Comment Re:Shine On, Football Brain (Score 1) 54
+1 Funny! Thanks for the visual.
Submission + - Canadian grocery giant Loblaws advertises, in the sky (thestar.com)
Striek writes: Non-paywalled link
A large LED aerial drone display appeared over Toronto’s skies late Thursday night promoting Loblaw’s [a major Canadian grocery retailer] health services app in an advertisement that the city says they were not made fully aware of.
Videos and photos posted online show a large-scale drone advertisement for President’s Choice Health that sparked a heated discussion online about the use of airspace for promotional material.
In an email to the [Toronto] Star, a City of Toronto spokesperson said that while they approved the rental of Fort York National Historic Site for a third-party drone operator, they didn’t know that Loblaw would be behind the display.
A large LED aerial drone display appeared over Toronto’s skies late Thursday night promoting Loblaw’s [a major Canadian grocery retailer] health services app in an advertisement that the city says they were not made fully aware of.
Videos and photos posted online show a large-scale drone advertisement for President’s Choice Health that sparked a heated discussion online about the use of airspace for promotional material.
In an email to the [Toronto] Star, a City of Toronto spokesperson said that while they approved the rental of Fort York National Historic Site for a third-party drone operator, they didn’t know that Loblaw would be behind the display.
The City was not informed of the client associated with the display and is updating its booking requirements to add disclosure of this information as a requirement for future bookings,
said spokesperson Nichole Jankowski.
The advertisement could be seen from multiple vantage points downtown with several phrases urging viewers to ask the Loblaw-owned platform medical questions. Some of the questions on display included “Can melatonin lose its effect? Is that third coffee keeping me up?” and “Do I really need 8 hours of sleep?” The sleep-related questions are followed with a QR code.
Commenters in threads on Reddit and posts on X, where videos of the ads surfaced, criticized the company’s use of airspace, including a tweet that calls for this sort of advertising to be banned. Loblaw confirmed the advertisement in an emailed statement to the Star.
The drone show was intentionally short and carefully considered to minimize brightness and disruption. All appropriate permissions were obtained for the show, including airspace approval secured through NAV CANADA and ground space approval secured through Fort York.
reads the retail company’s statement. According to their website, Loblaw used the ad to launch their health app:
Torontonians along the waterfront can look to the skyline at approximately 11 p.m. ET on September 10, as a series of health-related questions appear overhead during a 15-minute aerial display,
reads a release from Loblaw Companies Limited. Prior to Thursday evening, the Fort York landing page on the city’s website posted that a display would be happening.
In order to stage a drone show, such as the one on Thursday evening, organizers have to apply for an SFOC-RPAS — a permit for flying a drone at an advertised event — with Transport Canada. The federal agency, who has jurisdiction over the airspace, said that they issued an SFOC-RPAS for the event, but would not provide any more information about the applicant due to “privacy requirements.”
Submission + - Vulnerability giving attackers full control on Mac is under active exploitation (arstechnica.com)
joshuark writes: Dutch officials have warned that a high-severity macOS vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code is under active exploitation.
“The NCSC has received a notification indicating that active abuse of this vulnerability has been observed on multiple systems on which port 5900 was accessible from the Internet,” the Netherlands National Cyber Security Centrum warned earlier this week. “In all these cases, root had been accessed on the affected system and a Monero crypto miner had been placed.”
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-65400, received a patch from Apple last week for macOS Tahoe, Sequoia, and Sonoma. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 7.1 out of 10, stems from a bug in the macOS screen sharing capability, which allows a remote party to view the screen and control the keyboard and mouse while a machine is turned on. A flaw in the “state management,” which keeps track of preceding events, user interactions, variables, and other system states, is the underlying cause.
A video of the exploit in action can be found here. Details of CVE-2026-65400 became public at last week’s Black Hat security conference. Apple said last week that CVE-2026-65400 “may” allow an attacker without credentials to gain access to a Mac. It’s unclear why Apple hedged, but softening language is common among most tech developers when disclosing vulnerabilities.
As noted by the NCSC, the vulnerability is being exploited when port 5900 is exposed to the Internet. When screen sharing is turned on, the macOS firewall opens the port. Routers and dedicated firewalls generally block the port unless configured to override that setting. Security practitioners generally advise Mac users to keep the port closed even when using screen sharing and to instead connect over a VPN or through SSH tunneling. The alternatives require actions that aren’t within the capabilities of most users.
The safest practice is to block screen sharing, enable it only when screen sharing is needed, and to turn the feature off once a session has ended. Screen sharing can be turned on or off by accessing System Settings > General > Sharing and toggling the switch for Screen Sharing. Of course, installing last week’s security update is also a must. Sharing is not caring.
