Linux fréttir

Fun with a FOSS-focused Phosh fondleslab

FuriLabs offers a decent-spec smartphone that is based on Debian and can run GNOME apps in your pocket.…

Investigating compensation to police whose sensitive info was leaked in 2023

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has bailed two officers after they were arrested as part of a fraud investigation related to the payments to cops whose sensitive data was mistakenly published in 2023.…

Profiteering from emergency services comms network in Britain? Not anymore, says CMA

Motorola will not be allowed to again appeal a decision by the UK competition regulator to impose a price cap on the communications network it operates for Britain's emergency services.…

Third-party software sticking plaster expected six months late

Further delays have hit Birmingham City Council's disastrous attempt to implement a functioning finance system after it emerged that off-the-shelf software to solve "one of the fundamental problems" with the beleaguered Oracle implementation has been put back.…

Auditor offers qualified opinion as financial fallout from historic miscarriage of justice remains unclear

The UK's spending watchdog has offered a "qualified opinion" on the Department for Business and Trade's accounts, largely down to uncertainties around a scheme designed to mitigate the historic injustice surrounding the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.…

The blog OMG Ubuntu reports: Ubuntu's key developers have agreed to switch to Matrix as the primary platform for real-time development communications involving the distro. From March, Matrix will replace IRC as the place where critical Ubuntu development conversations, requests, meetings, and other vital chatter must take place... Only the current #ubuntu-devel and #ubuntu-release Libera IRC channels are moving to Matrix, but other Ubuntu development-related channels can choose to move — officially, given some projects were using Matrix over IRC already. As a result, any major requests to/of the key Ubuntu development teams with privileged access can only be actioned if requests are made on Matrix. Canonical-employed Ubuntu developers will be expected to be present on Matrix during working hours... The aim is to streamline organisation, speed up decision making, ensure key developers are reliably reachable, and avoid discussions and conversations from fragmenting across multiple platforms... It's hoped that in picking one platform as the 'chosen one' the split in where the distro's development discourse takes place can be reduced and greater transparency in how and when decisions are made restored. IRC remains popular with many Ubuntu developers but its old-school, lo-fi nature is said to be off-putting to newer contributors. They're used to richer real-time chat platforms with more features (like discussion history, search, offline messaging, etc). It's felt this is why many newer developers employed by Canonical prefer to discuss and message through the company's internal Mattermost instance — which isn't publicly accessible. Many Ubuntu teams, flavours, and community chats already take place on Matrix... "End-users aren't directly affected, of course," they point out. But an earlier post on the same blog notes that Matrix "is increasingly ubiquitous in open-source circles. GNOME uses it, KDE embraces it, Linux Mint migrated last year, Mozilla a few years before, and it's already widely used by Ubuntu community members and developers." IRC remains unmatched in many areas but is, rightly or wrongly, viewed as an antiquated communication platform. IRC clients aren't pretty or plentiful, the syntax is obtuse, and support for 'modern' comforts like media sending, read receipts, etc., is lacking.To newer, younger contributors IRC could feel ancient or cumbersome to learn. Though many of IRC's real and perceived shortcomings are surmountable with workarounds, clients, bots, scripts, and so on, support for those varies between channels, clients, servers, and user configurations. Unlike IRC, which is a centralised protocol relying on individual servers, Matrix is federated. It lets users on different servers to communicate without friction. Plus, Matrix features encryption, message history, media support, and so, meeting modern expectations.

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Hey! Teacher! Leave our network alone!

Who, Me? At the start of working week, it can sometimes feel like you’re just another brick in the wall and the next five days will require you to carry weight for others. To ease you into the mucky business of exchanging your labor for currency, The Register therefore uses each Monday to offer a fresh instalment of Who, Me? It’s the column in which you admit to escaping your errors and emerging unscathed.…

Australian government staff mixed medical info for folk who share names and birthdays

Australia’s privacy commissioner has found that government agencies down under didn’t make enough of an effort to protect data describing “digital doppelgangers” – people who share a name and date of birth and whose government records sometimes contain data describing other people.…

To capitalize on the AI boom, many crypto miners "have begun to repurpose parts of their operations into data centers," reports Reuters, "given they already have most of the infrastructure" (including landing and "significant" power resources...) Toronto-based bitcoin miner Bitfarms has enlisted two consultants to explore how it can transform some of its facilities to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence data centers, it said on Friday... Earlier this month, Riot Platforms launched a review of the potential AI and computing uses for parts of its facility in Navarro County, Texas.

