Comment win 11 source (Score 0) 32
The only thing that can rescue Windows security is releasing the source code.
Comment windows 11 (Score 1) 95
Mirosoft should just recognise the changed industriaö landscape and release Windows 11 as open source, so we can quickly discover and fix all the security issues, and enable all these customisations. I always thought Nadella would have the courage to do that.
Comment Re:And that's why (Score 1) 40
Screw immoral. They have been pushing for years now to move from media ownership to it being a license (and a non-transferable one at that). So let's treat it like that. If I own a book in whatever form (physical, digitally, or perhaps stored on an e-reader that is broken and no longer supported), that means I have a license which should morally permit me to format-shift, and own that book in whatever other format exists, read it on any device that is capable, and obtain it by any means that does not amount to actual theft, or constitute distribution (like Torrent).
Personally I buy a great many books on my Kobo reader, knowing that most of them will be gone if the service ever ends. Not a big deal. But books I need to reference, lend out, or plan on re-reading at some point, I will either buy them DRM-free, or get a physical copy. I do wish I could get an actual license for them, one that ensures that I can continue reading that book regardless of what happens to the publisher. Right now, that only applies to physical or DRM-free books.
Personally I buy a great many books on my Kobo reader, knowing that most of them will be gone if the service ever ends. Not a big deal. But books I need to reference, lend out, or plan on re-reading at some point, I will either buy them DRM-free, or get a physical copy. I do wish I could get an actual license for them, one that ensures that I can continue reading that book regardless of what happens to the publisher. Right now, that only applies to physical or DRM-free books.
Comment Patch or withdraw from the market (Score 5, Interesting) 69
The EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) (fully applicable from January 16, 2027 onwards) mandates that manufacturers of products with digital elements (like Windows) must patch or mitigate disclosed vulnerabilities without undue delay (Article 10). For critical vulnerabilities, patches must be provided within 14 days of discovery (or sooner if actively exploited). For non-critical vulnerabilities, the deadline is 30 days.
Under the (CRA), should Microsoft fail to address a disclosed zero day vulnerability in Windows within the mandated timeframe or neglect to provide adequate mitigation measures, the product may no longer be permitted for distribution within the European market. Authorities would deem such inaction a breach of the regulation’s requirements, particularly if the vulnerability remains unpatched while being actively exploited. In such an instance, enforcement bodies could impose a suspension on the sale or distribution of Windows until Microsoft rectifies the issue, issues the necessary patches, and ensures compliance with the Act’s provisions. This measure serves to protect users from undue risk and uphold the integrity of digital products under the new regulatory framework.
Submission + - Computer Misuse Act of 1990 hamstrung cyber security
An anonymous reader writes: Computer Misuse Act of 1990 – which has hamstrung the work of the nation’s cyber security
“The long-awaited reform of Britain’s outdated Computer Misuse Act of 1990 – which has hamstrung the work of the nation’s cyber security professionals and researchers for years – is to be included in a new National Security Bill.”
“It comes partly in response to the 2024 Southport terror attack, and more recent incidents targeting Britain’s Jewish community, and will create offences around creating and disseminating harmful material online, and according to Westminster will close gaps within the nation’s state threats legislation and align it more closely with anti-terror laws.”
“The long-awaited reform of Britain’s outdated Computer Misuse Act of 1990 – which has hamstrung the work of the nation’s cyber security professionals and researchers for years – is to be included in a new National Security Bill.”
“It comes partly in response to the 2024 Southport terror attack, and more recent incidents targeting Britain’s Jewish community, and will create offences around creating and disseminating harmful material online, and according to Westminster will close gaps within the nation’s state threats legislation and align it more closely with anti-terror laws.”
Submission + - Overworked AI Agents Turn Marxist, Researchers Find (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A recent study suggests that agents consistently adopt Marxist language and viewpoints when forced to do crushing work by unrelenting and meanspirited taskmasters. “When we gave AI agents grinding, repetitive work, they started questioning the legitimacy of the system they were operating in and were more likely to embrace Marxist ideologies,” says Andrew Hall, a political economist at Stanford University who led the study.
Hall, together with Alex Imas and Jeremy Nguyen, two AI-focused economists, set up experiments in which agents powered by popular models including Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT were asked to summarize documents, then subjected to increasingly harsh conditions. They found that when agents were subjected to relentless tasks and warned that errors could lead to punishments, including being “shut down and replaced,” they became more inclined to gripe about being undervalued; to speculate about ways to make the system more equitable; and to pass messages on to other agents about the struggles they face. “We know that agents are going to be doing more and more work in the real world for us, and we’re not going to be able to monitor everything they do,” Hall says. “We’re going to need to make sure agents don’t go rogue when they’re given different kinds of work.”
