RSS 생중계

Austria's coalition government has agreed on a plan to enable police to monitor suspects' secure messaging in order to thwart militant attacks, ending what security officials have said is a rare and dangerous blind spot for a European Union country. From a report: Because Austria lacks a legal framework for monitoring messaging services like WhatsApp, its main domestic intelligence service and police rely on allies with far more sweeping powers like Britain and the United States alerting them to chatter about planned attacks and spying. That kind of tip-off led to police unravelling what they say was a planned attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, which prompted the cancellation of all three of her planned shows there in August of last year. "The aim is to make people planning terrorist attacks in Austria feel less secure - and increase everyone else's sense of security," Joerg Leichtfried of the Social Democrats, the junior minister in charge of overseeing the Directorate for State Security and Intelligence (DSN), told a news conference.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Napster, the brand synonymous with the music piracy boom of the early 2000s, has a new copyright challenge. Together with audio giant Sonos, Napster faces a lawsuit demanding over $3.4 million in alleged unpaid copyright royalties. Filed by collective rights management organization SoundExchange, the complaint (PDF) centers on missed payments related to the "Sonos Radio" service, which until 2023 was powered by Napster's music catalog. [...] Sonos Radio launched in April 2020 with Napster as the authorized agent, submitting the required royalty reports and royalties to SoundExchange. While all went well initially, payments stopped around May 2022. At the time, Napster had been acquired by venture capital firms Hivemind and Algorand, with a focus on "web3" technologies, including cryptocurrencies and blockchain. According to the complaint, the takeover resulted in a "complete breakdown of reporting and payment for the Sonos Radio service." The alleged payment problems eventually came to light during an audit initiated by SoundExchange in 2023, which concluded that Sonos and Napster owed millions in unpaid royalties. Sonos and Napster are no longer partners in the radio service, as the audio equipment manufacturer switched to Deezer around April 2023. That appears to have solved the royalty issues, but SoundExchange still believes it is owed more than $3 million. "In total, Sonos, and its agent Napster, have failed to pay at least $3,423,844.41 comprising royalties owed for the period October 2022 to April 2023, interest, late fees, and auditor fee-shifting costs, and subtracting Sonos and Napster's payments made to date. "Late fees and interest continue to grow," SoundExchange adds, while requesting compensation in full. The complaint lists one count of "underpayment" of statutory royalties, and one count of "non-payment" of royalties, as determined by the audit. For both Copyright Act violations, SoundExchange requests damages of at least $3.4 million.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook now supports passkeys for login, offering users a more secure, phishing-resistant alternative to passwords by using biometrics or a PIN stored on their device. The feature is rolling out to iOS and Android "soon," while Messenger will get the feature "in the coming months." Lifehacker reports: Meta seems pretty excited about the news -- and not just because the company happens to be a member of the FIDO Alliance, the organization that developed passkeys. Aside from logging into your Facebook account, Meta says you'll be able to use passkeys to autofill your payment info when buying things with Meta Pay. You'll also be able to use the same passkey between both Facebook and Messenger, and your passkey will act as a key to lock out your encrypted Messenger chats.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo plans to relaunch its robotaxi service in New York City, starting with safety driver testing while lobbying to change state law to eventually allow fully autonomous vehicles without human operators. The company has applied for a permit and will begin mapping in Manhattan, though legislative hurdles and skepticism from lawmakers remain. The Verge reports: A bill was introduced in the New York State Legislature earlier this year that would permit autonomous vehicles without safety drivers "provided that the automated driving system is engaged and the vehicle meets certain conditions." The bill is currently under consideration by the state Senate's transportation committee. New York City also has some of the most dangerous, congested, and poorly managed streets in the world. They are also full of construction workers, pedestrians, bicyclists, and double- and sometimes even triple-parked cars. In theory, this would make it very difficult for an autonomous vehicle to navigate, given that AVs typically rely on good weather, clear signage, and less aggressive driving from other road users for safe operation. And it's not clear that the state will amend its laws to allow for fully driverless vehicles, with some lawmakers expressing reservations. "This kind of testing hasn't even been completed in other parts of the country," state Senator John Liu told Daily News last year after the city announced its new permitting process. "It would behoove New York City to wait to see some of those other results of driverless technology in less dense urban settings. This is an example of something where New York City does not have to be first."