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Monthly Archives: February 2018

When will phishers learn that their written English needs to improve?

Category: Technology

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Hardware Exploits?
Why Quake3 was so fast : Fast Inverse Square Root
A Nice Little Cryptography Primer
pfSense / Wireguard / Bad Code / Close Call
Apple Continues Its Trip To The Dark Side With The Release of MacOS 17 (Big Sur)

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MapQuest's App Surges to No. 1 In Navigation After Refusing to Rename Lake Ontario
by BeauHD on 31/08/2026 at 5:00 pm
MapQuest's refusal to rename Lake Ontario as "Lake America" has sent its app surging up the charts, making it the No. 1 navigation app in the U.S. and driving "hundreds of thousands" of new downloads. In contrast, Google Maps announced on Saturday that it was complying with the Trump administration's name change. TechCrunch reports: The "OG of online mapping," as the company calls itself, announced on Thursday that it would not change the name of Lake Ontario on its maps to Lake America, despite Trump's executive order directing the U.S. Department of the Interior to update the lake's name in the U.S. geographic naming service. As a result, MapQuest's mobile app downloads soared, sending the iOS app to the No. 4 position on the U.S. App Store's Top Charts for apps (not including games) as of Monday morning on the U.S. east coast. MapQuest also reached the No. 8 position overall in the U.S. App Store across both apps and games, and it became the No. 1 Navigation app in the United States. In Canada's App Store, the app reached No. 2 overall as of Sunday evening. The 30-year-old company remarked that it received "hundreds of thousands" of new downloads since its decision to keep the name Lake Ontario in place, and saw its app's usage climb to 50 times above its normal levels. "We took the same approach we did with the Gulf of Mexico: be part of the conversation, and give people an app that keeps the names they're familiar with," said Doug Berger, general manager of MapQuest, in a statement. "Hundreds of thousands of people signaled to us this weekend that we got it right by downloading our app." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A 12TB Steam 'Teraleak' Spills More Than a Decade of Lost PC Gaming History
by BeauHD on 31/08/2026 at 4:00 pm
A massive 12TB archive of old Steam2 content has surfaced online, apparently containing nearly every version of games uploaded to Valve's servers between 2003 and 2013, including unreleased prototypes, playtest builds, and cut content. Early discoveries include deleted Portal 2 material, files tied to Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and beta builds of games like Left 4 Dead 2, CS: GO, Spore, and Dragon Age: Origins. Researchers claim much of the material was once accessible through an unsecured public API. Ars Technica reports: The reason this weekend's leaked content cuts off abruptly in 2013 is because that's when Valve updated its content distribution system from "Steam2" to the current SteamPipe system. In moving from a proprietary file distribution format to standard HTTP file trees, the new system removed various update approval bottlenecks on Valve's end and streamlined update and patch downloads so they only reflected file differentials. Publicly accessible early versions of some games released before this SteamPipe transition had been considered lost content by archivists, no longer accessible from Valve itself and living on only as local downloads on aging machines. Apparently all that content wasn't as lost as many thought, though. Longtime Valve watcher and data miner Gabe Follower (previously) wrote on social media this weekend that he had "verified that everything in Steam2 Teraleak was obtained via a publicly accessible [API] endpoint. It's Valve's fault..." Spanish-language Valve streamer and analyst Scolcer also said on social media (via machine translation) that the teraleak was "obtained from a site that was 100% accessible to the public. It was there for everyone to download. No passwords. Nothing. Hidden in plain sight, but with no protection whatsoever." What's unclear right now if that API and publicly available Steam2 server content were accessed recently or if this weekend's leak represents content that was privately archived before the 2013 server transition and is just now being made public. "It could more-so be a collection of different people that knew about it and accumulated whatever people had downloaded back then into this massive archive," said The One Epicplayer, a moderator on the Valve Cut Content (VCC) Discord, which has long followed Valve betas and leaks. "I haven't been filled in on the full details but my suspicion is that these depot [files] were downloaded a long time ago and sat in a private collection," CrazyBubba, another VCC Discord moderator, told Ars. "There were a lot of leaks a few years back and many folks hoarded files for years. ... historically there have been issues with people lording content over other members." A readme file included with the leak offers "warm n good wishes to all hoarders who had stuff from this collection" and encourages users to mirror and share it as widely as possible. On the VCC Discord, a user purporting to be the original uploader of the teraleak (who offered screenshots of a 22TB server upload log among their evidence) wrote that "getting this out really took a significant amount of effort from me and I would like it if it didn't go to waste." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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.

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