Linux fréttir

The world used clean power sources to meet more than 40% of its electricity demand last year for the first time since the 1940s, figures show. The Guardian: A report by the energy thinktank Ember said the milestone was powered by a boom in solar power capacity, which has doubled in the last three years. The report found that solar farms had been the world's fastest-growing source of energy for the last 20 consecutive years. Phil MacDonald, Ember's managing director, said: "Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition. Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity." Overall, solar power remains a relatively small part of the global energy system. It made up almost 7% of the world's electricity last year, according to Ember, while wind power made up just over 8% of the global power system. The fast-growing technologies remain dwarfed by hydro power, which has remained relatively steady in recent years, and made up 14% of the worldâ(TM)s electricity in 2024.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fake job seekers using AI tools to impersonate candidates are increasingly targeting U.S. companies with remote positions, creating a growing security threat across industries. By 2028, one in four global job applicants will be fake, according to Gartner. These imposters use AI to fabricate photo IDs, generate employment histories, and provide interview answers, often targeting cybersecurity and cryptocurrency firms, CNBC reports. Once hired, fraudulent employees can install malware to demand ransoms, steal customer data, or simply collect salaries they wouldn't otherwise obtain, according to Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO of Pindrop Security. The problem extends beyond tech companies. Last year, the Justice Department alleged more than 300 U.S. firms inadvertently hired impostors with ties to North Korea, including major corporations across various sectors.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Feds claim creaky COBOL, user spike is real reason key portal now flaky

The United States Social Security Administration's internet portal has frequently gone offline in recent weeks, and presented inaccurate or incomplete information to users, perhaps because of changes steered by Elon Musk's cost-trimming DOGE unit.…

Lawsuit claims sick cyber-voyeurism went undetected for years, using hundreds of PCs, due to lax infosec

A now-former pharmacist at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) has been accused of compromising the US healthcare organization's IT systems to ogle female clinicians using webcams at their workplace and at their homes.…

Hackers intercepted about 103 bank regulators' emails for more than a year, gaining access to highly sensitive financial information, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing two people familiar with the matter and a draft letter to Congress. From the report: The attackers were able to monitor employee emails at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency after breaking into an administrator's account, said the people, asking not to be identified because the information isn't public. OCC on Feb. 12 confirmed that there had been unauthorized activity on its systems after a Microsoft security team the day before had notified OCC about unusual network behavior, according to the draft letter. The OCC is an independent bureau of the Treasury Department that regulates and supervises all national banks, federal savings associations and the federal branches and agencies of foreign banks -- together holding trillions of dollars in assets. OCC on Tuesday notified Congress about the compromise, describing it as a "major information security incident." "The analysis concluded that the highly sensitive bank information contained in the emails and attachments is likely to result in demonstrable harm to public confidence," OCC Chief Information Officer Kristen Baldwin wrote in the draft letter to Congress that was seen by Bloomberg News. While US government agencies and officials have long been the targets of state-sponsored espionage campaigns, multiple high-profile breaches have surfaced over the past year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We hear from court-scolded Jerome Dewald, who insists lawyer-bots have a future

Interview The founder of an AI startup who attempted to use an artificially generated avatar to argue his case in court has been scolded by a judge for the stunt.…

New submitter toutankh writes: The UK government is developing a tool to predict murder. The scheme was originally called the "homicide prediction project", but its name has been changed to "sharing data to improve risk assessment". The Ministry of Justice hopes the project will help boost public safety but campaigners have called it "chilling and dystopian".The existence of the project was uncovered by Statewatch rather than announced by the UK government. PR following this discovery looks like uncoordinated damage control: one stated goal is to "ultimately contribute to protecting the public via better analysis", but a spokesperson also said that it is "for research purpose[s] only". One criticism is that such a system will inevitably reproduce existing bias from the police. What could go wrong?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has scrapped plans to build three data center campuses in Licking County, Ohio, in a $1 billion investment pullback, the company said. The canceled developments in New Albany, Heath, and Hebron join a growing list of Microsoft data center project cancellations across the United States, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the United Kingdom. Microsoft will retain ownership of the land and plans to eventually develop the sites at an unspecified future date. Two properties will remain available for farming in the interim.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A novel way to encourage upgrades? Microsoft would never stoop so low

Patch Tuesday Patch Tuesday has arrived, and Microsoft has revealed one flaw in its products under active exploitation and 11 critical issues in its code to fix.…

Razer's upcoming Blade 16 and other laptops are no longer available for preorder or purchase on its US site. From a report: The configurator for preordering its new Blade 16 laptop was available as recently as April 1st, according to the Internet Archive -- one day before the Trump administration announced sweeping US tariffs on China, Taiwan, and others that make laptop components. When asked recently if tariffs might affect Razer's prices or availability, its Public Relations Manager, Andy Johnston, told The Verge, "We do not have a comment at this stage regarding tariffs." Razer may not be openly talking about the impact of tariffs, but Framework halted sales of its entry-level Laptop 13 in the US on April 7th, and Micron reportedly confirmed surcharges for its memory chips will apply once the tariffs take effect after midnight tonight.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What did we learn today, hm?