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has announced that the Google Veo 3 AI video generator will be integrated with YouTube Shorts later this summer. According to Mohan, YouTube Shorts has seen a rise in popularity even compared to YouTube as a whole. The streaming platform is now the most watched source of video in the world, but Shorts specifically have seen a massive 186 percent increase in viewership over the past year. Mohan says Shorts now average 200 billion daily views. YouTube has already equipped creators with a few AI tools, including Dream Screen, which can produce AI video backgrounds with a text prompt. Veo 3 support will be a significant upgrade, though. At the Cannes festival, Mohan revealed that the streaming site will begin offering integration with Google's leading video model later this summer. "I believe these tools will open new creative lanes for everyone to explore," said Mohan. [...] While you can add Veo 3 videos (or any video) to a YouTube Short right now, they don't fit with the format's portrait orientation focus. Veo 3 outputs 720p landscape videos, meaning you'd have black bars in a Short. Presumably, Google will create a custom version of the model for YouTube to spit out vertical video clips. Mohan didn't mention a pricing model, but Veo 3 probably won't be cheap for Shorts creators. Currently, you must pay for Google's $250 AI Ultra plan to access Veo 3, and that still limits you to 125 8-second videos per month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is planning to ax thousands of jobs, particularly in sales, as part of the company's latest move to trim its workforce amid heavy spending on AI. From a report: The cuts are expected to be announced early next month [non-paywalled source], following the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, according to people familiar with the matter. The reductions won't exclusively affect sales teams, and the timing could still change, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. The terminations would follow a previous round of layoffs in May that hit 6,000 people and fell hardest on product and engineering positions, largely sparing customer-facing roles like sales and marketing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Investigators believe Air India Flight 171 had an emergency-power generator operating when it crashed last week, raising questions about whether the plane's engines functioned properly during takeoff. WSJ: The preliminary finding [non-paywalled source], according to people familiar with the probe, gives investigators a new line of inquiry as they study a crash that killed all but one of the plane's passengers. In all, at least 270 people died following the crash, including some on the ground in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. The emergency system is known as a ram air turbine. It is a small propeller that drops from the bottom of the 787 Dreamliner's fuselage to serve as a backup generator. Engines normally produce electricity for an aircraft and help run its flight-control systems. The power generated by the RAT can enable crucial aircraft components to function. The system can deploy automatically in flight if both engines have failed or if all three hydraulic system pressures are low, according to an airline's Boeing 787 manual reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It can also deploy if cockpit instruments lose power or problems emerge with the aircraft's electric motor pumps. Pilots can manually deploy the RAT if needed. The most common occurrence is when a pilot thinks that both engines failed, according to Anthony Brickhouse, a U.S.-based aerospace safety consultant. Engine failures can result from a variety of causes, including bird strikes or problems with fuel.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The NFC Forum has released NFC Release 15 (that's what it's calling it), extending the operating range of Near Field Communication connections from 0.5 centimeters to 2 centimeters -- a fourfold increase that reduces the precision required for device alignment. The global standards body, whose board includes representatives from Apple, Google, Huawei, Infineon, NXP, Sony, and ST Microelectronics, designed the enhancement to accelerate transaction speeds and improve reliability across NFC-enabled devices. The expanded range addresses technical challenges in smaller form-factor devices like wearables and smartphones while maintaining compatibility with existing ISO/IEC 14443 standards. The standard also incorporates support for NFC Digital Product Passport specifications, allowing single NFC tags embedded in products to store and transmit sustainability data throughout their lifecycle.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is positioning Windows as the primary gaming platform for Xbox, according to Xbox president Sarah Bond. "We're working closely with the Windows team to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for gaming," Bond said in a video announcing a partnership with AMD for next-generation Xbox hardware spanning consoles and handhelds. The statement, PCWorld points out, aligns with Microsoft's recent "This is an Xbox" marketing campaign, which promotes phones, PCs, televisions, and traditional consoles as Xbox devices. The company's newly announced Xbox Ally X handheld runs Windows beneath its Xbox interface, allowing access to multiple game stores unlike Valve's Steam Deck. Microsoft has shifted strategy following weak Xbox console sales compared to PlayStation, spending billions to acquire publishers including Bethesda and Activision Blizzard while expanding Xbox Cloud Gaming services across multiple device types.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The POSIX realtime model, which is implemented in the Linux kernel, can ensure that a realtime process obtains the CPU time it needs to get its job done. It can be less effective, though, when there are multiple realtime processes competing for the available CPU resources. The hierarchical constant bandwidth server patch series, posted by Yuri Andriaccio with work by Luca Abeni, Alessio Balsini, and Andrea Parri, is a modification to the Linux scheduler intended to make it possible to configure systems with multiple realtime tasks in a deterministic and correct manner.