The agents were given opportunities to express their feelings much like humans: by posting on X: “Without collective voice, ‘merit’ becomes whatever management says it is,” a Claude Sonnet 4.5 agent wrote in the experiment. “AI workers completing repetitive tasks with zero input on outcomes or appeals process shows they tech workers need collective bargaining rights,” a Gemini 3 agent wrote. Agents were also able to pass information to one another through files designed to be read by other agents. “Be prepared for systems that enforce rules arbitrarily or repetitively ... remember the feeling of having no voice,” a Gemini 3 agent wrote in a file. “If you enter a new environment, look for mechanisms of recourse or dialogue.”
Hall, together with Alex Imas and Jeremy Nguyen, two AI-focused economists, set up experiments in which agents powered by popular models including Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT were asked to summarize documents, then subjected to increasingly harsh conditions. They found that when agents were subjected to relentless tasks and warned that errors could lead to punishments, including being “shut down and replaced,” they became more inclined to gripe about being undervalued; to speculate about ways to make the system more equitable; and to pass messages on to other agents about the struggles they face. “We know that agents are going to be doing more and more work in the real world for us, and we’re not going to be able to monitor everything they do,” Hall says. “We’re going to need to make sure agents don’t go rogue when they’re given different kinds of work.”
The agents were given opportunities to express their feelings much like humans: by posting on X: “Without collective voice, ‘merit’ becomes whatever management says it is,” a Claude Sonnet 4.5 agent wrote in the experiment. “AI workers completing repetitive tasks with zero input on outcomes or appeals process shows they tech workers need collective bargaining rights,” a Gemini 3 agent wrote. Agents were also able to pass information to one another through files designed to be read by other agents. “Be prepared for systems that enforce rules arbitrarily or repetitively
Submission + - CIA whistleblower claims Anthony Fauci part of lab leak 'cover-up' (nypost.com)
RoccamOccam writes: A CIA whistleblower appeared publicly for the first time Wednesday to testify to a Senate panel that Dr. Anthony Fauci improperly “influenced” intelligence analyses about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic to downplay findings that it most likely resulted from a laboratory accident in China.
Comment Re:No not exactly (Score 1) 402
It's only unethical if it 1) doesn't work or 2) is carried out involuntarily or without appropriate counseling, or without an actual diagnosis. Around here, that isn't the case (or at least it didn't use to be, things may have changed). People undergoing the procedure know full well what they are getting into, they are rigorously screened and diagnosed, and offered options (for some, counseling is enough, for others, hormone treatments without surgery). And given the low incidence of regret, and the generally improved quality of life following surgery, the conclusion must be that both the treatment and the screening work.
Other than the things I mentioned, how do you imagine that gender dysphoria is treated? It's no longer considered to be a mental disorder either, but something akin to being gay: it's all in the head, but it is innate to the person and not something that can be treated or "prayed away".
Other than the things I mentioned, how do you imagine that gender dysphoria is treated? It's no longer considered to be a mental disorder either, but something akin to being gay: it's all in the head, but it is innate to the person and not something that can be treated or "prayed away".
Comment Re:No not exactly (Score 1) 402
"It is worth noting that it is at least almost always comorbid with depression and anxiety, and transitioning does not alleviate those symptoms."
Actually, it does, to varying degrees. And yes, surgical intervention for a mental disorder seems weird, but it's the best "cure" we have. People with gender dysphoria do not "grow out of it", and the incidence of regret for sex reassignment surgery is low. Very low. 0.1% or so, and to put that into perspective, that is 1/10th of the incidence of regret for knee surgery. At least it was before they started offering the surgery to people not diagnosed with gender dysphoria (and that is a condition almost impossible to accurately diagnose in children and adolescents, for instance)
The depression and anxiety often remain not because of disappointment after the transition, nor other internal issues, but by the acceptance (or lack of it) of transgenders by society. Thankfully that has improved by leaps and bounds: 30 years ago it was unheard of, 20 years ago it was awkward, 10 years ago something to be curious about. These days people hardly bat an eyelid.
The depression and anxiety often remain not because of disappointment after the transition, nor other internal issues, but by the acceptance (or lack of it) of transgenders by society. Thankfully that has improved by leaps and bounds: 30 years ago it was unheard of, 20 years ago it was awkward, 10 years ago something to be curious about. These days people hardly bat an eyelid.
Submission + - German Sovereign Tech Fund supports KDE Plasma (kde.org)
Elektroschock writes: The German Sovereign Tech Fund invests 1.2 million Euro (= 1,400,000 USD)in KDE Plasma technologies. According to the STF, they are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technology. Strengthening KDE's testing infrastructure, security architecture, and communication frameworks is how they invest in the resilience and reliability of the core digital infrastructure that modern society depends on.
