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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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  • Massive Debian 13 Linux Kernel Security Update Patches 68 Vulnerabilities
    by EditorDavid on 03/08/2026 at 7:34 am

    Slashdot reader prisoninmate shares this report from 9to5Linux: Coming ten days after the previous Linux kernel security update, which only fixed 12 vulnerabilities that may lead to a privilege escalation, denial of service, or information leaks, the new Debian 13 Linux kernel security update is a massive one, and it patches no less than 68 security vulnerabilities in the Linux 6.12 LTS kernel. ebian 13 "Trixie" kernel security update are CVE-2026-64530, a use-after-free in the traffic-control subsystem leading to remote denial-of-service with potential for remote code execution, and CVE-2026-64531 (a.k.a. OVSwrap), a local-root vulnerability in the Open vSwitch datapath leading to local privilege escalation to root... All Debian 13 "Trixie" users are urged to update their installations to Linux kernel 6.12.100-1 as soon as possible. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Hollywood Fights AI In Public While Quietly Building It Into Movies
    by EditorDavid on 03/08/2026 at 5:05 am

    Even as Hollywood performers protest and Hollywood studios sue "in their war on AI," reports the Los Angeles Times, "the entertainment industry is deepening its dependence on it." Among hundreds of job postings in late June, more than one in 10 was likely connected to AI. The top studios' public postings suggest they have been recruiting people to build AI tools. They are also recruiting teams to defend their intellectual property against unauthorized AI use. "There are plenty of studios that are hiring [for AI] but never talk about it in public," said Yoland Yan, a co-founder of ComfyUI, a company that helps studios juggle different AI tools. Companies have been hesitant to detail how they use generative AI in film production — partly because they are concerned about consumer and union backlash. Some in Hollywood described AI use as the new cosmetic surgery, where everyone knows it is happening, but few will admit to it... Although some companies may be shy about sharing their AI plans, big stars who don't have to answer to others have been more open about their embrace of the new technology for storytelling. Rejecting AI is like picking a horse and buggy over a car, said "Star Wars" creator George Lucas. "Artificial intelligence means it's much easier for us to make movies," he told a trade magazine earlier this year. "There's nothing you can do about it. That's progress. It's the future." Some in Hollywood have a softer stance on artificial intelligence, with studios cutting deals with AI companies, and filmmakers like Martin Scorsese backing AI companies. Ben Affleck launched an AI film tech company then sold it to Netflix for half a billion dollars. When launching InterPositive, Affleck said he wanted to keep "storytelling human" by building AI tools that could fix lighting, generate missing shots and other things while "keeping creative decisions in the hands of artists...." Disney, Netflix and Amazon had job postings that were about using AI on the creative side of the business. Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros. and Sony had job ads suggesting they were also using AI but for marketing, distribution and audience analytics. The postings suggest the Disney, Netflix and Amazon studios are building repeatable AI workflows for visual effects, animation, sound and dubbing. The companies also seem to be building in-house teams to develop custom generative-AI models, while also using third-party software. None of the jobs advertised were to create AI that wrote scripts or created AI actors. Ironically, the Times used Claude Code to build a scraper to identify the job postings, their article acknowledges. Three Disney jobs were for "content security," assessing AI tools and guarding against piracy, watermarking and rights-protection work. But Disney is also hiring PhD-level talent "to study 'computer graphics and AI' for Pixar and Disney films," according to the article, and "people to 'bridge the gap between research and practical studio application.'" Disney-owned visual effects shops Industrial Light & Magic "was searching for supervisors to 'explore emerging technologies (including AI/Machine Learning)' to develop new production workflows." Audio post-production unit Skywalker Sound "seemed to be recruiting to build proprietary AI models for soundtracks, voice separation, and voice transfer, the process of taking a speaker's tone and pitch, and applying it to new content." Amazon "was hiring a principal AI executive to drive AI-tool adoption across production, plus roles in operations automation and LLM content classification." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Rogue Police Officers Have Turned Flock's Nationwide Camera Network Into a Stalking Tool
    by EditorDavid on 03/08/2026 at 2:05 am

