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Nothing Caught Using Stock Photos as Phone 3 Camera Samples
Phonemaker Nothing used professional stock photos to demonstrate its Phone 3's camera capabilities on retail demo units, according to The Verge. Five images the company presented as community-captured samples were licensed photographs from the Stills marketplace, taken with other cameras in 2023.
The Verge verified EXIF data confirming one image predated the Phone 3's release. Co-founder Akis Evangelidis acknowledged the photos were placeholders intended for pre-production testing that weren't replaced before deployment to stores.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
South Korea Bans Phones in School Classrooms Nationwide
South Korea has passed a bill banning the use of mobile phones and smart devices during class hours in schools -- becoming the latest country to restrict phone use among children and teens. From a report: The law, which comes into effect from the next school year in March 2026, is the result of a bi-partisan effort to curb smartphone addiction, as more research points to its harmful effects. Lawmakers, parents and teachers argue that smartphone use is affecting students' academic performance and takes away time they could have spent studying.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Wikipedia Editors Reject Founder's AI Review Proposal After ChatGPT Fails Basic Policy Test
Wikipedia's volunteer editors have rejected founder Jimmy Wales' proposal to use ChatGPT for article review guidance after the AI tool produced error-filled feedback when Wales tested it on a draft submission. The ChatGPT response misidentified Wikipedia policies, suggested citing non-existent sources and recommended using press releases despite explicit policy prohibitions.
Editors argued automated systems producing incorrect advice would undermine Wikipedia's human-centered model. The conflict follows earlier tensions over the Wikimedia Foundation's AI experiments, including a paused AI summary feature and new policies targeting AI-generated content.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
DSA-5989-1 udisks2 - security update
Michael Imfeld discovered an out-of-bounds read vulnerability in
udisks2, a D-Bus service to access and manipulate storage devices, which
may result in denial of service (daemon process crash), or in mapping an
internal file descriptor from the daemon process onto a loop device,
resulting in local privilege escalation.
Categories: Security
Posthumous AI Avatars Shift From Memorial Tools To Revenue Generators
Digital resurrections of deceased individuals are emerging as the next commercial frontier in AI, with the digital afterlife industry projected to reach $80 billion within a decade. Companies developing these AI avatars are exploring revenue models ranging from interstitial advertising during conversations to data collection about users' preferences.
StoryFile CEO Alex Quinn confirmed his company is exploring methods to monetize interactions between users and deceased relatives' digital replicas, including probing for consumer information during conversations. The technology has already demonstrated persuasive capabilities in legal proceedings, where an AI recreation of road rage victim Chris Pelkey delivered testimony that contributed to a maximum sentence. Current implementations operate through subscription models, though no federal regulations govern commercial applications of posthumous AI representations despite state-level protections for deceased individuals' likeness rights.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
DSA-5988-1 chromium - security update
A security issues was discovered in Chromium which could result
in the execution of arbitrary code, denial of service, or information
disclosure.
Categories: Security
DSA-5987-1 unbound - security update
Multiple security issues were discovered in Unbound, a validating,
recursive, caching DNS resolver, which may result in denial of service
or cache poisoning via the "rebirthday attack".
Categories: Security
DSA-5986-1 node-cipher-base - security update
Nikita Skorovoda discovered that Node cipher-base, an abstract base
class for crypto-streams, performed incomplete type checks.
Categories: Security
DSA-5985-1 ffmpeg - security update
Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the FFmpeg multimedia
framework, which could result in denial of service or potentially the
execution of arbitrary code if malformed files/streams are processed.
Categories: Security
DSA-5984-1 thunderbird - security update
Multiple security issues were discovered in Thunderbird, which could
result in the execution of arbitrary code.
Categories: Security
DSA-5983-1 qemu - security update
This update removes the usage of the C (Credential) flag for the
binfmt_misc registration within the qemu-user package, as it allowed for
privilege escalation when running a suid/sgid binary under qemu-user.
This means suid/sgid foreign-architecture binaries are not running with
elevated privileges under qemu-user anymore. If you relied on this
behavior of qemu-user in the past (running suid/sgid foreign-arch
binaries), this will require changes to your deployment.
In Bookworm the affected packages are qemu-user-static (and qemu-user-binfmt) instead of qemu-user.
Additionally, two security issues were fixed the in SR-IOV support of QEMU system emulation.
Categories: Security
DSA-5982-1 squid - security update
Two security issues were discovered in the Squid proxy caching server,
which could result in the execution of arbitrary code, information
disclosure or denial of service.
Categories: Security
DSA-5981-1 chromium - security update
A security issues was discovered in Chromium which could result
in the execution of arbitrary code, denial of service, or information
disclosure.
