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Submission + - Malicious compliance? (theguardian.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: People examining documents released by the Department of Justice in the Jeffrey Epstein case discovered that some of the file redaction can be undone with Photoshop techniques, or by simply highlighting text to paste into a word processing file.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act signed into law last month permits the Department of Justice “to withhold certain information such as the personal information of victims and materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation”.

It was unclear how property material complies with the redaction standard under the law. An inquiry to the Department of Justice has not yet been answered

Submission + - Suspect in Brown University, MIT Shootings Found Dead in NH

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The body of a man suspected in the killing of two students at Brown University and an MIT professor was found dead in a storage unit in New Hampshire Thursday night. Law enforcement officials said that the suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, had died by suicide. Valente not only briefly attended Brown as a Physics graduate student in the early 2000s, but also is believed to have earlier attended the same academic program in Portugal as murdered MIT Physics professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro between 1995 and 2000.

Submission + - Book Tailored Norfolk Island Holiday Packages Today (spacificatravel.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes:   All the packages below can be tailored in any way that you require – extend your stay, upgrade your flights, change the travel dates or add-on additional tours – just let us know when booking what you require and we’ll make it happen. For more information about any of the Norfolk Island holiday packages below or to speak to an experienced travel consultant today, please contact us on 1800 800 722.

  #SpacificaTravel #NorfolkIslandHolidayPackages #NorfolkIslandPackages #NorfolkIslandHolidays

Submission + - Cinnamon 6.6 Desktop Environment Released with Redesigned Application Menu (9to5linux.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 9to5linux.com reports: "The Linux Mint team released today the Cinnamon 6.6 desktop environment, which will be the default in the upcoming Linux Mint 22.3 (Zena) release expected in late December 2025 or in early 2026. The biggest change in Cinnamon 6.6 is a redesigned application menu applet that now lets you toggle between symbolic or full color icons for categories, support for color system buttons on hover, configurable Places and Bookmarks, as well as many visual changes."

"Cinnamon 6.6 also modernizes keyboard handling and the virtual keyboard with a new button for switching the layout, a context menu shortcut for accessing the Keyboard Accessibility settings, improved theme support, improved suggestions visibility, and a fade-in/out effect when hiding and showing the keyboard."

"The Settings app received some attention as well in Cinnamon 6.6 with a new Thunderbolt module, a new tab for tiling in the Windows module, a suspend option to battery-critical actions in the Power module, support for manual scheduling in the Night Light module, and support for the new System Information tool."

Submission + - Am I The Last Surviving 3-Digit User ID on Slashdot? 5

Submitted by Jeremiah Cornelius
Jeremiah Cornelius writes: Some distinctions mean very little to anyone other than the singular individual holding them. Are there others remaining? Does Rob Malda ever bother checking in here? Who remembers the promising ascent and rapid zenith of VA Linux Systems? How about the decade-old sighting of the Slashdot PT Cruiser?

If you're out there we want to hear from you. Or just tell us why we don't.

Submission + - Secret Service Raids Malicious SIM Server Setup (apnews.com)

Submitted by Gilmoure
Gilmoure writes: The US Secret Service is in the process of taking down a massive network of SIM Server systems, designed to function "like banks of mock cellphones, able to generate mass calls and texts, overwhelm local networks and mask encrypted communications criminals. When agents entered the sites, they found rows of servers and shelves stacked with SIM cards. More than 100,000 were already active, investigators said, but there were also large numbers waiting to be deployed, evidence that operators were preparing to double or even triple the network’s capacity, McCool said. He described it as a well-funded, highly organized enterprise, one that cost millions of dollars in hardware and SIM cards alone."

Submission + - In love with a Luigi Mangione chatbot (thespectator.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In this short clip, an unnamed woman proudly declares both her infatuation with – and ability to create an artificial construction of – Luigi Mangione outside of a Manhattan courthouse, where he has recently been absolved of various terrorism-related charges. Wearing an “I Italian Boys” T-shirt with an illustration of his face, the woman lists the many reasons why an AI chatbot, presumably trained on Luigi Mangione-related trivia, offers her the perfect romantic companionship. She gets to talk to him every day, she says, as a best friend and partner with whom she can plan a future and name their children. And, the woman adds, although she is aware that this might make her something of an imposter, the fact that Luigi studied AI at Stanford meant that this was an all-round reasonable thing to do.

It’s easy to write off this case as simply a harmless, albeit quite eccentric, example of the many ways in which young people are using AI today. But to do so would be to miss something much more provocative about how society has changed in the past decade. It’s the future of romance, she added in her clip. But it’s not. It’s the future of everything.

