Linux fréttir

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the company was forced to stagger the rollout of its newest model, GPT-4.5, because OpenAI is "out of GPUs." In a post on X, Altman said that GPT-4.5, which he described as "giant" and "expensive," will require "tens of thousands" more GPUs before additional ChatGPT users can gain access. GPT-4.5 will come first to subscribers to ChatGPT Pro starting Thursday, followed by ChatGPT Plus customers next week. Perhaps in part due to its enormous size, GPT-4.5 is wildly expensive. OpenAI is charging $75 per million tokens (~750,000 words) fed into the model and $150 per million tokens generated by the model. That's 30x the input cost and 15x the output cost of OpenAI's workhorse GPT-4o model. "We've been growing a lot and are out of GPUs," Altman wrote. "We will add tens of thousands of GPUs next week and roll it out to the Plus tier then [] This isn't how we want to operate, but it's hard to perfectly predict growth surges that lead to GPU shortages."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EA has released the source code for several classic Command & Conquer games, including Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, Renegade, and Generals & Zero Hour. "They're being released under the GPL license, meaning folks can mix, match, and redistribute them to their hearts' content without EA lawyers smashing down the door," adds PC Gamer. Additionally, Steam Workshop support has been added for multiple C&C titles, along with updated mission editor tools and a modding support pack. From the report: As for the Steam Workshop? That's getting switched on for C&C Renegade, C&C Generals and Zero Hour, C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath, and C&C 4 Tiberium Twilight (they can't all be winners). EA's also gone and "updated all the Mission Editor and World Builder tools so you can publish maps directly to the Steam Workshop." Plus, it's putting out a modding support pack that "contains the source Xml, Schema, Script, Shader and Map files for all the games that use the SAGE engine." Per C&C producer Jim Vessella, EA commissioned C&C community veteran Luke 'CCHyper' Feenan to officially research improvements to many of the games in the Ultimate Collection," and this is the fruit of his labor.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Technicolor Group has filed for a court recovery procedure in France after failing to secure new investors, putting its VFX brands, including MPC, The Mill, Mikros Animation, and Technicolor Games, at risk of closure. Variety reports: A total shutdown of MPC and Technicolor's operations would affect thousands of visual effects workers in countries include the U.S., UK, Canada and India. The turn in business has raised the alarm and sparked sadness within the VFX community. Parot's memo explains, "In each country, the appropriate framework for orderly protection and way forward is currently being put in place to allow, when possible, to remain in business continuity." Technicolor has already started to shut down U.S. operations. On Friday, it began alerting customers and employees, sending U.S. employees a WARN notice as required by law for large companies that anticipate closings and mass layoffs. At least one recovery effort already started for roughly 100 U.S. employees of The Mill. The creative leadership and most of the creative staff that was Technicolor's The Mill U.S. is joining forces with Dream Machine FX to launch a new venture, Arc Creative, Variety reported exclusively on Monday. A statement from the artists explains they they are working to launch the new entity amid "the complexities of Technicolor's Chapter 7 proceedings." Questions remain about how studios will finish upcoming projects that are currently housed at MPC, which include Disney's live-action remake of "Lilo and Stitch" and Paramount's "Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning," as well as Mikros' work, such as Paramount and Nickelodeon's upcoming "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" sequel.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FYI: What NOT to search after committing a crime

The US Army soldier accused of compromising AT&T and bragging about getting his hands on President Trump's call logs allegedly tried to sell stolen information to a foreign intel agent.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Security researchers are warning that data exposed to the internet, even for a moment, can linger in online generative AI chatbots like Microsoft Copilot long after the data is made private. Thousands of once-public GitHub repositories from some of the world's biggest companies are affected, including Microsoft's, according to new findings from Lasso, an Israeli cybersecurity company focused on emerging generative AI threats. Lasso co-founder Ophir Dror told TechCrunch that the company found content from its own GitHub repository appearing in Copilot because it had been indexed and cached by Microsoft's Bing search engine. Dror said the repository, which had been mistakenly made public for a brief period, had since been set to private, and accessing it on GitHub returned a "page not found" error. "On Copilot, surprisingly enough, we found one of our own private repositories," said Dror. "If I was to browse the web, I wouldn't see this data. But anyone in the world could ask Copilot the right question and get this data." After it realized that any data on GitHub, even briefly, could be potentially exposed by tools like Copilot, Lasso investigated further. Lasso extracted a list of repositories that were public at any point in 2024 and identified the repositories that had since been deleted or set to private. Using Bing's caching mechanism, the company found more than 20,000 since-private GitHub repositories still had data accessible through Copilot, affecting more than 16,000 organizations. Lasso told TechCrunch ahead of publishing its research that affected organizations include Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, PayPal, Tencent, and Microsoft. [...] For some affected companies, Copilot could be prompted to return confidential GitHub archives that contain intellectual property, sensitive corporate data, access keys, and tokens, the company said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta has fired "roughly 20" employees who leaked "confidential information outside the company," The Verge reported Thursday, citing the company. From the report: "We tell employees when they join the company, and we offer periodic reminders, that it is against our policies to leak internal information, no matter the intent," Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold tells The Verge. "We recently conducted an investigation that resulted in roughly 20 employees being terminated for sharing confidential information outside the company, and we expect there will be more. We take this seriously, and will continue to take action when we identify leaks." Meta has ramped up its efforts to find leakers due to a recent influx of stories detailing unannounced product plans and internal meetings, including a recent all-hands led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. After we and other outlets reported on what Zuckerberg said during that meeting, employees were warned not to leak.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Federal agents, open up ... your browsers and see if you recognize any of these wallets