TSMC could end up paying $1 billion or more to settle a US investigation into whether the Taiwanese outfit busted sanctions by indirectly producing AI accelerators for America's bête noire / hēi yáng, Huawei.…

Built by 2028? Maybe. Powering homes? That’s another licence entirely

Canadian nuclear regulators have approved an Ontario company's request to build a single small modular reactor - the first such license issued in the country. But with the chosen design yet to be operated anywhere in the world, it's best to take the news with a heap of salt.…

Did Facebook giant rizz up LLM to win over human voters? It appears so

Meta submitted a specially crafted, non-public variant of its Llama 4 AI model to an online benchmark that may have unfairly boosted its leaderboard position over rivals.…

'Loss of safe separation between aircraft, collision, or runway incursion' is not what we want to hear

Boeing issued a software patch for the VHF radio systems used on its 787 aircraft, and the update turned out to be ineffective, Qatar Airways has complained.…

What a MIME field

A bug in WhatsApp for Windows can be exploited to execute malicious code by anyone crafty enough to persuade a user to open a rigged attachment - and, to be fair, it doesn't take much craft to pull that off.…

Children in a small Japanese town are obsessively collecting trading cards featuring local elderly men rather than popular fantasy creatures, helping bridge generational gaps in an aging rural community. In Kawara, Fukuoka Prefecture, the "Ojisan TCG" (Middle-aged Man Trading Card Game) features 28 local men with assigned elemental types and battle stats. The collection includes a former fire brigade chief and a prison officer-turned-volunteer whose card has become so sought-after that children request his autograph. Created by Eri Miyahara of the Saidosho Community Council, the initiative has doubled participation in town events. "We wanted to strengthen the connection between children and older generations," Miyahara told Fuji News Network. "So many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China is moving fast to dominate biotechnology, and the U.S. risks falling behind permanently unless it takes action over the next three years, a congressional commission said. WSJ: Congress should invest at least $15 billion to support biotech research over the next five years and take other steps to bolster manufacturing in the U.S., while barring companies from working with Chinese biotech suppliers, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology said in a report Tuesday. To achieve its goals, the federal government and U.S.-based researchers will also need to work with allies and partners around the world. "China is quickly ascending to biotechnology dominance, having made biotechnology a strategic priority for 20 years," the commission said. Without prompt action, the U.S. risks "falling behind, a setback from which we may never recover." The findings convey the depth of worry in Washington that China's rapid biotechnology advances jeopardize U.S. national security. Yet translating the concern into tangible actions could prove challenging. [...] China plays a large role supplying drug ingredients and even some generic medicines to the U.S. For years, it produced copycat versions of drugs developed in the West. Recent years have seen it become a formidable hub of biotechnology innovation, after the Chinese government gave priority to the field as a critical sector in China's efforts to become a scientific superpower.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

70 years old, yes. Obsolete? Not by a long shot

Comment There is something about Elon Musk's career trajectory that compels onlookers to hang around for the seemingly inevitable crash landing. Tesla, SpaceX, and X – formerly known as Twitter – have all become hosts to the man's galactic ego.…

Disconnected device scenarios cause headaches for Microsoft

Microsoft is extending support for a product scheduled for deprecation. Sadly for some, it's not Windows 10.…

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke is changing his company's approach to hiring in the age of AI. Employees will be expected to prove why they "cannot get what they want done using AI" before asking for more headcount and resources, Lutke wrote in a memo to staffers that he posted to X. From a report: "What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?" Lutke wrote in the memo, which was sent to employees late last month. "This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects." Lutke also said there's a "fundamental expectation" across Shopify that employees embrace AI in their daily work, saying it has been a "multiplier" of productivity for those who have used it. "I've seen many of these people approach implausible tasks, ones we wouldn't even have chosen to tackle before, with reflexive and brilliant usage of AI to get 100X the work done," Lutke wrote. The company, which sells web-based software that helps online retailers manage sales and run their operations, will factor AI usage into performance reviews, he added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.