    A woman found her police officer ex-boyfriend cop had used Flock's camera system 600 times to look up the location of her and her daughter, reports the Washington Post (Alternate URL here). (She found out through Have I Been Flocked, described as "a website that aggregates police search logs made available through public records.") But it turns out dozens more police officers have also misused Flock... Authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers of using license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes, including to stalk women without their knowledge or consent, a Post analysis of police and court records found. In 26 of these cases, police investigators and prosecutors said the officers used the technology to spy on their wives, their girlfriends, their exes, their exes' new partners or women they wanted to meet. In other cases, police or prosecutors have not specified the alleged surveillance targets. Flock's system was used in 46 of the cases analyzed by The Post, while the other cases involved competing products... After The Post relayed its findings to Flock, the company said in a statement it "will soon be announcing better filters and tools to stop abuse before it happens...." In April, the company rolled out a new voluntary "audit assistance" feature, which agencies can choose to enable, that automatically scans officers' searches for suspicious activity, such as queries repeatedly targeting the same vehicle or run by officers off the clock. In an interview with The Post, Flock chief executive Garrett Langley said misuse of its systems is inevitable and that the company is focused on providing tools to catch perpetrators after the fact... "We're not going to change humans, and humans make bad decisions," Langley said. "What we can do is make sure that they know if you use this tool, you will be held accountable...." Through automated license-plate reader systems, or ALPRs, officers could trace the rhythms and travels of their subjects' daily lives, leading in some instances to violent confrontations, moments of psychological manipulation, and threats of coercion and control, the analysis found. - In Wisconsin, a police officer allegedly used Flock to check whether his ex-girlfriend had gone to an abortion clinic, according to a police affidavit for a case set for trial this month. - In Kansas, a police chief who tracked his ex through Flock sneaked up on her while she was intimate with another man, a state police certification body alleged, leading to his firing. - In Florida, a deputy speeding to stop a young actress he'd added to a watch list for a license-plate tool called Guardian nearly caused a head-on crash, according to a police report and video from his dashboard camera. The deputy was arrested in March, and his attorney declined to comment. - And in California, prosecutors said a former deputy, Alexander Vanny, used Flock as part of a months-long campaign of "stalking" and "humiliating" his former fiancée that also involved following her around town and installing a hidden camera in her roommate's bathroom, according to a sentencing brief... While some of the searches resulted in officers' firings, prosecutions and prison sentences, police departments in other cases allowed officers to continue using the systems even after receiving warnings that they were being misused... An array of privacy advocates has argued that Flock could deter bad actors by making simple changes to its product, such as requiring officers to label every search with a criminal case number. Some policing experts also warned that agencies' inconsistencies in developing and enforcing standard procedures for license-plate readers could lead to further misconduct. With no federal laws governing use and only a patchwork of state laws, many of the country's roughly 18,000 police agencies are left to decide their rules on their own... Langley, Flock's chief, has dismissed pushes by activists for the company to further limit how officers use its product. "No one elected me the police chief of America," he told Forbes last year, adding, "I don't think it's our job to police the police." The Post also got this quote from an officer was fired and sentenced to probation after pleading no contest to charges of computer-system misuse, stalking and battery. "Pretty much everybody uses that computer system" improperly in the department, he said, and "they don't audit it [nearly] as much as they should." Flock told The Post it now has over 120,000 cameras in more than 6,000 communities, recording 20 billion license plate scans every month. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • GOG Officially Expands Linux Support With Native Galaxy Client In Development
    by EditorDavid on 03/08/2026 at 12:35 am

    Long-time Slashdot reader pyroclast shared this report from Linux Journal: After years of requests from the Linux gaming community, GOG has officially confirmed that it is developing native Linux support for the GOG Galaxy launcher. The announcement marks one of the biggest shifts in the company's history and signals a stronger commitment to Linux as a first-class gaming platform. While GOG has offered DRM-free Linux game downloads since 2014, its Galaxy launcher has remained exclusive to Windows and macOS — until now. Although the company has not announced a release date, GOG says Linux has become a major area of investment, with development already underway... Unlike the web-based game downloads that Linux users already have access to, GOG Galaxy serves as a full-featured game management application. The launcher currently offers features including: — Automatic game installation and updates — Cloud save synchronization — Achievement tracking — Playtime statistics — Game library organization — Integrated storefront browsing — Friends lists and social features — Cross-platform launcher integration Today, Linux users typically access these capabilities through community projects such as Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, or Bottles. A native Galaxy client would provide an officially supported alternative with direct integration into GOG's ecosystem... For GOG, supporting Linux more fully aligns with its philosophy of giving users greater control over their purchased games. The article argues this news shows Linux growing in importance for game publishers. After the rapid adoption of Valve's Steam Deck, there's also been continuous improvements to Proton and Vulkan, increasing hardware compatibility, and native Linux game development efforts. "As more companies recognize the platform's growth, Linux users can expect broader support from game publishers and software developers alike." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • IT Teams are Spending 11 Hours a Week on Cloud Connectivity Problems
    by EditorDavid on 02/08/2026 at 11:35 pm

