reale Außenwelt” (“Natural Science and the Real External World”). A month later, Planck responded in print—and used the exact same title. This, Gingras and Khelfaoui suspect, caused Springer Nature’s copyright bot to retract the paper as plagiarism decades later, even though the contents of the two essays differ markedly."

However, apparently feeling like they had to retract the paper was not enough to fully dissuade Springer Nature from still selling it, in its retracted form:

"Gingras was especially incensed that Springer Nature deviated from the normal practice of merely slapping the word RETRACTED across the digital version of the paper while still allowing scholars to read the text. Instead, the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95."

Submission + - Microsoft extends Win10 CONSUMER ESU for one more year (microsoft.com)

Submitted by williamyf
williamyf writes: Microsoft has extended the consumer ESU support for Windows 10 for another year. It will now run until Oct 2027.

Both the ESU page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/extended-security-updates#cw) and a Blog Post (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2025/06/24/stay-secure-with-windows-11-copilot-pcs-and-windows-365-before-support-ends-for-windows-10/) from Microsoft reflect the change.

Consumer ESU is either free (sometimes with strings attached) or low cost (~30 U$D) compared to Enterprise ESU. The details are in the ESU page.

Enterprise ESU remains unchanged, and runs until Oct 2028. For people still using Win10 as their main OS, either because their HW does not support Win11, or because they like Win10 better, or people (like me) Dualbooting another OS as the main one, with a Win10 partition for other uses, these are excellent news.

Submission + - Polestar Banned From Selling Cars in the U.S. Starting With Model Year 2027 (autoevolution.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Polestar is now winding down its car sales in the United States, following the decision of the U.S. Department of Commerce

The Connected Vehicle Rule is a regulation that restricts the import and sale of vehicles equipped with Vehicle Connectivity Systems (VCS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) tied to foreign adversaries, primarily from China and Russia.

Polestar is owned by Chinese auto giant Geely, which has also been the parent company of Swedish brand Volvo since 2010. However, Volvo has recently been granted authorization to sell connected vehicles in the United States.

Submission + - Should AI Ban Users Without Human Review? (medium.com)

Submitted by VTAndrew
VTAndrew writes: Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of content moderation and account enforcement across major online platforms. While AI can help identify spam, scams, and harmful content at internet scale, what happens when the system gets it wrong?

A recently published Medium article examines this question through the experience of a Facebook account suspension that was reportedly initiated by an automated system, followed by an automated appeal denial and no meaningful path to human review.

The article argues that the issue isn't AI itself—it's allowing AI to become investigator, decision-maker, and appeals process without effective human oversight.

The broader concern is that platforms like Meta have evolved into critical pieces of modern infrastructure. They host community groups, school communications, local government announcements, business pages, political discussions, and years of personal history. Their ecosystems also span multiple interconnected services, meaning a single enforcement action can affect Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, and Meta hardware tied to the same account.

This concern extends beyond a single user's experience. A growing advocacy effort at People Over Platforms documents thousands of reports from users who say they were wrongfully locked out of their accounts and calls for stronger transparency, meaningful appeals, and human oversight.

The movement originated with a Change.org petition that has gathered more than 63,000 supporters before transitioning to an independent nonprofit focused on digital rights and platform accountability.

Media outlets in multiple countries have also reported on users who say they were wrongly disabled by Meta's automated enforcement systems, with some accounts later restored after additional review.

Rather than asking whether AI should be used for moderation, the article asks a different question:

If AI is empowered to make decisions that can revoke a person's digital identity, communications, communities, and purchased ecosystem, should there always be a meaningful human appeal available?

Medium article:

https://medium.com/@vtadorsett...

People Over Platforms:

https://www.peopleoverplatform...

Original Change.org petition:

https://www.change.org/p/hold-...

Submission + - When AI Becomes Judge, Jury, and Appeals Court (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Medium article explores the growing use of AI for account enforcement and moderation decisions on large social platforms. The author argues that the real issue isn't AI making mistakes—mistakes are inevitable—but the lack of meaningful human review when those mistakes occur.

The article describes an account suspension process in which an AI system made the initial enforcement decision, an automated appeal upheld it, and human support representatives were reportedly unable to revisit the case because it had already been marked as resolved.

The broader question raised is one of governance rather than technology: if platforms increasingly rely on AI to make decisions that can revoke access to social networks, communications, communities, purchased hardware ecosystems, and digital identities, what level of human oversight should be required?

The article also discusses the concept of "blast radius" in system design, arguing that centralized digital identity systems amplify the consequences of false positives when enforcement actions cascade across multiple services.

What level of human review should be required when AI systems are empowered to make decisions with significant real-world consequences?

Submission + - Mushroom Behind 'Tiny Human' Visions Lacks Genes For Known Psychedelics (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: When eaten undercooked, the mushroom can produce vivid visions of miniature people â" not unlike Gulliver on his travels to Lilliput.

"Biosynthetic gene mining of the L. asiatica genome found no close hits with any genes known in the production of mushroom psychoactive compounds," write the researchers in their published paper.

"This supports our hypothesis of the presence of a novel unidentified metabolite responsible for the unique hallucinogenic properties of L. asiatica."

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