Categories: Security
Amazon Cloud Chief Says Replacing Junior Staff With AI is 'Dumbest' Idea
Matt Garman, Amazon's cloud boss, has a warning for business leaders rushing to swap workers for AI: Don't ditch your junior employees. From a report: The Amazon Web Services CEO said on an episode of the "Matthew Berman" podcast published Tuesday that replacing entry-level staff with AI tools is "one of the dumbest things I've ever heard."
"They're probably the least expensive employees you have. They're the most leaned into your AI tools," he said. "How's that going to work when you go like 10 years in the future and you have no one that has built up or learned anything?" Garman said companies should keep hiring graduates and teaching them how to build software, break down problems, and adopt best practices.
He also said the most valuable skills in an AI-driven economy aren't tied to any one college degree. "If you spend all of your time learning one specific thing and you're like, 'That's the thing I'm going to be expert at for the next 30 years,' I can promise you that's not going to be valuable 30 years from now," he said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Mark Zuckerberg Plans To Shake Up Meta's AI Efforts, Again
Meta announced today that it is splitting its Meta Superintelligence Labs into four divisions focused on AI research, superintelligence development, products, and infrastructure. The reorganization accompanies potential downsizing of the AI division's thousands of employees and executive departures, according to New York Times.
Vice President of Generative AI Loredana Crisan is expected to announce her departure Tuesday. The company is exploring third-party AI models for its products rather than relying solely on internal technology. Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang's team has abandoned Meta's previous frontier model Behemoth and is developing a new model from scratch, the report added.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Windows Power Users Frustrated as Microsoft Forces Automatic App Updates
Microsoft has removed the ability to disable automatic app updates in the Microsoft Store, according to screenshots from Deskmodder.de. Windows users can now only pause updates for one to five weeks. The Registry tweak that previously allowed users to modify update behavior has been removed. Group Policy editor remains the sole method for creating update exemptions on workstations and enterprise systems, but this tool is unavailable in Windows Home editions. The change is being deployed gradually to all Windows users. Microsoft has not commented on the modification, which affects all apps distributed through the Microsoft Store including both UWP and Win32 applications added in 2024.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Three-Quarters of Countries Face Below-Replacement Fertility by 2050
Global fertility rates have fallen from five children per woman in the mid-twentieth century to 2.2 today, with approximately half of countries now below the 2.1 replacement threshold, according to data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Mexico's rate dropped from seven children in 1970 to 1.6 in 2023. South Korea recorded 0.75 in 2024, down from 4.5 in 1970. The IHME projects over three-quarters of countries will fall below replacement level by 2050. A UN survey of 14,000 people across 14 countries found 39% cited financial limitations as a primary reason for not having children. China's population peaked around 2022 at 1.4 billion, while the U.S. Census Bureau predicts America's population will peak in 2080 at 370 million.
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Categories: Technology
Gates Funds $1 Million AI Alzheimer's Prize
Bill Gates is funding a $1 million competition to spur the use of AI to find innovative treatments for Alzheimer's disease, the latest effort to deploy the promising technology to find cures for humanity's toughest illnesses. From a report: The Alzheimer's Insights AI prize will be awarded to the team that comes up with the most original way to program AI-powered agents that are "capable of independent planning, reasoning, and action to accelerate breakthrough discoveries from existing Alzheimer's data." Â
The winning tool will be released for free on the Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative's cloud "workbench" to be used by scientists globally, the organisation said on Tuesday. The prize is being financed by Gates Ventures, the family office of the billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder.
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Categories: Technology
MIT Report: 95% of Generative AI Pilots at Companies Are Failing
The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, a new report published by MIT's NANDA initiative, reveals that while generative AI holds promise for enterprises, most initiatives to drive rapid revenue growth are falling flat. Fortune: Despite the rush to integrate powerful new models, about 5% of AI pilot programs achieve rapid revenue acceleration; the vast majority stall, delivering little to no measurable impact on P&L. The research -- based on 150 interviews with leaders, a survey of 350 employees, and an analysis of 300 public AI deployments -- paints a clear divide between success stories and stalled projects.
To unpack these findings, I spoke with Aditya Challapally, the lead author of the report, and a research contributor to project NANDA at MIT. "Some large companies' pilots and younger startups are really excelling with generative AI," Challapally said. Startups led by 19- or 20-year-olds, for example, "have seen revenues jump from zero to $20 million in a year," he said. "It's because they pick one pain point, execute well, and partner smartly with companies who use their tools," he added.
But for 95% of companies in the dataset, generative AI implementation is falling short. The core issue? Not the quality of the AI models, but the "learning gap" for both tools and organizations. While executives often blame regulation or model performance, MIT's research points to flawed enterprise integration. Generic tools like ChatGPT excel for individuals because of their flexibility, but they stall in enterprise use since they don't learn from or adapt to workflows, Challapally explained.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
DSA-5980-1 firefox-esr - security update
Multiple security issues have been found in the Mozilla Firefox web
browser, which could potentially result in the execution of arbitrary
code, sandbox escape or bypass of the same-origin policy.
Categories: Security
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