Linux fréttir

Seven gas turbines planned to juice datacenter demand by 2027

Developers on Wednesday announced plans to bring up to 4.5 gigawatts of natural gas-fired power online by 2027 at the site of what was once Pennsylvania's largest coal plant, as part of a proposed datacenter campus running AI and high-performance computing workloads.…

Online scam operations across Southeast Asia are rapidly adapting to recent crackdowns, adopting AI and expanding globally despite the release of 7,000 trafficking victims from compounds along the Myanmar-Thailand border, experts say. These releases represent just a fraction of an estimated 100,000 people trapped in facilities run by criminal syndicates that rake in billions through investment schemes and romance scams targeting victims worldwide, CNN reports. "Billions of dollars are being invested in these kinds of businesses," said Kannavee Suebsang, a Thai lawmaker leading efforts to free those held in scam centers. "They will not stop." Crime groups are exploiting AI to write scamming scripts and using deepfakes to create personas, while networks have expanded to Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific region, according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime. "This is a situation the region has never faced before," said John Wojcik, a UN organized crime analyst. "The evolving situation is trending towards something far more dangerous than scams alone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission has announced its intention to join the ongoing debate about lawful access to data and end-to-end encryption while unveiling a new internal security strategy aimed to address ongoing threats. From a report: ProtectEU, as the strategy has been named, describes the general areas that the bloc's executive would like to address in the coming years although as a strategy it does not offer any detailed policy proposals. In what the Commission called "a changed security environment and an evolving geopolitical landscape," it said Europe needed to "review its approach to internal security." Among its aims is establishing Europol as "a truly operational police agency to reinforce support to Member States," something potentially comparable to the U.S. FBI, with a role "in investigating cross-border, large-scale, and complex cases posing a serious threat to the internal security of the Union." Alongside the new Europol, the Commission said it would create roadmaps regarding both the "lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement" and on encryption.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is pushing businesses to shift away from perpetual Office licenses to Microsoft 365 subscriptions, citing collaboration limitations and rising IT costs associated with standalone software. "You may have started noticing limitations," Microsoft says in a post. "Your apps are stuck on your desktop, limiting productivity anytime you're away from your office. You can't easily access your files or collaborate when working remotely." In its pitch, the Windows-maker says Microsoft 365 includes Office applications as well as security features, AI tools, and cloud storage. The post cites a Microsoft-commissioned Forrester study that claims the subscription model delivers "223% ROI over three years, with a payback period of less than six months" and "over $500,000 in benefits over three years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bosses say theft now the name of the game with a shift in tactics, apparent branding

Big-game ransomware crew Hunters International says its criminal undertaking has become "unpromising, low-converting, and extremely risky," and it is mulling shifting tactics amid an apparent rebrand.…

The FBI searched two homes of Indiana University Bloomington data privacy professor Xiaofeng Wang last week, following months of university inquiries into whether he received unreported research funding from China, WIRED reported Wednesday. Wang, who leads the Center for Distributed Confidential Computing established with a $3 million National Science Foundation grant, was terminated on March 28 via email from the university provost. The university had contacted Wang in December regarding a 2017-2018 grant in China that listed him as a researcher, questioning whether he properly disclosed the funding to IU and in applications for U.S. federal research grants. Jason Covert, Wang's attorney, said Wang and his wife Nianli Ma, whose employee profile was also removed, are "safe" and neither has been arrested. The couple's legal team has viewed a search warrant but received no affidavit establishing probable cause.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An AI system has for the first time figured out how to collect diamonds in the hugely popular video game Minecraft -- a difficult task requiring multiple steps -- without being shown how to play. Its creators say the system, called Dreamer, is a step towards machines that can generalize knowledge learned in one domain to new situations, a major goal of AI. From a report: "Dreamer marks a significant step towards general AI systems," says Danijar Hafner, a computer scientist at Google DeepMind in San Francisco, California. "It allows AI to understand its physical environment and also to self-improve over time, without a human having to tell it exactly what to do." Hafner and his colleagues describe Dreamer in a study in Nature published on 2 April. In Minecraft, players explore a virtual 3D world containing a variety of terrains, including forests, mountains, deserts and swamps. Players use the world's resources to create objects, such as chests, fences and swords -- and collect items, among the most prized of which are diamonds. Importantly, says Hafner, no two experiences are the same. Every time you play Minecraft, it's a new, randomly generated world," he says. This makes it useful for challenging an AI system that researchers want to be able to generalize from one situation to the next. "You have to really understand what's in front of you; you can't just memorize a specific strategy," he says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CEO hails 'transformative year' as IPO puts 'puter maker on the big board

