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From homework helper to psychological hazard in 300 hours of sycophantic validation

Feature When a close family member contacted Etienne Brisson to tell him that he'd created the world's first sentient AI, the Quebecois business coach was intrigued. But things quickly turned dark. The 50-year-old man, who had no prior mental health history, ended up spending time in a psychiatric ward.…

Broadband biz teams up with Good Things Foundation to teach the digitally doddery how to dodge fraud

UK network Virgin Media O2 is taking steps to combat fraud with a nationwide education scheme that aims to help vulnerable people and older folk avoid becoming victims.…

No idea who's behind it, just happy it's over

London-based wholesale telecoms biz ICUK is back on track after a multi-day DDoS attack on its network and systems.…

XXongo writes: A New York times article suggests that merging the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome into the Autism diagnosis in 2013, thus creating the "autism spectrum disorder," was not helpful (paywalled; alternative source). That broadening of the diagnosis, along with the increasing awareness of the disorder, is largely responsible for the steep rise in autism cases that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called "an epidemic" and has attributed to theories of causality that mainstream scientists reject, like vaccines and, more recently, Tylenol. But the same diagnosis now applies to both people who are non-verbal, frequently engage in self-destructive behavior such as pounding their heads against the floor, and may require full-time care, but also to people who are merely somewhat socially awkward, possibly engage in repetitive behaviors, and have a narrow range of interests. "Everything changed when we included Asperger's [in the diagnosis of autism]," said Dr. Eric Fombonne, a psychiatrist and researcher at Oregon Health & Science University. He noted that in the earliest studies of autism rates, 75% of people with the diagnosis had intellectual disabilities. Now, only about a third do.

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Department also wedded to Big Red in shared service applications

The UK's Home Office has signed a new deal with Oracle for around £54 million ($72 million) in cloud infrastructure and platform services as it gears up as the centerpiece of a government shared services strategy based on Big Red.…

Recyclers reckon millions of obsolete PCs could yield a small fortune in precious metals

There's gold in them thar piles of old Windows 10 PCs. Quite literally, according to recyclers.…

Researchers argue that this dark pattern poses a legal risk

AI companion apps such as Character.ai and Replika commonly try to boost user engagement with emotional manipulation, a practice that academics characterize as a dark pattern.…

NBC is developing a game show based on the New York Times' Wordle puzzle, with Today anchor Savannah Guthrie set to host and Jimmy Fallon executive producing through his company, Electric Hot Dog. The Times is also a production partner. From the Hollywood Reporter: Wordle, which the Times acquired in 2022 and logs billions of plays from the paper's games site annually, gives players six tries to guess a five-letter word, revealing only if letters are in the right place (via a green background) or part of the word but in the wrong place (with a gold background). Should it go forward, the Wordle show would join another Fallon-produced game show, Password, on NBC's unscripted roster. The Tonight Show emcee also executive produces and hosts the network's On Brand, a competition series that revolves around advertising and marketing.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Over the course of a nearly four-decade career, Cory Doctorow has written 15 novels, four graphic novels, dozens of short stories, six nonfiction books, approximately 60,000 blog posts and thousands of essays. And yet for all the millions of words he's published, these days the award-winning science fiction author and veteran internet activist is best known for just a single one: Enshittification. The term, which Doctorow, 54, popularized in essays in 2022 and 2023, refers to the way that online platforms become worse to use over time, as the corporations that own them try to make more money. Though the coinage is cheeky, in Doctorow's telling the phenomenon it describes is a specific, nearly scientific process that progresses according to discrete stages, like a disease. Since then, the meaning has expanded to encompass a general vibe -- a feeling far greater than frustration at Facebook, which long ago ceased being a good way to connect with friends, or Google, whose search is now baggy with SEO spam. Of late, the idea has been employed to describe everything from video games to television to American democracy itself. "It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying," Doctorow said in a 2024 speech. On Tuesday, Farrar Straus & Giroux will release "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Doctorow's book-length elaboration on his essays, complete with case studies (Uber, Twitter, Photoshop) and his prescriptions for change, which revolve around breaking up big tech companies and regulating them more robustly. Further reading: The Enshittification Hall of Shame