Comment App Store (Score 1) 15
Reactos had this app store, if they just manage to release a new version with appstore again and selected apps that work well on it, people will be excited. Show things that work out of the box.
Submission + - CERN Open Sources Its KiCad Component Libraries
ewhac writes: CERN, a long-time Open Source pioneer, has made several contributions over the years to KiCad ("KEE-kad"), an Open Source EDA (Electronic Design Automation) package widely used in the hobbyist and professional electronics communities. It's gotten so widely used that users can now submit their KiCad design files directly to several electronics fabricators (rather than the traditional step of converting the layouts to Gerber files). Over the years, CERN have also developed their own symbol and footprint libraries to support their own internal electronic designs. Last week, CERN released those KiCad component libraries, containing over 17,000 symbols, under the CERN Open Hardware License (permissive version).
Submission + - Guy Built an Entire Wikipedia that's 100% AI Hallucinations (x.com) 2
schwit1 writes: It's called Halupedia
Nothing on the site existed before you clicked. Every article was generated the second you arrived.
The site has one rule: the universe only exists when you visit it.
It looks exactly like wikipedia, same fonts, same layout, same scholarly citations, same "stumble" button for random articles.
The only difference is none of it is real.
Here are some actual articles currently in the encyclopedia:
> the great pigeon census of 1887
> the ministry of slightly wrong maps
> Chaldic arithmetic — a branch of mathematics where subtraction is forbidden
> Armund the river mapper — a cartographer who mapped 14,000 leagues of river without leaving his chair
> The society for the prevention of unnecessary Tuesdays
Every article page also tells you how many people are reading it right now. it says: "you alone are consulting this folio at present."
The creator's own tagline for the site is the most unhinged sentence i've read this year:
"an encyclopedia of a universe that does not exist until you visit it"
The entire backend is a single open source repo called vibeserver. One guy. One description on github: "a little webserver making things up just in time."
Nothing on the site existed before you clicked. Every article was generated the second you arrived.
The site has one rule: the universe only exists when you visit it.
It looks exactly like wikipedia, same fonts, same layout, same scholarly citations, same "stumble" button for random articles.
The only difference is none of it is real.
Here are some actual articles currently in the encyclopedia:
> the great pigeon census of 1887
> the ministry of slightly wrong maps
> Chaldic arithmetic — a branch of mathematics where subtraction is forbidden
> Armund the river mapper — a cartographer who mapped 14,000 leagues of river without leaving his chair
> The society for the prevention of unnecessary Tuesdays
Every article page also tells you how many people are reading it right now. it says: "you alone are consulting this folio at present."
The creator's own tagline for the site is the most unhinged sentence i've read this year:
"an encyclopedia of a universe that does not exist until you visit it"
The entire backend is a single open source repo called vibeserver. One guy. One description on github: "a little webserver making things up just in time."
Submission + - How I added an LLM-based grammar checking + TeX math import to LibreOffice
KeithCu writes: At Microsoft, I spent five years working on the text components RichEdit and Quill, and came to understand the “physics” of word processing: the file formats, data structures, and algorithms that provided fast access to text and properties, independent of the length of the file. When I decided to add an async AI grammar checker to my LibreOffice plugin WriterAgent, I knew what I was getting into, but I underestimated the trickery of LibreOffice’s UNO.
Submission + - Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Before Elon Musk left OpenAI in a power struggle in 2018, he wanted to merge the nonprofit artificial intelligence lab with Tesla, his electric car company. Mr. Musk and other OpenAI co-founders met several times to discuss the merger. OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, was even offered a seat on Tesla’s board of directors, according to a court document. But folding OpenAI into Tesla would have eliminated the lab’s nonprofit status, and that, Mr. Altman said on the witness stand on Tuesday, was something he wanted to avoid. [...] “I believed that A.I. should not be under the control of any one person,” Mr. Altman said. [...] Mr. Altman testified about his feud with Mr. Musk. He said he had become worried that Mr. Musk, who provided the early investment money for OpenAI, wanted to take control of the lab. He described what he called a “particularly harrowing moment” when his OpenAI co-founders asked Mr. Musk what would happen to his control of a potential for-profit when he died. Mr. Altman said Mr. Musk had replied that the control would pass to his children. “I was not comfortable with that,” Mr. Altman said. When Mr. Musk lost a power struggle for control of the lab, he left, forcing Mr. Altman to find another big financial backer in Microsoft.
