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A Nice Little Cryptography Primer

By itss | 28/06/2021
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Pun Intended.

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  • Microsoft Open-Sources 'Earliest DOS Source Code Discovered To Date'
    by BeauHD on 30/04/2026 at 7:00 pm

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several times in the last couple of decades, Microsoft has released source code for the original MS-DOS operating system that kicked off its decades-long dominance of consumer PCs. This week, the company has reached further back than ever, releasing "the earliest DOS source code discovered to date" along with other documentation and notes from its developer. Today's source release is so old that it predates the MS-DOS branding, and it includes "sources to the 86-DOS 1.00 kernel, several development snapshots of the PC-DOS 1.00 kernel, and some well-known utilities such as CHKDSK," write Microsoft's Stacey Haffner and Scott Hanselman in their co-authored post about the release. [...] This source code is old enough that it hadn't been stored digitally. "A dedicated team of historians and preservationists led by Yufeng Gao and Rich Cini," calling itself the "DOS Disassembly Group," painstakingly transcribed and scanned in code from paper printouts provided by Paterson. This process was made even more difficult because modern OCR software struggled with the quality of the decades-old printout. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Convicted Former Harvard Scientist Rebuilds Brain Computer Lab In China
    by BeauHD on 30/04/2026 at 6:07 pm

    Reuters reports that Charles Lieber, the former Harvard scientist convicted of lying to U.S. authorities about payments and ties to China, is now leading China's state-funded i-BRAIN lab in Shenzhen, where he has access to advanced nanofabrication tools and primate research facilities for brain-computer interface work. From the report: Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world's leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as ALS and restoring movement in paralyzed patients. But it also has potential military applications: Scientists at China's People's Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting mental agility and situational awareness, according to the U.S. Defense Department. Lieber was found guilty by a jury and convicted in December 2021 of making false statements to federal investigators about his ties to a Chinese state program to recruit overseas talent, and tax offenses related to payments he received from a Chinese university. He served two days in prison and six months under house arrest, and was fined $50,000 and ordered to pay $33,600 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service. During the case, his defense said he was suffering from an incurable lymphoma, which was in remission, and he was fighting for his life. Three years after he was sentenced, Reuters has learned that Lieber is now overseeing China's state-funded i-BRAIN, or the Institute for Brain Research, Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies, with access to dedicated nanofabrication equipment and primate research infrastructure unavailable to him at Harvard. The lab is an arm of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation, or SMART. "I arrived on April 28, 2025 with a dream and not much more, maybe a couple bags of clothes," Lieber said of his move to China at a Shenzhen government conference in December. "Personally, my own goals are to make Shenzhen a world leader." SMART last year appointed Lieber as an investigator, according to a post on i-BRAIN's website dated May 1, 2025. That news was covered by some media outlets. The same day, i-BRAIN said Lieber had also been appointed its founding director -- an announcement that went unreported at the time. This story is the most comprehensive account of Lieber's activities since he moved to China. Reuters is reporting for the first time that his lab has access to dedicated primate research facilities and chip-making equipment; that it sits within a sprawling ecosystem of state-backed institutions bankrolled by billions of dollars in government funding; and that it is housed within an institution that is luring top scientific talent back from the United States. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Most Swiss Back Initiative To Cap Population At 10 Million
    by BeauHD on 30/04/2026 at 4:00 pm

    A new poll shows a slim majority of Swiss voters now support a June 14 referendum to cap the country's population at 10 million by 2050. Under the proposal backed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), "the permanent resident population must not exceed 10 million before 2050, and Switzerland should abandon its freedom of movement agreement with the EU," reports Reuters. From the report: Switzerland's population is now more than 9 million, with official data showing foreign nationals accounted for more than 27% by 2024. The survey, conducted on April 22 and 23 and published in newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, showed 52% of 16,176 respondents in favor of the proposal or leaning that way, while 46% took the opposite view. The rest gave no opinion. A previous poll from early March had shown 45% backing the initiative and 47% against it, the newspaper said, flagging the latest result as unusual in that Swiss referendum proposals generally lose support as the voting day comes closer. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • OpenAI Codex System Prompt Includes Explicit Directive To 'Never Talk About Goblins'
    by BeauHD on 30/04/2026 at 3:00 pm