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Tech lobby isn't at the negotiating table, fears unintended consequences

United States President Donald Trump has delivered on his campaign promise to introduce tariffs, by slapping a 25 percent duty on imports from Canada and Mexico, and a ten percent impost on goods from China. Industry groups quickly responded by saying this is not a great idea.…

Android and Google Play have billions of users, Google wrote in its security blog this week. "However, like any flourishing ecosystem, it also attracts its share of bad actors... That's why every year, we continue to invest in more ways to protect our community." Google's tactics include industry-wide alliances, stronger privacy policies, and "AI-powered threat detection." "As a result, we prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play and banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts that attempted to publish harmful apps. " To keep out bad actors, we have always used a combination of human security experts and the latest threat-detection technology. In 2024, we used Google's advanced AI to improve our systems' ability to proactively identify malware, enabling us to detect and block bad apps more effectively. It also helps us streamline review processes for developers with a proven track record of policy compliance. Today, over 92% of our human reviews for harmful apps are AI-assisted, allowing us to take quicker and more accurate action to help prevent harmful apps from becoming available on Google Play. That's enabled us to stop more bad apps than ever from reaching users through the Play Store, protecting users from harmful or malicious apps before they can cause any damage. Starting in 2024 Google also "required apps to be more transparent about how they handle user information by launching new developer requirements and a new 'Data deletion' option for apps that support user accounts and data collection.... We're also constantly working to improve the safety of apps on Play at scale, such as with the Google Play SDK Index. This tool offers insights and data to help developers make more informed decisions about the safety of an SDK." And once an app is installed, "Google Play Protect, Android's built-in security protection, helps to shield their Android device by continuously scanning for malicious app behavior." Google Play Protect automatically scans every app on Android devices with Google Play Services, no matter the download source. This built-in protection, enabled by default, provides crucial security against malware and unwanted software. Google Play Protect scans more than 200 billion apps daily and performs real-time scanning at the code-level on novel apps to combat emerging and hidden threats, like polymorphic malware. In 2024, Google Play Protect's real-time scanning identified more than 13 million new malicious apps from outside Google Play [based on Google Play Protect 2024 internal data]... According to our research, more than 95 percent of app installations from major malware families that exploit sensitive permissions highly correlated to financial fraud came from Internet-sideloading sources like web browsers, messaging apps, or file managers. To help users stay protected when browsing the web, Chrome will now display a reminder notification to re-enable Google Play Protect if it has been turned off... Scammers may manipulate users into disabling Play Protect during calls to download malicious Internet-sideloaded apps. To prevent this, the Play Protect app scanning toggle is now temporarily disabled during phone or video calls... Google Play Protect's enhanced fraud protection pilot analyzes and automatically blocks the installation of apps that may use sensitive permissions frequently abused for financial fraud when the user attempts to install the app from an Internet-sideloading source (web browsers, messaging apps, or file managers). Building on the success of our initial pilot in partnership with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA), additional enhanced fraud protection pilots are now active in nine regions — Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam. In 2024, Google Play Protect's enhanced fraud protection pilots have shielded 10 million devices from over 36 million risky installation attempts, encompassing over 200,000 unique apps.