The FBI has officially accused North Korea's Lazarus Group of stealing $1.5 billion in Ethereum from crypto-exchange Bybit earlier this month, and asked for help tracking down the stolen funds.…

More than 100,000 seeds from across Africa have been deposited in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the world's repository for specimens intended to preserve crop diversity in the event of disaster. From a report: Among the latest additions are seeds critical to building climate resilience, such as the tree Faidherbia albida, which turns nitrogen into ammonia and nitrates, and Cordia africana, the Sudan teak, a tree renowned for its strength and durability. The seeds, from 177 different species, were delivered to the Norwegian vault on Tuesday by Dr Eliane Ubalijoro, the chief executive of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (Cifor-Icraf). "For me, seeds are about hope," Ubalijoro said. "They're about moving beyond survival, particularly when you come from places that have gone through really difficult times. When I think of my country of Rwanda and what happened in 1994, seed banks were critical when it came to rebuilding after the genocide." Ubalijoro said countries that had experienced disaster and conflict could emerge as leaders in the fight against climate breakdown.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sprinting after Microsoft and co, Amazon claims it too has a QC chip that's good at all-important error correction

Amazon Web Services on Thursday announced Ocelot, a quantum computing chip based on "cat qubits."…

OpenAI released an early version of its new AI model GPT-4.5 to select users on Thursday, following development challenges that delayed the project last year. The Microsoft-backed startup said the new model responds better to subtle cues in written prompts and excels at chatting, writing and coding. OpenAI expects it will produce fewer fabricated responses than previous versions. Initially available as a "research preview," access is limited to software developers and users who pay $200 monthly for ChatGPT Pro subscriptions. The company plans to gather feedback before wider distribution. According to OpenAI's blog post, GPT-4.5 will be the company's last model that doesn't use additional computing power to analyze queries before responding. Future releases will incorporate the reasoning approach already used in its newer models like o1 and o3.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The company behind WordPress, Automattic Inc., and its founder, Matt Mullenweg, continue to face backlash over a "nuclear war" started with WP Engine (WPE) that allegedly messed with maintenance and security of hundreds of thousands of websites. In a proposed class action lawsuit filed this weekend, a WPE customer, Ryan Keller, accused Automattic and Mullenweg of "deliberately abusing their power and control over the WordPress ecosystem to purposefully, deliberately, and repeatedly disrupt contracts" -- all due to a supposed trademark infringement claim. If granted, the class would include "all persons in the United States who had ongoing active WPE WordPress Web Hosting Plans on or before September 24, 2024 through December 10, 2024." WPE had previously sued Automattic and Mullenweg, alleging that the attack on WPE was actually an attempt to extort what Keller alleged was "tens of millions of dollars" in payments from WPE for using the WordPress trademark. Mullenweg made it clear that the value of the payments was "based on what he thought WPE could afford, rather than what the value of the trademark actually was," Keller's complaint alleged. Automattic's "poorly disguised attempt to extort WPE," Keller alleged, was lobbed "against the threat of making it virtually impossible for WPE (and its customers) to conduct its ordinary business."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Derek Harris, born the same year as the iconic K6 red phone box he's fighting to save, has launched what he calls a "David and Goliath" campaign against BT in the Norfolk village of Sharrington. The phone box is among 10 in North Norfolk marked for removal, having logged fewer than 10 calls last year. Harris argues the box remains vital in an area with poor mobile coverage, high elderly population, and proximity to an accident-prone stretch of the A148. He recounts how it once saved a driver trapped in a snowstorm when mobile networks failed. BT's regulator, Ofcom, protects phone boxes that meet specific criteria, including emergency usage and location in signal-poor areas. Of the UK's original 100,000 phone boxes, only 14,000 remain functional, with 3,000 being the classic red design. For Harris, the fight transcends practicality. "It would be alive, wouldn't it? I feel an empathy for a living thing," he told The Guardian. "The nearer you get to the end, the more you want to see things live."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is stuck-down memory forgivable if it's for the sake of performance?

