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Excellent and Accessible Write-Up on Spectre & Meltdown Vulnerabilities

By itss | 08/01/2018
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https://ds9a.nl/articles/posts/spectre-meltdown/

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News for nerds

  • Berlin Is Being Blackmailed By Hackers
    by BeauHD on 31/08/2026 at 3:00 pm

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Berlin is being blackmailed by hackers who were able to compromise city systems and steal data earlier this month, its mayor has said. Kai Wegner said officials would not cave in to the ransom demand, which came on Thursday evening. He did not say how much was being sought, though Der Spiegel reports the hackers are demanding 30 bitcoin, worth around 2 million euros. Some of the German capital's online systems were forced to close down as a result of the attack, while investigators were working to understand what data had been taken. The Rhysida group, which is thought to operate from Russia and eastern Europe, and was behind a previous attack on the British Museum, has reportedly taken responsibility. It has said on its website it intends to begin auctioning the 5.79 terabytes of data it was able to steal from Berlin in seven days' time, according to news agency Reuters. [...] Officials for the city-state said an initial data leak occurred between August 7 and 12. Then, on August 14, two department networks were shut down, making applications for housing benefits and payments impossible for several days. "Berlin will not be blackmailed," Wegner said on Friday. He said state police, prosecutors and federal security services were working to investigate the suspected perpetrators "with the utmost urgency," adding that inquiries into the "content and scope of the compromised data are being pursued with great intensity." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • California's Age Verification Bill Passes with Linux Exemption Intact
    by EditorDavid on 31/08/2026 at 11:34 am

    California's age-verification bill has passed in its legislature — but with its open-source carve-out intact, reports the blog Linuxiac: Back in May, we reported that California lawmakers amended Assembly Bill 1856 to carve open-source operating systems out of the state's upcoming age verification requirements. Three months later, that exemption survived the legislative process intact, and the bill has cleared both chambers of the California Legislature... sending the measure to Engrossing and Enrolling, the final legislative preparation stage before it can be presented to Governor Gavin Newsom... For operating systems that are covered, AB 1856 builds on California's Digital Age Assurance Act, which is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2027. Under the current text, when an operating system runs on a device and includes an account setup feature, its provider must offer an interface that asks the account holder for the birth date, age, or both, of the device's primary user during account setup. The operating system must then be capable of providing a digital age signal to covered application stores and application developers through a reasonably consistent real-time API. Instead of exposing a precise birth date, the signal identifies one of four age ranges: under 13, 13 through 15, 16 through 17, or 18 and older... Covered application stores must request the signal from the operating system and make it available to developers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • OpenAI To Cut Off AI Models For SpaceX-owned Cursor
    by EditorDavid on 31/08/2026 at 7:34 am

    "OpenAI said on Friday that it plans to stop providing AI models to Cursor, the coding-tool company now owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX," reports Reuters: "We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts," OpenAI said in a blog post... However, Michael Truell, a co-founder of Cursor and now an executive at SpaceX, said on X that the company was speaking with the OpenAI team to resolve this issue. Hours after OpenAI's announcement, Anthropic, which rivals both firms but has an ongoing partnership with SpaceX, said it planned to increase compute to support Claude models in Cursor, according to Tom Brown, one of the co-founders of the firm... In its blog post, OpenAI said that X, formerly known as Twitter and now part of SpaceX, had breached the terms of its contract with OpenAI after Musk acquired the platform. "To work with a large partner like SpaceX, we typically rely on custom contracts to ensure compliance with our terms of service and that the integration provides for safety at scale," the AI company added. The article also notes Elon Musk's response Saturday in a post on X.com: "I couldn't care less." He accused Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman of being "untrustworthy," while repeating his assertion that they "stole an open source nonprofit." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Amazon's HR Lead Uses AI Tool to Write 100,000 Lines of Code - 25 Years After She Last Coded
    by EditorDavid on 31/08/2026 at 4:34 am