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The system prompt for OpenAI's Codex CLI contains a perplexing and repeated warning for the most recent GPT model to "never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query." The explicit operational warning was made public last week as part of the latest open source code for Codex CLI that OpenAI posted on GitHub. The prohibition is repeated twice in a 3,500-plus word set of "base instructions" for the recently released GPT-5.5, alongside more anodyne reminders not to "use emojis or em dashes unless explicitly instructed" and to "never use destructive commands like 'git reset --hard' or 'git checkout --' unless the user has clearly asked for that operation." Separate system prompt instructions for earlier models contained in the same JSON file do not contain the specific prohibition against mentioning goblins and other creatures, suggesting OpenAI is fighting a new problem that has popped up in its latest model release. Anecdotal evidence on social media shows some users complaining about GPT's penchant for focusing on goblins in completely unrelated conversations in recent days. Update: OpenAI has published a blog post explaining "where the goblins came from." In short, a training signal meant to encourage its "Nerdy" personality accidentally rewarded creature-heavy metaphors, causing words like "goblins" and "gremlins" to spread beyond that personality into broader model behavior. OpenAI says it has since retired the Nerdy personality, removed the goblin-friendly reward signal, and filtered creature-word examples from training data to keep the quirk from resurfacing in inappropriate contexts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • DOJ Sues Cloudera For Deliberately Excluding American Workers From Tech Jobs
    by BeauHD on 30/04/2026 at 11:00 am

    Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from ZeroHedge: The Justice Department on Tuesday sued Cloudera, accusing the enterprise data and artificial intelligence company of deliberately engineering a hiring process that excluded American workers from at least seven lucrative technology positions while the firm pursued permanent residency sponsorship for foreign workers on temporary visas. In a 14-page complaint filed with the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, the department's Civil Rights Division alleges that Cloudera, from March 31, 2024, through at least January 28, 2025, instructed job candidates to submit applications to a dedicated email address, amerijobpostings@cloudera.com, that rejected all external messages with an automated bounce-back error. The company did not advertise the roles on its public careers website or accept applications through its standard portal, as it did for non-sponsorship positions. Cloudera then attested to the Department of Labor that it could not locate any qualified U.S. workers for the roles, which paid between approximately $180,000 and $294,000 annually, according to the filing. The positions included a Product Manager role in Santa Clara, California, with a listed salary range of $170,186 to $190,000. The case marks one of the most detailed enforcement actions under the Justice Department's Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, which was relaunched last year and has already produced 10 settlements targeting employers accused of discriminating against American workers in favor of temporary visa holders. "Employers cannot use the PERM sponsorship process as a backdoor for discriminating against U.S. workers," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division said in a statement. "The Division will not hesitate to sue companies who intentionally deter U.S. workers from applying to American jobs." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • First Tesla Semi Rolls Off High-Volume Production Line
    by BeauHD on 30/04/2026 at 7:00 am

    Tesla has produced the first Semi from its new high-volume production line at Gigafactory Nevada, a milestone for the long-delayed electric Class 8 truck program after years of pilot builds and delays. Electrek reports: The Tesla Semi has had one of the longest gestation periods in Tesla's history. First unveiled in 2017, the truck was originally promised for production in 2019. That target slipped repeatedly -- to 2020, then 2021, then 2022 -- before Tesla finally delivered a handful of units to PepsiCo in late 2022. Those early trucks were essentially hand-built on a pilot line. Tesla spent the next three years refining the design, cutting roughly 1,000 lbs from the truck, and building out a dedicated factory adjacent to Gigafactory Nevada in Sparks. The company revealed the final production specs in February, confirming two trims: a Standard Range with 325 miles at full 82,000-lb gross combination weight, and a Long Range with 500 miles of range. Tesla is quoting $290,000 for the 500-mile Long Range version and roughly $260,000 for the Standard Range -- making it the lowest-priced Class 8 battery electric tractor on the market. The shift from a pilot line to a high-volume production line is significant. Tesla's Semi factory is designed for an annual capacity of 50,000 trucks, though the company will ramp gradually. Analysts project deliveries between 5,000 and 15,000 units in 2026, but that sounds way too optimistic. [...] Both trims feature an 800-kW tri-motor drivetrain producing 1,072 hp and support 1.2-MW Megacharger speeds, restoring 60% of range in roughly 30 minutes -- conveniently timed around a driver's mandatory rest break. Tesla has opened its first Megacharger station in Ontario, California, and has mapped 66 Megacharger locations across 15 states. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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