“The NCSC has received a notification indicating that active abuse of this vulnerability has been observed on multiple systems on which port 5900 was accessible from the Internet,” the Netherlands National Cyber Security Centrum warned earlier this week. “In all these cases, root had been accessed on the affected system and a Monero crypto miner had been placed.”
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-65400, received a patch from Apple last week for macOS Tahoe, Sequoia, and Sonoma. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 7.1 out of 10, stems from a bug in the macOS screen sharing capability, which allows a remote party to view the screen and control the keyboard and mouse while a machine is turned on. A flaw in the “state management,” which keeps track of preceding events, user interactions, variables, and other system states, is the underlying cause.
A video of the exploit in action can be found here. Details of CVE-2026-65400 became public at last week’s Black Hat security conference. Apple said last week that CVE-2026-65400 “may” allow an attacker without credentials to gain access to a Mac. It’s unclear why Apple hedged, but softening language is common among most tech developers when disclosing vulnerabilities.
As noted by the NCSC, the vulnerability is being exploited when port 5900 is exposed to the Internet. When screen sharing is turned on, the macOS firewall opens the port. Routers and dedicated firewalls generally block the port unless configured to override that setting. Security practitioners generally advise Mac users to keep the port closed even when using screen sharing and to instead connect over a VPN or through SSH tunneling. The alternatives require actions that aren’t within the capabilities of most users.
The safest practice is to block screen sharing, enable it only when screen sharing is needed, and to turn the feature off once a session has ended. Screen sharing can be turned on or off by accessing System Settings > General > Sharing and toggling the switch for Screen Sharing. Of course, installing last week’s security update is also a must. Sharing is not caring.
Comment Credible (Score 5, Informative) 69
The current government has no credibility so neither do their sources.
Submission + - Of Course They Booed
theodp writes: In Of Course They Booed, Audrey Watters takes a look at the chorus of boos greeting college commencement speakers who heralded the glorious AI future students are poised to step into:
And perhaps it’s a little ironic that this graduating class, a group that we've been told time and time again has spent the last four years using ChatGPT to cheat their way through college, would display such sour sentiment towards "AI." But as most commencement speakers seem duty-bound to repeat, graduation marks the entry into adulthood; it is "the beginning of your life"; "the future is now" – that sort of thing. And just these students are now officially adults, they’re being told a very different story: that there really is no future. There are no jobs. And whatever thing they might have learned to do or learned to love in college, whatever career they might have believed they were preparing for, "AI" is going to destroy all of that. No wonder they boo.
But the growing pushback against "AI," and the growing pushback against ed-tech more generally, is not simply a rejection of technology. These efforts are, as Astra Taylor and Saul Levin recently argued in The Guardian, a rejection of the profoundly anti-democratic practices that have pushed technologies into all aspects of our lives without our consent and often in the face of our outright opposition. These technologies have been marketed to us as solutions to all sorts of social problems — and have done so, in no small part, by bypassing and undermining the very public sphere in which debate and discussion can take place: schools, libraries, the arts, the media. The adoption of education technology, "AI" or otherwise, has been anti-democratic in practices both big and small. Despite all the talk of progressive education and ed-tech, it has been experienced as something else entirely. Throughout the country for the past few decades Gates (via the Gates Foundation), other billionaire philanthropists, and giant companies have shaped education funding and policy through a combination of technology and testing.
At one point, perhaps, people were willing to welcome devices into schools, into the classroom. They believed the stories, not just that "this is the future," but that future meant something better for everyone. “Access” signaled equality. But as the tech billionaires have embraced authoritarianism and inequality, and as their apocalyptic rhetoric about not just the "end of work," but quite literally the end of the world grows louder and louder — all while they amass more wealth than anyone in history — it is quite apparent that their promises about the future do not include us. Their vision of future does not make any space or allowance for our children to choose their own futures.
And perhaps it’s a little ironic that this graduating class, a group that we've been told time and time again has spent the last four years using ChatGPT to cheat their way through college, would display such sour sentiment towards "AI." But as most commencement speakers seem duty-bound to repeat, graduation marks the entry into adulthood; it is "the beginning of your life"; "the future is now" – that sort of thing. And just these students are now officially adults, they’re being told a very different story: that there really is no future. There are no jobs. And whatever thing they might have learned to do or learned to love in college, whatever career they might have believed they were preparing for, "AI" is going to destroy all of that. No wonder they boo.