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PLUS: MGM settles breach suits; AWS doesn't trust you with security defaults; A new .NET backdoor; and more

Infosec in brief The United States Food and Drug Administration has told medical facilities and caregivers that monitor patients using Contec equipment to disconnect the devices from the internet ASAP.…

Spirit Aerosystems builds aircraft components, including fuselages and flight deck sections for Boeing, according to Wikipedia. But now Boeing is set to acquire Spirit AeroSystems. The aviation blog called Aviation Source News says the price tag was $4.7 billion, and opines that Boeing's move signals "a renewed focus on quality and supply chain stability" as Boeing "addresses lingering concerns surrounding its 737 program." Spirit's recent struggles with quality control and production delays have had a fallout effect for Boeing... By integrating Spirit's operations, Boeing can implement more stringent oversight and ensure consistent manufacturing processes. This move is a direct response to past quality lapses that have plagued the company and damaged its reputation. Beyond quality control, the acquisition also offers Boeing greater control over its supply chain. By bringing a key supplier in-house, Boeing can streamline production, improve coordination, and reduce the risk of future disruptions... Spirit AeroSystems also supplies parts to Airbus, Boeing's main competitor. To address this, a separate agreement is being negotiated for Airbus to acquire Spirit's Airbus-related business. This strategic move ensures that Airbus maintains control over its own supply chain and prevents Boeing from gaining undue influence over its competitor's production. Meanwhile, the vice president leading Boeing's Starliner spacecraft unit "has left his role in the program and been replaced by the company's International Space Station program manager, John Mulholland," Reuters reports, citing a Boeing spokesperson. In its first test mission last summer flying astronauts, Starliner was forced by NASA to leave its crew aboard the ISS and return empty in September over problems with its propulsion system. A panel of senior NASA officials in August had voted to have a Crew Dragon capsule from Elon Musk's SpaceX bring them back instead, deeming Starliner too risky for the astronauts. Paul Hill, a veteran NASA flight director and member of the agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said during a quarterly panel meeting on Thursday that NASA and Boeing continue to investigate Starliner's propulsion system. A Boeing spokesperson said on Thursday that the company and NASA have not yet determined what Starliner's next mission will look like, such as whether it will need to repeat its crewed flight test before receiving NASA certification for routine flights.

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PLUS: Chinese bus lanes put Tesla in a tangle; India drops electronics tariffs; Samsung worries about soft demand

Asia In Brief Nvidia’s quarterly results occasionally raise eyebrows because they report that Singapore is a disproportionately large market for its wares. In a Q3 2025 filing [PDF], for example, the accelerator colossus revealed that Singapore is its second-largest market and accounted for 22 percent of revenue.…

Just three hours ago, OpenAI made a surprise announcement to their 3.9 million followers on X.com. "Live from Tokyo," they'd be livestreaming... something. Their description of the event was just two words. "Deep Research" UPDATE: The stream has begun, and it's about OpenAI's next "agent-ic offering". ("OpenAI cares about agents because we believe they're going to transform knowlege work...") "We're introducing a capability called Deep Research... a model that does multi-step research. It discovers content, it synthesizes content, and it reasons about this content." It even asks "clarifying" questions to your prompt to make sure its multi-step research stays on track. Deep Research will be launching in ChatGPT Pro later today, rolling out into other OpenAI products... And OpenAI's site now has an "Introducing Deep Research" page. Its official description? "An agent that uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and complete multi-step research tasks for you. Available to Pro users today, Plus and Team next." Before the livestream began, X.com users shared their reactions to the coming announcement: "It's like DeepSeek, but cleaner" "Deep do do if things don't work out" "Live from Tokyo? Hope this research includes the secret to waking up early!" "Stop trying, we don't trust u" But one X.com user had presciently pointed out OpenAI has used the phrase "deep research" before. In July of 2024, Reuters reported on internal documentation (confirmed with "a person familiar with the matter") code-named "Strawberry" which suggested OpenAI was working on "human-like reasoning skills." How Strawberry works is a tightly kept secret even within OpenAI, the person said. The document describes a project that uses Strawberry models with the aim of enabling the company's AI to not just generate answers to queries but to plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably to perform what OpenAI terms "deep research," according to the source. This is something that has eluded AI models to date, according to interviews with more than a dozen AI researchers. Asked about Strawberry and the details reported in this story, an OpenAI company spokesperson said in a statement: "We want our AI models to see and understand the world more like we do. Continuous research into new AI capabilities is a common practice in the industry, with a shared belief that these systems will improve in reasoning over time." The spokesperson did not directly address questions about Strawberry. The Strawberry project was formerly known as Q*, which Reuters reported last year was already seen inside the company as a breakthrough... OpenAI hopes the innovation will improve its AI models' reasoning capabilities dramatically, the person familiar with it said, adding that Strawberry involves a specialized way of processing an AI model after it has been pre-trained on very large datasets. Researchers Reuters interviewed say that reasoning is key to AI achieving human or super-human-level intelligence... OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that in AI "the most important areas of progress will be around reasoning ability.