Framework's modular mini desktop has received glowing approval from the repair experts at iFixit, despite having non-upgradeable memory because of its Ryzen AI Max processor.…

The boss of The Pokemon Company believes the series can last for at least another 50 years if it continues to innovate. From a report: First launched on Nintendo's Game Boy in 1996, the video game has expanded into films, TV and toys to become one of the world's highest-grossing media franchise. Most recently, the trading card game based on the cute creatures at the centre of its universe has seen a surge in popularity -- but it has also brought scalpers and frauds to the hobby. [...] Pokemon has continued to bring new fans to the franchise by expanding into anime, card games, movies and toys alongside its video game titles. CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara says fans now "span several generations" and believes "the biggest reason behind their success is the fact that Pokemon became a tool of communication." Last weekend, about 13,000 Pokemon fans headed to the European leg of the International Championships at London's Excel Centre. It demonstrates Mr Ishihara's point that people have found their way into the series through various means.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How to make them, and what to use them for

The US Department of Defense's research arm, DARPA, has put out a Request for Information (RFI) for "large bio-mechanical space structures."…

When developers boast "I could write that in a weekend," they're missing the painful reality that haunts software maintainers for years. In a candid blog post, Construct developer Ashley explains why maintaining large software projects is a burden most programmers fail to appreciate. "Writing the initial code for a feature is only a fraction of the work," Ashley explains, estimating it represents just "25% of the total work" in Construct's 750,000-line codebase. The rest? A grinding cycle of "testing, diagnosing and fixing bugs, optimizing performance, upgrading it to work with other changes, refactoring, customer support, writing documentation and similarly revising the documentation over time." Ashley describes how accepting code contributions feels like someone offering to build you a free extension -- initially attractive until the roof starts leaking years later and the original builder is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, your tenants (users) are furious, and you're stuck with "no good options." The post recounts Construct's own bruises: a community-contributed storage plugin still causing compatibility headaches a decade later, and third-party libraries that became maintenance nightmares after their creators vanished. These experiences explain why seasoned maintainers eye large code contributions with deep suspicion rather than gratitude. "If you suggest some software project uses some code -- even a small amount -- will you be there in literally 10 year's time sorting out all the issues that arise from it?" Ashley asks. "Usually the answer is no."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Google have successfully tested technology that uses smartphone sensors to detect subway track defects, the MTA said Thursday. The four-month experiment, dubbed TrackInspect, mounted six Google Pixel phones on four A train subway cars traversing Manhattan and Queens. The phones' accelerometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes and external microphones collected 335 million sensor readings and 1,200 hours of audio data, which were processed through 200 prediction models. The system identified 92% of defects later confirmed by human inspectors, including broken rails and loose bolts. "The goal with this [project] is to find issues before they become a major issue in terms of service," said Demetrius Crichlow, the agencyâ(TM)s president. Following the successful trial, the MTA plans to expand to a full pilot where Google will build a production version for track inspectors.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What Chris Horsley expected to be a 10-minute washing machine installation stretched to four hours and required five trips to the hardware store. The CTO of security consultancy firm documented how unexpected obstacles -- drilling through shelves, replacing incompatible hoses, and removing hidden caps -- derailed his timeline. Horsley draws a direct parallel to software development, where estimation regularly fails despite experience. "While 90% of the project will be the same, there's going to be one critical difference between the last 5 projects and this project that seemed trivial at the time of estimation but will throw off our whole schedule," he writes in a blog. These disruptions often appear as unmaintained frameworks, obsolete development tools, or incompatible infrastructure components that weren't visible during planning. The software development environment changes rapidly, creating what Horsley describes as "unknown unknowns." Despite thorough requirements gathering, developers inevitably encounter unanticipated blockers, transforming familiar-looking tasks into complex challenges.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chipmaker touts high-core, low-power Altra processors as the future of 5G and AI inferencing

Ampere Computing is looking to target the telecoms market with its Arm-based server chips, hoping to take a slice of the growing compute needs of 5G and edge processing, which it believes Intel is no longer best served to meet.…

The number of babies born in Japan last year fell to the lowest level since records began 125 years ago as the country's demographic crisis deepens and government efforts to reverse the decline continue to fail. Financial Times [non-paywalled source]: Japan recorded 720,988 births in 2024, according to preliminary government figures published on Thursday. The number has declined for nine straight years and appears to be largely unaffected by financial and other government incentives for married couples to produce more children.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.