But the growing pushback against "AI," and the growing pushback against ed-tech more generally, is not simply a rejection of technology. These efforts are, as Astra Taylor and Saul Levin recently argued in The Guardian, a rejection of the profoundly anti-democratic practices that have pushed technologies into all aspects of our lives without our consent and often in the face of our outright opposition. These technologies have been marketed to us as solutions to all sorts of social problems — and have done so, in no small part, by bypassing and undermining the very public sphere in which debate and discussion can take place: schools, libraries, the arts, the media. The adoption of education technology, "AI" or otherwise, has been anti-democratic in practices both big and small. Despite all the talk of progressive education and ed-tech, it has been experienced as something else entirely. Throughout the country for the past few decades Gates (via the Gates Foundation), other billionaire philanthropists, and giant companies have shaped education funding and policy through a combination of technology and testing.
At one point, perhaps, people were willing to welcome devices into schools, into the classroom. They believed the stories, not just that "this is the future," but that future meant something better for everyone. “Access” signaled equality. But as the tech billionaires have embraced authoritarianism and inequality, and as their apocalyptic rhetoric about not just the "end of work," but quite literally the end of the world grows louder and louder — all while they amass more wealth than anyone in history — it is quite apparent that their promises about the future do not include us. Their vision of future does not make any space or allowance for our children to choose their own futures.
Submission + - More Than Half Of What Americans Eat Is Ultra-Processed (studyfinds.com) 2
fjo3 writes: A group of leading nutrition scientists, food policy lawyers, and public health experts has released what may be the most actionable blueprint yet for tackling one of the biggest threats to American health: ultra-processed food. Released in May 2026 by Healthy Eating Research, the report offers a concrete definition of what ultra-processed food is and a ranked list of policy options lawmakers could act on right now.
More than half of calories eaten by American adults come from ultra-processed foods, industrial products containing few or no real whole-food ingredients and made with additives that keep them cheap, shelf-stable, and highly appealing. For kids, that figure climbs even higher. A recent study found that of 651 baby and toddler food products sold in the eight largest grocery stores in North Carolina, 71% were classified as ultra-processed.
More than half of calories eaten by American adults come from ultra-processed foods, industrial products containing few or no real whole-food ingredients and made with additives that keep them cheap, shelf-stable, and highly appealing. For kids, that figure climbs even higher. A recent study found that of 651 baby and toddler food products sold in the eight largest grocery stores in North Carolina, 71% were classified as ultra-processed.
Submission + - Two-thirds of babies watch screens — some for eight hours a day (thetimes.com)
fjo3 writes: More than two-thirds of babies under two use screens, a report has found, and some are exposed for up to eight hours a day.
Nearly a third of newborns were found to be watching screens for more than three hours a day, while almost 20 per cent of infants of four to 11 months used screens for more than an hour a day.
The report comes after the government issued guidance that children under two do not use screens at all, apart from communal activities such as video-calling relatives.
Nearly a third of newborns were found to be watching screens for more than three hours a day, while almost 20 per cent of infants of four to 11 months used screens for more than an hour a day.
The report comes after the government issued guidance that children under two do not use screens at all, apart from communal activities such as video-calling relatives.
Submission + - Rectal cancer deaths rising rapidly among millennials (nbcnews.com) 2
fjo3 writes: “The rate of rectal cancer seems to be increasing more than two to three times compared to colon cancer,” said Mythili Menon Pathiyil, lead author of a new study and a gastroenterology fellow at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York.
If the trend continues, rectal cancer deaths will exceed the number of colon cancer deaths — already the nation’s No. 1 cause of cancer death in people under age 50 — by 2035.
If the trend continues, rectal cancer deaths will exceed the number of colon cancer deaths — already the nation’s No. 1 cause of cancer death in people under age 50 — by 2035.
Submission + - Maryland Becomes First State To Pass Bill Banning 'Surveillance Pricing' (denver7.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Maryland is poised to become the first state in the country to ban "surveillance pricing." The practice refers to companies using a shopper’s personal data, such as browsing history, location, or purchasing behavior, to tailor prices to individual customers. The Protection From Predatory Pricing Act, passed this month and sent to the governor for a signature, would prohibit food retailers and third-party delivery services from using the practice. Violations would be treated as deceptive trade practices under state law, with potential fines and lawsuits.
Submission + - Palantir posts Bond villain manifesto on X
DeanonymizedCoward writes: Engadget reports that Palantir has posted to X a summary of CEO Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska's 2025 book, The Technological Republic, which reads like a utopian idealist doodled on a Bond villain's whiteboard. While the post makes some decent points, it also highlights the Big-AI attitude that the AI surveillance state is in fact a good thing, and strongly implies that the Good Guys need to do war crimes before the Bad Guys get around to it.
Submission + - the highest-paying jobs have the worst scores (fortune.com)
ZipNada writes: Over the weekend, the OpenAI cofounder and former director of AI at Tesla posted a graphic showing how susceptible every occupation is to Al and automation, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Different jobs received scores on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being most exposed.
While the overall weighted exposure was 4.9, Karpathy’s data also showed that professions earning more than $100,000 a year had the worst average score (6.7), while the those earning less than $35,000 had the lowest exposure (3.4).