    In an Amazon News blog post, their HR leader describes using AI to write 100,000 lines of code — 25 years after she last coded. "Do you know how empowering it is to realize that after 25 years away from coding, you can actually build again?" First she built a calendar app for her family, but then used Amazon's AI-powered coding tool Kiro to write an app for Amazon's internal "Everyone Can Build" event. We opened the competition to every employee on our team, and within just a few weeks, more than 1,500 people were building. I couldn't believe what they built. One employee built an app that turned a nearly four-hour manual process into a one-second automated check, saving tens of thousands of hours annually. Another made a desktop pet named Momo that keeps your tasks, reminders, and shortcuts a click away. Since then, I've written over 100,000 lines of code with AI. What I've found is that the more you work with these tools, the more natural the process becomes, and the more you realize they're expanding what you're capable of, not replacing it. You don't need perfection to start. You just need to dive in. When I decided to build the submission app for our team competition, I didn't know how to begin, so I asked our internal AI workplace assistant, called Aza. It pointed me to the right tools and helped me take the first step. From there, I opened Kiro and started building. When you give employees the ability and tools to solve problems themselves, they will surprise you with what they create... At Amazon, every employee has access to AI tools. Whether someone needs a quick answer, wants to move faster in their day-to-day, or is ready to try building something new, the resources are there. The more people use these tools, the more capable they become with them, and that experience carries forward in their careers... We also want to make it easy for people to build credentials that are recognized across industries. That's why AI training is free for every Amazon employee. Amazon covers the full cost of one AWS AI certification exam per year, with options ranging from foundational AI concepts to professional-level generative AI. Employees can choose the path that fits where they are in their learning journey. Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes that 7 months ago Galetti also took to Amazon News to announce the elimination of 16,000 corporate jobs, a move which CNBC noted coincided "with a push to invest heavily in artificial intelligence." The job reductions come just a few months after October's layoffs, when 14,000 employees were let go across Amazon's corporate workforce. At the time, the company indicated the cuts would continue in 2026 as it found "additional places we can remove layers." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Multikernel Linux Tree Released: Runs Multiple Kernels On Bare Metal Without a Hypervisor
    by EditorDavid on 31/08/2026 at 2:26 am

    "Multikernel Technologies has put out mklinux v7.0-mk2, the first public release of the multikernel Linux tree it's been building since last year," reports the blog It's FOSS: The basic premise of the project is that one physical server can run several independent Linux kernels side by side, each with its own dedicated CPUs and memory. So, the same box could run a database on one kernel and a GPU training job on another without either kernel touching the other's resources... One kernel runs as the host, controlling the machine's CPUs, memory, and PCI devices. When it spins up a new kernel instance, that instance gets its own dedicated slice of hardware and boots straight onto it using Linux's kexec mechanism, running natively rather than under a hypervisor. The host tracks all of this through device tree overlays under /sys/fs/multikernel/, and it can shift hardware between running instances while everything stays up. That's a different setup from both VMs and containers. A VM still puts a hypervisor and a host kernel between the app and the hardware. A container skips the hypervisor, but every tenant on the machine shares one kernel... This release only supports x86_64 hardware, though Multikernel Technologies says the architecture-specific code is already modular enough for other ports to follow later. The article notes they're selling multiple products based on the kernel tree, including one for running AI agents in their own kernel with direct GPU access and one that promises to patch a running kernel without taking the system down. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Gamescom Crime Spree? Three Exhibitors Report Their Laptops Were Stolen
    by EditorDavid on 31/08/2026 at 12:38 am

    From the gaming news site Aftermath" Game developer and consultant Ryan Laley traveled to Cologne, Germany from Essex, England to showcase his upcoming horror social deduction game Mimic at the annual Gamescom event. He paid "thousands of pounds" to get a booth at the show, where other game developers and press could try the game ahead of its October release. But Laley's Gamescom was cut short when he realized Friday morning that his brand new Alienware laptop, purchased for the event, was missing. The laptop was stored in a cupboard in the booth, and Laley started asking nearby vendors to see if someone had moved it. That's when he realized it was stolen — and that he wasn't alone. Laley's booth in Gamescom's business area, specifically in the International Game Developers Association Lounge, had been hit in what appears to be a string of thefts at the convention center. The business area of the convention is not open to the public, only press and others with specific tickets. Laley said Gamescom advertised this area as having 24/7 security and limited access after hours... Publisher and merchandiser iam8bit, in a nearby booth showcasing Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School and Petal Runner, had two laptops with game builds stolen Thursday night from its booth, a representative confirmed to Aftermath. "Meanwhile, Tessera Studios had two laptops and a Steam Deck taken from its cabinet," reports Tom's Hardware: Gamescom organizers responded to the issues, saying that although they have arranged for uniformed guards to provide general security, individual booth security must be booked separately. They've also advised exhibitors to have insurance against theft, and said these warnings are noted in the terms and conditions for participants, as well as in the event's technical guidelines. "All cases have been reported to us and to the police, and investigations are already underway," the organizers' statement read. They also said that security is one of their priorities at the event, but also added, "At an event of this size, however, there will always be individuals attempting to take advantage of the situation." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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