    Researchers found enterprises are spending time troubleshooting cloud connectivity due to increased AI workloads, reports Computer Weekly. More than 400 IT and infrastructure decision-makers (US and UK) were surveyed for internet/cloud/AI exchange operator DE-CIX by market researchers Censuswide. But despite 96% of respondents claiming their enterprise networks are ready for cloud/AI loads, the average IT team still spends more than 11 hours each week resolving cloud connectivity problems Other leading concerns included downtime or reliability issues (26%), latency or slow performance (28%), and security vulnerabilities/DDoS attacks (27%). Cost of connectivity, staff expertise and lack of visibility/control over data flows were also cited as major challenges... As a result, as indicated in the study, many businesses are now turning to private interconnection, which enables enterprises to connect directly to cloud providers over dedicated infrastructure rather than routing traffic across the public Internet. Designed to deliver lower latency, greater resilience, enhanced security and more predictable performance, private interconnection has become an increasingly important way of supporting modern cloud and AI workloads. Specifically, the data showed that 61% of companies are already using private connectivity to clouds, while another 31% are actively considering it... [And 71% of enterprises with 1000 or more employees] Only 8.62% of the smaller companies were spending 21 to 40 hours per week dealing with connectivity issues, while just 2.53% of the largest companies in the sample do. Summing up these findings, DE-CIX said that together they suggest direct interconnection is rapidly becoming a core component of enterprise cloud and AI infrastructure and a competitive advantage for companies, though optimising interconnection strategies clearly remains a pressing challenge for small and medium-sized enterprises... "Every AI application depends on data moving quickly, securely and predictably between users, clouds and AI infrastructure. Our research suggests that far too many enterprises are still spending valuable time trying to maintain that kind of connectivity, with more than a third spending between 11 and 20 hours per week, and just under one in 10 spending between 21 to 40 hours per week. This confirms what we already knew — that that network architecture can make or break AI adoption." Elsewhere The Register reports that cloud infrastructure services "grew at their fastest for eight years during the second quarter of 2026, thanks to the AI craze and continued demand for flexible and scalable IT infrastructure." According to the latest figures from Synergy Research, enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure passed $143 billion in Q2, a year-on-year growth rate of 43 percent. This followed 11 successive quarters of increasing growth rates, during which the market has now doubled in size... "AI has, of course, driven most of that incremental growth, and we now see year-on-year growth rates of 165 percent for AI-specific cloud services...." And the top three global players continue to dominate the market, with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud together accounting for 67 percent of all the cloud revenue during the quarter. That percentage has increased since the third quarter of last year, when the triumvirate made up 63 percent of enterprise cloud infra spending. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • New Spinning Drone Hides In Plain Sight
    by EditorDavid on 02/08/2026 at 10:09 pm

    To design invisible drones, researchers have tried camouflage, transparent materials and light-bending optical systems. But engineers at Northwestern University used "motion blur," which an announcement from the school notes is the effect that makes fast-spinning fans seem to disappear. "The drone spins up to 25 times per second, which is too fast for the human eye to see clearly. While it isn't completely invisible, it morphs into a ghostly smudge that seamlessly blends into the background... " To design the drone, the Northwestern team first used a computational model to generate roughly 20,000 drone configurations capable of stable flight. Then, they used artificial intelligence (AI) and optimization algorithms to repeatedly rearrange the drones' major components, including a motor, propeller, circuit board, counterweight and batteries. After sifting through many different configurations, the algorithms determined the ideal placement of the drone's components to minimize its visibility from virtually every viewing angle while allowing for stable flight. After selecting promising candidates, the engineers simulated each drone spinning in flight and overlaid those images a hundred real-world backgrounds. Then, they used a perception model that approximates human vision to determine how noticeable each design appeared. Designs that blended into their surroundings received lower visibility scores. The team selected the 500 lowest-scoring designs and applied the optimization algorithm, which repeatedly adjusted the positions of components to further minimize those scores. "The design process was fully automated," [said Northwestern's associate CS professor Michael Rubenstein, who led the work]. "Then, when we were confident that a drone met all our criteria, we built it." They've named the drone "Phantom Twist"," and plan to design future iterations with more transparent materials or quieter propulsion to make it even less noticeable. The Northwestern team presented the work on July 16 at Robotics: Science and Systems 2026 in Sydney, Australia... Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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