While the overall weighted exposure was 4.9, Karpathy’s data also showed that professions earning more than $100,000 a year had the worst average score (6.7), while the those earning less than $35,000 had the lowest exposure (3.4).
Submission + - Moria creator Robert Koeneke passed away (wikipedia.org)
neoRUR writes: At the dawn of the computer era there were some games that borrowed from Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons to create an experience like no other. It brought you into the world and you could be one of those characters, roam around, fight monsters, level up your characters. One of the more popular ones that would add to that was Moria (As in the Mines of Moria from Lord of the Rings) You quest was to kill the Balrog at the end. Today one of the creators, Robert Alan Koeneke, who wrote Moria because he wanted a Rogue like game to play while at school at the University of Oklahoma, passed away. It has inspired many games and RPG's since. I played Moria on the Amiga for hours and hours. His contributions to computer game history will always be remembered.
Comment Re:Starkly (Score 1) 58
I completely agree with your post. I've always imagined this was possible and have been logging out of things immediately after use for a long time! Also been using multiple browsers/incognito mode for different categories of browsing.
Submission + - How One Company Survived a Ransomware Attack Without Paying the Ransom (esecurityplanet.com)
storagedude writes: The first signs of the ransomware attack at data storage vendor Spectra Logic were reports from a number of IT staffers about little things going wrong at the beginning of the day. Matters steadily worsened within a very short time and signs of a breach became apparent. Screens then started to display a ransom demand, which said files had been encrypted by the NetWalker ransomware virus. The ransom demand was $3.6 million, to be paid in bitcoin within five days.
Tony Mendoza, Senior Director of Enterprise Business Solutions at Spectra Logic, laid out the details of the attack at the annual Fujifilm Recording Media USA Conference in San Diego late last month, as reported by eSecurity Planet.
“We unplugged systems, as the virus was spreading faster than we could investigate,” Mendoza told conference attendees. “As we didn’t have a comprehensive cybersecurity plan in place, the attack brought the entire business to its knees.”
To make matters worse, backups were also corrupted, but with the help of recovery specialist Ankura, uncorrupted snapshots and tape backups helped the company get back online in days, although full recovery took a month.
“We were able to restore everything and paid nothing,” said Mendoza. “Other than a few files, all data was recovered.”
The attack, which started from a successful phishing attempt, "took us almost a month to fully recover and get over the ransomware pain," said Mendoza.
Tony Mendoza, Senior Director of Enterprise Business Solutions at Spectra Logic, laid out the details of the attack at the annual Fujifilm Recording Media USA Conference in San Diego late last month, as reported by eSecurity Planet.
“We unplugged systems, as the virus was spreading faster than we could investigate,” Mendoza told conference attendees. “As we didn’t have a comprehensive cybersecurity plan in place, the attack brought the entire business to its knees.”
To make matters worse, backups were also corrupted, but with the help of recovery specialist Ankura, uncorrupted snapshots and tape backups helped the company get back online in days, although full recovery took a month.
“We were able to restore everything and paid nothing,” said Mendoza. “Other than a few files, all data was recovered.”
The attack, which started from a successful phishing attempt, "took us almost a month to fully recover and get over the ransomware pain," said Mendoza.
Submission + - Judge Orders Twitter To Unmask FBI Impersonator Who Set Off Seth Rich Conspiracy (npr.org)
AmiMoJo writes: A federal judge in California has ordered that Twitter reveal the identity of an anonymous user who allegedly fabricated an FBI document to spread a conspiracy theory about the killing of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer who died in 2016.
The ruling could lead to the identification of the person behind the Twitter name @whyspertech. Through that account, the user allegedly provided forged FBI materials to Fox News. The documents falsely linked Rich's killing to the WikiLeaks hack of Democratic Party emails in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
While Twitter fought to keep the user's identity secret, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in Oakland, Calif., ordered on Tuesday that the tech company must turn over the information to attorneys representing Rich's family in a defamation suit by Oct. 20.
It is the latest twist in a years-long saga over a conspiracy theory that rocked Washington, caused a grieving family a great deal of pain and set off multiple legal battles.
The ruling could lead to the identification of the person behind the Twitter name @whyspertech. Through that account, the user allegedly provided forged FBI materials to Fox News. The documents falsely linked Rich's killing to the WikiLeaks hack of Democratic Party emails in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
While Twitter fought to keep the user's identity secret, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in Oakland, Calif., ordered on Tuesday that the tech company must turn over the information to attorneys representing Rich's family in a defamation suit by Oct. 20.
It is the latest twist in a years-long saga over a conspiracy theory that rocked Washington, caused a grieving family a great deal of pain and set off multiple legal battles.