Something she notes in her monologue is that her Mangione AI-bot “fights her battles for her.” This seemingly innocuous statement is particularly interesting if you remember that a low locus of control – the term psychologists refer to when discussing whether people feel in control of their own lives or not – correlates quite strongly with support for political violence today.

I’m pretty sure that The Matrix and Her were intended to be viewed as warnings, not how-to guides for life in the 21st century.

Submission + - When facial recognition goes wrong (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'A man who is bringing a High Court challenge against the Metropolitan Police after live facial recognition technology wrongly identified him as a suspect has described it as "stop and search on steroids".

'Shaun Thompson, 39, was stopped by police in February last year outside London Bridge Tube station.

'Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch said the judicial review, due to be heard in January, was the first legal case of its kind against the "intrusive technology".

'The Met, which announced last week that it would double its live facial recognition technology (LFR) deployments, said it was removing hundreds of dangerous offenders and remained confident its use is lawful.

'LFR maps a person's unique facial features, and matches them against faces on watch-lists.'

I suspect a payout of £10,000 for each false match that is acted on would probably encourage more careful use, perhaps with a second payout of £100,000 if the same person is victimised again.

Submission + - The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "The job of the future might already be past its prime," writes The Atlantic's Rose Horowitch in The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting. "For years, young people seeking a lucrative career were urged to go all in on computer science. From 2005 to 2023, the number of comp-sci majors in the United States quadrupled. All of which makes the latest batch of numbers so startling. This year, enrollment grew by only 0.2 percent nationally, and at many programs, it appears to already be in decline, according to interviews with professors and department chairs. At Stanford, widely considered one of the country’s top programs, the number of comp-sci majors has stalled after years of blistering growth. Szymon Rusinkiewicz, the chair of Princeton’s computer-science department, told me that, if current trends hold, the cohort of graduating comp-sci majors at Princeton is set to be 25 percent smaller in two years than it is today. The number of Duke students enrolled in introductory computer-science courses has dropped about 20 percent over the past year."

"But if the decline is surprising, the reason for it is fairly straightforward: Young people are responding to a grim job outlook for entry-level coders. In recent years, the tech industry has been roiled by layoffs and hiring freezes. The leading culprit for the slowdown is technology itself. Artificial intelligence has proved to be even more valuable as a writer of computer code than as a writer of words. This means it is ideally suited to replacing the very type of person who built it. A recent Pew study found that Americans think software engineers will be most affected by generative AI. Many young people aren’t waiting to find out whether that’s true."

Meanwhile, writing in the Communications of the ACM, Orit Hazzan and Avi Salmon ask: Should Universities Raise or Lower Admission Requirements for CS Programs in the Age of GenAI? "This debate raises a key dilemma: should universities raise admission standards for computer science programs to ensure that only highly skilled problem-solvers enter the field, lower them to fill the gaps left by those who now see computer science as obsolete due to GenAI, or restructure them to attract excellent candidates with diverse skill sets who may not have considered computer science prior to the rise of GenAI, but who now, with the intensive GenAI and vibe coding tools supporting programming tasks, may consider entering the field?"

Submission + - Bluesky suspends JD Vance for mentioning SCOTUS case (nypost.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

"To that end, I found Justice [Clarence] Thomas's concurrence on medical care for transgender youth quite illuminating," Vance wrote, including a screenshot of the conservative justice’s statement agreeing with the 6-3 ruling.

Posting this got JD banned from Bluesky.

Submission + - Solid Rock Caught Flowing 1,700 Miles Beneath Surface in Experimental First (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: They found something else, too: that the solid rock above the D" layer can flow in a convection pattern. This type of movement, which varies across different parts of Earth's layers, determines the alignment of post-perovskite crystals.

It's driven by a combination of cooler material, which is sinking, and hotter material, which is rising. It's the first experimental evidence we have of such movement in this region of Earth's insides – though of course direct observations are impossible.

Submission + - Warship blocks New Zealand wireless internet and radio services

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: HMAS Canberra accidentally blocks wireless internet and radio services in New Zealand

“The Department of Defence has acknowledged that HMAS Canberra, the Royal Australian Navy's largest warship, accidentally took out a number of wireless internet and radio services across New Zealand earlier this week during a visit intended to celebrate the sister city relationship between Canberra and Wellington.”

“According to local internet service providers (ISPs), HMAS Canberra's navigation radar began interfering with 5GHz wireless access points — devices that bridge wired and wireless networks -

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