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Android Authority notes the start of a new trend we're seeing in some new smartphones: devices shipping without USB cables. It follows the earlier industry shift away from bundled charging bricks, which Apple started back in 2020 with the launch of the iPhone 12. While manufacturers cite environmental benefits, "the main driver behind these decisions for companies like Apple and Sony is, of course, profit," writes Android Authority's Taylor Kerns. From the report: Now, it looks like we may be in for a similar shift with bundled USB cables. As shared on the Linus Tech Tips subreddit, user Brick_Fish's recently purchased Sony Xperia 10 VII came without a charger or a charging cable. In a photo included with the post, you can see iconography on the back of the phone's box that spells out these omissions. Sony's not really a major player in the smartphone space these days, but this seems like the type of trend we should expect to see gain traction over the next couple of years. [...] Apple actually beat Sony to the punch here, in a way. The company's latest earbuds, the AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 3, both ditched bundled USB cables, as well. Still, Sony's the first manufacturer I've heard of to omit charging cables with its smartphones.

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A now-fixed security flaw in India's income tax e-filing portal exposed millions of taxpayers' personal and financial data due to a basic IDOR vulnerability that let users view others' records by swapping PAN numbers. "The exposed data included full names, home addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, and bank account details of people who pay taxes on their income in India," reports TechCrunch. "The data also exposed citizens' Aadhaar number, a unique government-issued identifier used as proof of identity and for accessing government services." From the report: The researchers found that when they signed into the portal using their Permanent Account Number (PAN), an official document issued by the Indian income tax department, they could view anyone else's sensitive financial data by swapping out their PAN for another PAN in the network request as the web page loads. This could be done using publicly available tools like Postman or Burp Suite (or using the web browser's in-built developer tools) and with knowledge of someone else's PAN, the researchers told TechCrunch. The bug was exploitable by anyone who was logged-in to the tax portal because the Indian income tax department's back-end servers were not properly checking who was allowed to access a person's sensitive data. This class of vulnerability is known as an insecure direct object reference, or IDOR, a common and simple flaw that governments have warned is easy to exploit and can result in large-scale data breaches. "This is an extremely low-hanging thing, but one that has a very severe consequence," the researchers told TechCrunch. In addition to the data of individuals, the researchers said that the bug also exposed data associated with companies who were registered with the e-Filing portal. [...] It remains unclear how long the vulnerability has existed or whether any malicious actors have accessed the exposed data.

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BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Micro Center and iFixit have announced a partnership that combines the DIY repair giant's guides, parts, and toolkits with Micro Center's nationwide chain of computer and electronics stores. Customers browsing iFixit online can now find local Micro Center locations through a built-in locator and even stop in for a free consultation with a certified technician. Inside stores, shoppers will see iFixit toolkits and parts on shelves, while Micro Center's in-house technicians begin using iFixit's gear for professional repairs.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Sora 2, Open AI's new AI video generator, puts a visual watermark on every video it generates. But the little cartoon-eyed cloud logo meant to help people distinguish between reality and AI-generated bullshit is easy to remove and there are half a dozen websites that will help anyone do it in a few minutes. A simple search for "sora watermark" on any social media site will return links to places where a user can upload a Sora 2 video and remove the watermark. 404 Media tested three of these websites, and they all seamlessly removed the watermark from the video in a matter of seconds. Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley professor and an expert on digitally manipulated images, said he's not shocked at how fast people were able to remove watermarks from Sora 2 videos. "It was predictable," he said. "Sora isn't the first AI model to add visible watermarks and this isn't the first time that within hours of these models being released, someone released code or a service to remove these watermarks." [...] According to Farid, Open AI is decent at employing strategies like watermarks, content credentials, and semantic guardrails to manage malicious use. But it doesn't matter. "It is just a matter of time before someone else releases a model without these safeguards," he said. Both [Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security] and Farid said that the ease at which people can remove watermarks from AI-generated content wasn't a reason to stop using watermarks. "Using a watermark is the bare minimum for an organization attempting to minimize the harm that their AI video and audio tools create," Tobac said, but she thinks the companies need to go further. "We will need to see a broad partnership between AI and Social Media companies to build in detection for scams/harmful content and AI labeling not only on the AI generation side, but also on the upload side for social media platforms. Social Media companies will also need to build large teams to manage the likely influx of AI generated social media video and audio content to detect and limit the reach for scammy and harmful content." "I'd like to know what OpenAI is doing to respond to how people are finding ways around their safeguards," Farid said. "Will they adapt and strengthen their guardrails? Will they ban users from their platforms? If they are not aggressive here, then this is going to end badly for us all."

