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A Nice Little Cryptography Primer

By itss | 28/06/2021
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Pun Intended.

Category: Technology
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  • It's Not Just RAM: Windows Licenses Are Also Pushing Up PC Prices
    by EditorDavid on 15/08/2026 at 6:00 pm

    It's not just RAM prices that are going up, writes CNET. "Reports suggest the cost of Windows licenses for manufacturers is rising by up to 10%." Several sites that closely follow Microsoft news, including Windows Central and Windows Latest, have published articles citing a report from Taiwan's Economic Daily News that claims some PC manufacturers are seeing a 7% to 10% increase in the cost of Windows 11 licenses... Because they buy licenses in bulk, they get a sizeable discount over what a consumer would pay for a new copy of Windows 11. But given the existing cost pressures from other components, a big Windows 11 price hike could lead them to pass on some of the added cost to PC buyers. According to the EDN story, PC makers could raise prices by about 5% over the next quarter due to the reported Windows price hike. .. A translated version of the Economic Daily News article contains information from an unnamed PC brand executive. It says that while Microsoft typically raises licensing costs every year by single-digit percentages, that hike has reached 7% to 10% this year, a significant increase. "A representative for Microsoft declined to comment on the report," according to the article. But it also notes that three weeks ago laptop maker Framework blamed price hikes and reconfigurations for some of their models on processor, memory, storage, "and other silicon costs — but also "an increase in Windows license costs." Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Europe's Record Heatwave Kills 25,000, Dries Rivers, Shuts Nuclear Plant, Exposes Submerged Warships
    by EditorDavid on 15/08/2026 at 5:00 pm

    "The European Union's Copernicus climate monitoring service confirmed Monday that June and July were the hottest on record in western Europe," .according to a report from the CBC. "The period saw an estimated 25,000 heat-related deaths." CNN has before-and-after photos of Europe's dried rivers, calling it "a crisis so dire it can be seen from space" River levels are so low that commercial ships have had to reduce their loads by as much as 80% to avoid running aground. It's disrupting supply chains and making shipping more expensive. Other effects of Europe's drying rivers The BBC reports that Romania has "shut down its only nuclear power station because of extremely low water levels in the Danube river." A bridge built in the year 39 AD by the Roman emperor Caligula "is usually entirely underwater," reports CNN, but this year full blocks of the ancient structure are visible, giving archaeologists a rare opportunity to study it." The reports adds that drying Tiber has also now also revealed formerly submerged e-bikes, scooters, refrigerators and a car." The CBC reports a dozen Nazi warships scuttled in a river during the Second World War are now resurfacing as water levels plunge. "Elsewhere, the drying Danube has revealed a German military motorcycle in Hungary, an unexploded 700-kilogram British bomb in Slovakia, and what are believed to be the ancient remains of a mammoth in Bulgaria." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Why Are Big Tech CEOs Writing Long Manifestos About AI?
    by EditorDavid on 15/08/2026 at 4:00 pm

    This week Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word open letter titled "The Future is for Everyone". But the BBC is more interested in why big tech executives keep writing manifestos about AI: [Zuckerberg's] vision echoes what AI leaders have expressed in various forms: the product they are building is among the "most important technologies in history." Marc Andreessen, co-founder of early web titan Netscape, perhaps started this trend in 2023 with a 5,000-word essay he called "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto", which argued innovation was the way to solve life's problems... As the International Monetary Fund warns AI could affect nearly 40% of jobs and worsen global financial inequality, Zuckerberg says he believes there will be an abundance of jobs in the future. "I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity's relevance would rush to build that future." Never mind that Zuckerberg's Meta has cut 10% of its global workforce — about 8,000 jobs — as the company reorganizes to focus on AI. Zuckerberg's manifesto is the latest to land in our social media feeds in an effort to put a positive spin on AI. In 2024, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI boss Sam Altman released a manifesto called "The Intelligence Age", a sweeping expression of optimism about the tech's potential... That same year, in a manifesto titled "Machines of Loving Grace", Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei touted the potential of AI to transform everything from healthcare to politics. So what's going on with these tech executives' manifestos? Economics blogger Noah Smith suggested to the BBC "they all feel like it's such an important moment that it's incumbent upon them to do whatever they can to shape the direction that this technology is going." Although he does see some value in their engagement with important issues. "Should we open-source something that has the ability to kill humanity? If you don't take that seriously, you're just a fool." But Rob Lalka, a business professor at Tulane University, had a different explanation for the BBC: Lalka said the timing of Zuckerberg's manifesto coincides with rising anger over AI's impact on everything from jobs to the environment. And while tech journalists and academics might pore over them trying to glean nuggets of meaning, these executive manifestos are not necessarily landing with the general public. "They're trying to make the case that the positives will far outweigh some of those negatives that the public backlash is pointing out," he said. "But I think a lot of the reasons for optimism are still yet to be seen." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Vulnerability Giving Attackers Full Control of Macs Is Under Active Exploitation
    by BeauHD on 15/08/2026 at 3:00 pm

    joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Dutch officials have warned that a high-severity macOS vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code is under active exploitation. "The NCSC has received a notification indicating that active abuse of this vulnerability has been observed on multiple systems on which port 5900 was accessible from the Internet," the Netherlands National Cyber Security Centrum warned earlier this week. "In all these cases, root had been accessed on the affected system and a Monero crypto miner had been placed." The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-65400, received a patch from Apple last week for macOS Tahoe, Sequoia, and Sonoma. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 7.1 out of 10, stems from a bug in the macOS screen sharing capability, which allows a remote party to view the screen and control the keyboard and mouse while a machine is turned on. A flaw in the "state management," which keeps track of preceding events, user interactions, variables, and other system states, is the underlying cause. A video of the exploit in action can be found here. Details of CVE-2026-65400 became public at last week's Black Hat security conference. Apple said last week that CVE-2026-65400 "may" allow an attacker without credentials to gain access to a Mac. It's unclear why Apple hedged, but softening language is common among most tech developers when disclosing vulnerabilities. As noted by the NCSC, the vulnerability is being exploited when port 5900 is exposed to the Internet. When screen sharing is turned on, the macOS firewall opens the port. Routers and dedicated firewalls generally block the port unless configured to override that setting. Security practitioners generally advise Mac users to keep the port closed even when using screen sharing and to instead connect over a VPN or through SSH tunneling. The alternatives require actions that aren't within the capabilities of most users. The safest practice is to block screen sharing, enable it only when screen sharing is needed, and to turn the feature off once a session has ended. Screen sharing can be turned on or off by accessing System Settings > General > Sharing and toggling the switch for Screen Sharing. Of course, installing last week's security update is also a must. Sharing is not caring. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Astronomers Discover a New Kind of Cosmic Object: a Black Hole 'Star'
    by BeauHD on 15/08/2026 at 11:00 am

    Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope say they may have found a new class of object: a "black hole star," in which a black hole is wrapped in dense gas and radiates in ways that resemble an enormous star. The Guardian reports: The international team made the breakthrough after focusing their attention on a mysterious red spot in images of the early universe captured by Nasa's James Webb space telescope. The object was lurking in the constellation of Cetus, the Whale, billions of light years from Earth. It is thought to have formed 660m years after the big bang, astronomers' leading theory as to how the universe began. Measurements of the exotic body found that while it resembles an immense star, it releases 100bn times more energy than any known star can produce. The energy output is far closer to that observed from black holes than stars. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Meta Patents AI Glasses to Use Facial Recognition to Identify People, Make Highlight Reels of Your Dinner Party
    by BeauHD on 15/08/2026 at 7:00 am

    Meta has patented a smart-glasses system that could use facial recognition to identify people and automatically create personalized highlight reels of events such as dinner parties. The patent doesn't guarantee the feature will ship, but it offers a detailed look at how Meta is exploring facial recognition and AI-powered memory capture for its wearable devices. 404 Media reports: "I've generated some highlights of tonight's dinner party. Would you like to see them?" a prompt from the system says, alongside various thumbnails of what look like people laughing, according to one illustration in the patent. One section says the system may personalize highlight files using "user relationship data." The illustrations clearly show a person wearing a pair of glasses, looking at a group of people, then the glasses focusing on one or more people in particular. Patentlyze, an organization that tracks patents, first alerted 404 Media to the patent on Friday. The patent is dense with how such a system would work, but in sum, the system with one or more cameras receives an input from the user, then uses machine-learning and "sensory data" to figure out points of interest in the camera's field of view. That can include detecting people in the shot "based on one or more facial recognition algorithms," identifying those specific people, detecting their facial expressions, using "eye gaze data of the user captured by the client system," and figuring out other points of interest "based on scene and semantic understanding." Although the patent is for "particular camera-based tasks by particular systems in a particular manner" -- in this case, the company's smart glasses -- Meta writes it "contemplates assisting users in any suitable camera-based task by any suitable system in any suitable manner." Meaning that although this technology is focused on the glasses, maybe the company will use it for other purposes in the future. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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