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An anonymous reader shared this post from the blog OMG Ubuntu Want to find out if the text you're reading online was written by an real human or spat out by a large language model trying to sound like one? Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector Firefox add-on may help give you an indication. Similar to online AI detector tools, the add-on can analyse text (of 32 words or more) to identify patterns, traits, and tells common in AI generated or manipulated text. It uses Mozilla's proprietary ApolloDFT engine and a set of open-source detection models. But unlike some tools, Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector browser extension is free to use, does not require a signup, nor an app download. "After installing the extension, it is simple to highlight any text online and request an instant analysis. Our Detector will tell you right away if the words are likely to be written by a human or if they show AI patterns," Mozilla says. Fakespot, acquired by Mozilla in 2023, is best known for its fake product review detection tool which grades user-submitted reviews left on online shopping sites. Mozilla is now expanding the use of Fakespot's AI tech to cover other kinds of online content. At present, Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector only works with highlighted text on websites but the company says it image and video analysis is planned for the future. The Fakespot web site will also analyze the reviews on any product-listing pages if you paste in its URL.

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"Stakeholders must be included" throughout an agile project "to ensure the evolving deliverables meet their expectations," according to an article this week in Communications of the ACM. But long-time Slashdot reader theodp complains it's a "gushing how-to-make-Agile-even-better opinion piece." Like other pieces by Agile advocates, it's long on accolades for Agile, but short on hard evidence justifying why exactly Agile project management "has emerged as a critical component for firms looking to improve project delivery speed and flexibility" and the use of Agile approaches is being expanded across other departments beyond software development. Indeed, among the three examples of success offered in the piece to "highlight the effectiveness of agile methods in navigating complex stakeholder dynamics and achieving project success" is Atlassian's use of agile practices to market and develop its products, many of which are coincidentally designed to support Agile practices and teams (including Jira). How meta. Citing "recent studies," the piece concludes its call for stakeholder engagement by noting that "59% of organizations measure Agile success by customer or user satisfaction." But that is one of those metrics that can create perverse incentives. Empirical studies of user satisfaction and engagement have been published since the 1970's, and sadly one of the cruel lessons learned from them is that the easiest path to having satisfied users is to avoid working on difficult problems. Keep that in mind when you ponder why difficult user stories seem to languish forever in the Kanban and Scrum Board "Ice Box" column, while the "Complete" column is filled with low-hanging fruit. Sometimes success does come easy! So, are you in the Agile-is-Heaven or Agile-is-Hell camp?

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There are solutions, workable smart solutions, but who wants to talk about that?

Special report We humans have gorged ourselves on fossil fuels for well over a century, and the bill for that delicious, civilization-enhancing meal has finally come due.…

Tom's Hardware reports: Facebook's heavy-handed censorship of Linux groups and topics was "in error," the social media juggernaut has admitted. Responding to reports earlier this week, sparked by the curious censorship of the eminently wholesome DistroWatch, Facebook contacted PCMag to say that it had made a mistake and that the underlying issue had been rectified. "This enforcement was in error and has since been addressed. Discussions of Linux are allowed on our services," said a Meta rep to PCMag. That is the full extent of the statement reproduced by the source... Copenhagen-hosted DistroWatch says it has appealed against the Community Standards-triggered ban shortly after it noticed it was in effect (January 19). PCMag received the Facebook admission of error on January 28. The latest statement from DistroWatch, which now prefers posting on Mastodon, indicates that Facebook has lifted the DistroWatch links ban. More details from PCMag: Meta didn't say what caused the crackdown in the first place. But the company has been revamping some of its content moderation and plans to replace its fact-checking methodology with a user-driven Community Notes, similar to X. "We're also going to change how we enforce our policies to reduce the kind of mistakes that account for the vast majority of the censorship on our platforms," the company said earlier this month, in another irony. "Up until now, we have been using automated systems to scan for all policy violations, but this has resulted in too many mistakes and too much content being censored that shouldn't have been," Meta added in the same post.