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Both men, 17, taken into custody

London cops on Tuesday arrested two teenagers on suspicion of computer misuse and blackmail following a ransomware attack on a chain of London preschools.…

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: OpenAI said on Tuesday it has banned several ChatGPT accounts with suspected links to the Chinese government entities after the users asked for proposals to monitor social media conversations. In its latest public threat report (PDF), OpenAI said some individuals had asked its chatbot to outline social media 'listening' tools and other monitoring concepts, violating the startup's national security policy. The San Francisco-based firm's report raises safety concerns over potential misuse of generative AI amid growing competition between the U.S. and China to shape the technology's development and rules. OpenAI said it also banned several Chinese-language accounts that used ChatGPT to assist phishing and malware campaigns and asked the model to research additional automation that could be achieved through China's DeepSeek. It also banned accounts tied to suspected Russian-speaking criminal groups that used the chatbot to help develop certain malware, OpenAI said.

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Jailbreaks, direct prompt injection not allowed

Google on Monday rolled out a new AI Vulnerability Reward Program to encourage researchers to find and report flaws in its AI systems, with rewards of up to $30,000 for a single qualifying report.…

Longtime Slashdot reader kamesh shares a report from TechCrunch: Tech behemoth IBM is teaming up with AI research lab Anthropic to bring AI into its software. Armonk, New York-based IBM announced it will be adding Anthropic's Claude large language model family into some of its software products on Tuesday. The first product to tap Claude will be IBM's integrated development environment, which is already available to a select group of customers. IBM also announced it created a guide in partnership with Anthropic on how enterprises can build, deploy, and maintain enterprise-grade AI agents. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Smartphone processor and modem maker Qualcomm is acquiring Arduino, the Italian company known mainly for its open source ecosystem of microcontrollers and the software that makes them function. In its announcement, Qualcomm said that Arduino would "[retain] its brand and mission," including its "open source ethos" and "support for multiple silicon vendors." Qualcomm didn't disclose what it would pay to acquire Arduino. The acquisition also needs to be approved by regulators "and other customary closing conditions." The first fruit of this pending acquisition will be the Arduino Uno Q, a Qualcomm-based single-board computer with a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor installed. The QRB2210 includes a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU and a Qualcomm Adreno 702 GPU, plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and combines that with a real-time microcontroller "to bridge high-performance computing with real-time control." "Arduino will retain its independent brand, tools, and mission, while continuing to support a wide range of microcontrollers and microprocessors from multiple semiconductor providers as it enters this next chapter within the Qualcomm family," Qualcomm said in its press release. "Following this acquisition, the 33M+ active users in the Arduino community will gain access to Qualcomm Technologies' powerful technology stack and global reach. Entrepreneurs, businesses, tech professionals, students, educators, and hobbyists will be empowered to rapidly prototype and test new solutions, with a clear path to commercialization supported by Qualcomm Technologies' advanced technologies and extensive partner ecosystem." CNBC notes in its reporting that this acquisition gives Qualcomm "direct access to the tinkerers, hobbyists and companies at the lowest levels of the robotics industry." From the report: Arduino products can't be used to build commercial products but, with chips preinstalled, they're popular for testing out a new idea or proving a concept. Qualcomm hopes that Arduino can help it gain loyalty and legitimacy among startups and builders as robots and other devices increasingly need more powerful chips for artificial intelligence. When some of those experiments become products, Qualcomm wants to sell them its chips commercially.

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U.S. GDP growth in the first half of 2025 was driven almost entirely by investment in data centers and information processing technology. The GDP growth would have been just 0.1% on an annualized basis without these technology-related categories, according to Harvard economist Jason Furman. Investment in information-processing equipment and software accounted for only 4% of U.S. GDP during this period but represented 92% of GDP growth. Renaissance Macro Research estimated in August that the dollar value contributed to GDP growth by AI data-center buildout had surpassed U.S. consumer spending for the first time. Consumer spending makes up two-thirds of GDP. Tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Nvidia poured tens of billions of dollars into building and upgrading data centers.

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House Committee on China wants more comprehensive ban on chipmaking equipment exports to Middle Kingdom

US export controls have had mixed results in stemming the flow of chipmaking equipment into China, according to a congressional investigation, which found US and allied companies sold $38 billion worth of semiconductor tools in 2024 alone.…