Raspberry Pi hasn't felt the sting of US tariffs yet, and having its boards built outside China might give it an edge over rivals, analysts reckon.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon has put in a last-minute bid to acquire all of TikTok, the popular video app, as it approaches an April deadline to be separated from its Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States, according to three people familiar with the bid. Various parties who have been involved in the talks do not appear to be taking Amazon's bid seriously, the people said. The bid came via an offer letter addressed to Vice President JD Vance and Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, according to a person briefed on the matter. Amazon's bid highlights the 11th-hour maneuvering in Washington over TikTok's ownership. Policymakers in both parties have expressed deep national security concerns over the app's Chinese ownership, and passed a law last year to force a sale of TikTok that was set to take effect in January.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott has predicted that AI will generate 95% of code within five years. Speaking on the 20VC podcast, Scott said AI would not replace software engineers but transform their role. "It doesn't mean that the AI is doing the software engineering job.... authorship is still going to be human," Scott said. According to Scott, developers will shift from writing code directly to guiding AI through prompts and instructions. "We go from being an input master (programming languages) to a prompt master (AI orchestrator)," he said. Scott said the current AI systems have significant memory limitations, making them "awfully transactional," but predicted improvements within the next year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Newcomer: Keith O'Brien, the man who allegedly spied for Deel while working at Rippling, is apparently clearing his conscience, according to a sworn Irish affidavit. O'Brien says in the affidavit that Deel paid him to spy on Rippling and that he coordinated directly with Deel's CEO, Alex Bouaziz. For some background, Alex Bouaziz is Deel's CEO and Philippe Bouaziz is his father, Deel's CFO. Rippling, which competes directly with Deel, has sued Deel over the alleged spying. O'Brien says in the affidavit: I decided to cooperate after I got a text from a friend on March 25, 2025 saying, "the truth will set you free." I was also driving with a family member to meet my solicitors and she told me that if I had done something wrong that I should "just tell the truth." I was having bad thoughts at the time; it was a horrible time for me. I was getting sick concealing this lie. I realised that I was harming myself and my family to protect Deel. I was concerned, and I am still concerned, about how wealthy and powerful Alex and Philippe are, but I know that what I was doing was wrong. After I spoke with my solicitors at Fenecas Law, I started to feel a sense of relief. I want to do what I can to start making amends and righting these wrongs. Deel CEO allegedly agreed to pay O'Brien 5000 euros a month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fallout shows how what you say must be central to disaster planning

Opinion Oracle is being accused of poor incident comms as it reels from two reported data security mishaps over the past fortnight, amid a reluctance to publicly acknowledge all of the events as well as allegedly deleting evidence from the web.…

Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Anna Paulina Luna introduced bipartisan legislation in March to cap credit card interest rates at 10% annually as Americans' debt hits record levels. "Credit cards with high interest rates regularly trap working people in endless cycles of debt," Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement. Credit card debt has reached $1.2 trillion in Q4 2024, up from $720 billion in the same quarter of 2004, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. Average annual percentage rates nearly doubled to 21% in 2024 from 12% in 2003. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported a record number of cardholders making only minimum payments in Q3 2024, "showing signs of consumer stress." Further reading: Study Reveals Why Credit Card Interest Rates Remain Stubbornly High.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hike is no joke and users are not laughing

Microsoft's Power BI price rises have arrived, with some tiers increasing by up to 40 percent.…

Nintendo's Switch 2, priced at $450, launches June 5 with a 7.9-inch LCD screen offering 1080p resolution, HDR support, and 120Hz refresh capability. The device maintains the original Switch's 13.99mm thickness while increasing internal storage to 256GB from the previous 32GB. The console outputs at 4K/60fps when docked, with the dock featuring a built-in cooling fan. Two USB-C ports handle accessories and charging. The system supports microSD Express cards but not original Switch microSD cards. Joy-Con controllers now attach via magnets instead of sliding rails and feature mouse-like functionality with compatible games. Both Joy-Cons and the new Pro Controller include a "C" button that activates a chat menu for the new "Game Chat" feature. Game cards for Switch 2 will be red rather than black. The system maintains backward compatibility with original Switch cartridges and introduces a "Game Share" feature for local game sharing between consoles.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Zelle is shutting down its stand-alone app on Tuesday, according to a company blog post. This news might be alarming if you're one of the over 150 million customers in the U.S. who use Zelle for person-to-person payments. But only about 2% of transactions take place via Zelle's app, which is why the company is discontinuing its stand-alone app. Most consumers access Zelle via their bank, which then allows them to send money to their phone contacts. Zelle users who relied on the stand-alone app will have to re-enroll in the service through another financial institution. Given the small user base of the Zelle app, it makes sense why the company would decide to get rid of it -- maintaining an app takes time and money, especially one where people's financial information is involved.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Has until month end to make an offer for semiconductor design and licensing shop

Qualcomm has confirmed its interest in buying high-speed connectivity module designer Alphawave Semi, a move that could see yet another major British tech operation swallowed up by a foreign business.…

Organizational, technological resilience combined defeat the disease that is cybercrime

When IT disasters strike, it can become a matter of life and death for healthcare organizations – and criminals know it.…

Victims expect to spend considerable time and money over privacy incident, lawyers argue

Specialist class action lawyers have launched proceedings against Oracle in Texas over two alleged data breaches.…

Longtime Slashdot reader backslashdot writes: Commentary, video, and a publication in this week's Nature Neuroscience herald a significant advance in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, enabling speech by decoding electrical activity in the brain's sensorimotor cortex in real-time. Researchers from UC Berkeley and UCSF employed deep learning recurrent neural network transducer models to decode neural signals in 80-millisecond intervals, generating fluent, intelligible speech tailored to each participant's pre-injury voice. Unlike earlier methods that synthesized speech only after a full sentence was completed, this system can detect and vocalize words within just three seconds. It is accomplished via a 253-electrode array chip implant on the brain. Code and the dataset to replicate the main findings of this study are available in the Chang Lab's public GitHub repository.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.