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An aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy tested "vastly increased" levels of internet connectivity, reports the defense-news web site TWZ, callling it "a game-changer for what a ship, and its sailors, can do while at sea." The F-35 Joint Strike Fighters assigned to the carrier offer a case in point for what more shipboard bandwidth — provided by commercial providers like Starlink and OneWeb — can mean at the tactical level. Jets with the embarked Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 took on critical mission data file updates in record time last fall due to the carrier's internet innovations, a capability that is slated to expand across the fleet. "This file offers intelligence updates and design enhancements that enable pilots to identify and counter threats in specific operational environments," the Navy said in an October release announcing the feat. "The update incorporated more than 100 intelligence changes and multiple design improvements, significantly enhancing the aircraft's survivability and lethality...." [Capt. Kevin White, then the Lincoln's combat systems officer] noted how the F-35 "eats and breathes data daily," and it has to be shared with commands ashore. The connectivity innovations he's pioneered will enable such data transfers, which will only grow more complex over time. "If you can't get the data onboard, you're probably going to be at a loss," White said. "So large file transfer capability increases combat readiness...." When the system was on, it provided not only mission benefits, but benefits to the hard-working Lincoln crew as well, which was at sea for 107 days at one point with no port calls [Capt. Pete "Repete" Riebe, told WEST conference attendees]... White said the average age of an embarked Lincoln sailor was 20.8, and Riebe noted that to attract young people into service, the Navy needs to recognize the innate connection they have to their devices. "The next generation of sailors grew up with a cell phone in their hand, and they are uncomfortable without it," Riebe said. "I don't necessarily like that, but that's reality, and if we want to compete for the best folks coming into the Navy, we need to offer them bandwidth at sea." Having better connectivity also helped with the ship's administrative functions, Riebe said, making medical, dental and other work far easier than they have been in the past... A sailor who can FaceTime with his family back home carries less non-Navy stress with them as they focus on the life-or-death duties at hand, White said... This beefed-up bandwidth allowed 38 sailors to witness the birth of their child, while others were able to watch their kids' sporting events, White said. Several crew members pursued doctorate and master's degrees while deployed due to better internet, while others were able to deal with personal or legal issues they had left behind back home. One officer was able to commission his wife remotely from the ship... On the operational side, from "the most desolate waters," Lincoln used its bandwidth to connect with a command in Norfolk, which undertook the ship's annual cybersecurity scans "from halfway around the world," White said... Taxpayer dollars can also be saved if a ship isn't paying for WiFi access while in port, White noted, and the crew was able to start getting to know Italian allies online before an exercise, enhancing the personal aspects of such partnerships. More bandwidth also means more onboard training, meaning some sailors who don't have to leave to go to the school house, and sailors were able to get answers to maintenance questions from ashore commands faster as well. "Just by being able to have more reliable access to support resources, we definitely become more effective at maintenance," White said. Every day the aircraft carrier averaged four to eight terabytes of transferred data, according to the article (with a team of two full-time system administrators managing 7,000 IP addresses), and ultimately saw 780 terabytes of data transferred over five-and-a-half months. The article notes it's part of the Navy's larger "Sailor Edge Afloat and Ashore" (SEA2) program to provide all its warships with high-bandwidth connectivity around the world. The program "involves moving some communications aspects away from proprietary Defense Department satellites, while leaning on commercial satellite constellations and even cellular providers to keep ships more connected at sea for both personal and tactical uses." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.

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