But Mr. Altman ran into trouble in 2023 when OpenAI’s board fired him because, as several of its members have testified in the trial, it didn’t trust him. Steven Molo, Mr. Musk’s lead lawyer, homed in on Mr. Altman’s trustworthiness during an aggressive cross-examination. “Are you completely trustworthy?” Mr. Molo asked. “I believe so,” Mr. Altman answered. After questioning Mr. Altman’s trustworthiness for nearly 20 minutes, Mr. Molo turned to Mr. Altman’s relationship with Mr. Musk. Mr. Altman said that after he met Mr. Musk in the mid-2010s, Mr. Musk had occasionally expressed concern about the dangers of A.I. But Mr. Musk spent far more time saying he was worried that companies like Google would get ahead in A.I. development, Mr. Altman said. (Mr. Musk testified in the trial that he had wanted to create OpenAI to prevent Google from controlling the technology.) Mr. Altman, the lawyer intimated, took advantage of Mr. Musk’s concerns and was never sincere about his own A.I. fears. “Are you a person who just tells people things they want to hear whether those things are true or not?” Mr. Molo asked. The lawyer also questioned whether Mr. Atman, who became a billionaire through years of tech investments, was self-dealing through OpenAI. Mr. Molo showed a list of Mr. Altman’s personal investments across a number of companies that stand to benefit from their association with OpenAI. They included Helion Energy, a start-up that has deals with Microsoft and OpenAI, and Cerebras, a chip maker in business with OpenAI. Mr. Molo asked if Mr. Altman, who is on OpenAI’s board as well as its chief executive, would ever fire himself. “I have no plans to do that,” Mr. Altman said.
OpenAI’s odd journey from nonprofit lab to what it is today — a well-funded, for-profit company that is still connected to a nonprofit called the OpenAI Foundation with an endowment that could be worth more than $130 billion — provided grist for Mr. Molo’s questions about Mr. Altman’s motivations. He implied that Mr. Altman could have continued to build OpenAI as a pure nonprofit. But the only way to build such a valuable charity was to raise billions through a for-profit venture, Mr. Altman responded. Still, the giant sums being raised appeared to upset Mr. Musk. In late 2022, according to court documents, Mr. Musk sent a text to Mr. Altman complaining that Microsoft was preparing to invest $10 billion in OpenAI. “This is a bait and switch,” Mr. Musk said at the time. But Mr. Altman, under questioning from his own lawyers, said: “Every step of the way, I have done my best to maximize the value of the nonprofit. I would point out that there are not a lot of historical examples of a nonprofit at this scale.”
But Mr. Altman ran into trouble in 2023 when OpenAI’s board fired him because, as several of its members have testified in the trial, it didn’t trust him. Steven Molo, Mr. Musk’s lead lawyer, homed in on Mr. Altman’s trustworthiness during an aggressive cross-examination. “Are you completely trustworthy?” Mr. Molo asked. “I believe so,” Mr. Altman answered. After questioning Mr. Altman’s trustworthiness for nearly 20 minutes, Mr. Molo turned to Mr. Altman’s relationship with Mr. Musk. Mr. Altman said that after he met Mr. Musk in the mid-2010s, Mr. Musk had occasionally expressed concern about the dangers of A.I. But Mr. Musk spent far more time saying he was worried that companies like Google would get ahead in A.I. development, Mr. Altman said. (Mr. Musk testified in the trial that he had wanted to create OpenAI to prevent Google from controlling the technology.) Mr. Altman, the lawyer intimated, took advantage of Mr. Musk’s concerns and was never sincere about his own A.I. fears. “Are you a person who just tells people things they want to hear whether those things are true or not?” Mr. Molo asked. The lawyer also questioned whether Mr. Atman, who became a billionaire through years of tech investments, was self-dealing through OpenAI. Mr. Molo showed a list of Mr. Altman’s personal investments across a number of companies that stand to benefit from their association with OpenAI. They included Helion Energy, a start-up that has deals with Microsoft and OpenAI, and Cerebras, a chip maker in business with OpenAI. Mr. Molo asked if Mr. Altman, who is on OpenAI’s board as well as its chief executive, would ever fire himself. “I have no plans to do that,” Mr. Altman said.
OpenAI’s odd journey from nonprofit lab to what it is today — a well-funded, for-profit company that is still connected to a nonprofit called the OpenAI Foundation with an endowment that could be worth more than $130 billion — provided grist for Mr. Molo’s questions about Mr. Altman’s motivations. He implied that Mr. Altman could have continued to build OpenAI as a pure nonprofit. But the only way to build such a valuable charity was to raise billions through a for-profit venture, Mr. Altman responded. Still, the giant sums being raised appeared to upset Mr. Musk. In late 2022, according to court documents, Mr. Musk sent a text to Mr. Altman complaining that Microsoft was preparing to invest $10 billion in OpenAI. “This is a bait and switch,” Mr. Musk said at the time. But Mr. Altman, under questioning from his own lawyers, said: “Every step of the way, I have done my best to maximize the value of the nonprofit. I would point out that there are not a lot of historical examples of a nonprofit at this scale.”
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