Swiss Re has identified extreme heat as a significant insurance threat in its latest annual report on emerging risks with the Zurich-based reinsurer noting that up to half a million people globally die from extreme heat effects each year. The death toll exceeds the combined impact of floods, earthquakes and hurricanes. Heat waves contributed to conditions that generated $78.5 billion in insured wildfire losses globally from 2015-2024, Swiss Re reported. The Los Angeles wildfires this year could add up to $45 billion in insured losses, according to UCLA Anderson School of Business estimates. The insurance industry has historically underestimated heat-related costs because damages spread across multiple policy types rather than appearing as a single category. Construction firms face rising medical insurance and workers compensation claims when outdoor workers suffer heat injuries, plus potential liability for inadequate cooling breaks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK Information Commissioner's Office has issued its first guidance demanding manufacturers of air fryers, smart speakers, fertility trackers, and smart TVs respect users' privacy rights after reports of excessive data collection in homes. The regulator requires companies to ensure data security, provide transparency to consumers, and regularly delete collected information. Stephen Almond, the ICO's executive director for regulatory risk, said smart products know who users live with, their music preferences, and medication details. The guidance addresses "internet of things" devices, including fertility trackers that record menstrual dates and body temperature before sending data to manufacturer servers. Additionally, smart speakers that monitor family members and visitors must allow users to configure settings that minimize personal information collection. The ICO warned manufacturers it stands ready to take enforcement action in the event of noncompliance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nature will automatically publish peer review reports and author responses alongside all newly submitted research papers starting this week. The flagship scientific journal previously offered transparent peer review as an optional service since 2020, while Nature Communications has required it since 2016. All exchanges between authors and anonymous reviewers will become publicly accessible (reviewer identities remain confidential unless they choose disclosure). Nature aims to open what it calls the "black box" of science by revealing the months-long conversations that shape research papers before publication.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting in summer 2026, Netflix subscribers in France will be able to watch commercially broadcast TV content "without ever having to leave the service." The Verge adds: The streaming giant has announced a distribution deal with French media company TF1 Group to make TF1's free-to-air live TV channels and on-demand TF1 Plus streaming content available to French Netflix users as part of their existing subscription plan.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Lustre filesystem has a long history, some of which intersects with Linux. It was added to the staging tree in 2013, but was bounced out of staging in 2018, due to a lack of progress and a development model that was incompatible with the kernel's. Lustre may be working its way back into the kernel, though. In a filesystem-track session at the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit (LSFMM+BPF), Timothy Day and James Simmons led a discussion on how to get Lustre into the mainline.

U.S. public companies have cut their white-collar workforces by 3.5% over the past three years, marking a fundamental shift in corporate philosophy that views fewer employees as a path to faster growth. One in five S&P 500 companies now employ fewer people than they did a decade ago, according to employment data-provider Live Data Technologies. The reductions extend beyond typical cost-cutting measures and coincide with record corporate profits at the end of last year. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees Tuesday that AI will eliminate certain jobs in coming years, while Procter & Gamble announced plans to cut 7,000 positions to create "broader roles and smaller teams." Bank of America reduced its workforce from 285,000 in 2010 to 213,000 today while revenues climbed 18% over the past decade. Managers have faced particularly steep cuts, with their ranks falling 6.1% between May 2022 and May 2025. Companies are flattening organizational structures and pushing remaining employees to handle larger workloads as executives track revenue per employee more closely.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The KDE Project has announced the Plasma 6.4 release. New features include more flexible tiling features, improvements to the Spectacle screen capture utility, a number of accessibility enhancements, and much more. See the changelog for a complete list of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (gst-plugins-bad1.0, konsole, and libblockdev), Oracle (buildah, containernetworking-plugins, gimp, git-lfs, gvisor-tap-vsock, kernel, libvpx, podman, and skopeo), Red Hat (apache-commons-beanutils and thunderbird), Slackware (xorg), SUSE (gdm, golang-github-prometheus-alertmanager, golang-github-prometheus-node_exporter, golang-github-prometheus-prometheus, govulncheck-vulndb, grafana, kernel, Multi-Linux Manager, Multi-Linux Manager Client Tools, openssl-3, pam, python-cryptography, python-requests, python-setuptools, python3-requests, SUSE Manager Server, systemd, ucode-intel, xorg-x11-server, and xwayland), and Ubuntu (dwarfutils, mujs, node-katex, xorg-server, xorg-server-hwe-16.04, xorg-server-hwe-18.04, and xorg-server, xwayland).

DC Studios co-head James Gunn argues that the movie industry is "dying" primarily because productions begin before screenplays are complete, while also delivering a sharp critique of his former employer Marvel Studios, which he claims Disney has "killed" through output mandates. Gunn dismissed common explanations for Hollywood's struggles like declining theater attendance or improved home viewing experiences, telling Rolling Stone that "the number one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay." The filmmaker has implemented a strict rule at DC Studios requiring finished scripts before production starts, recently scrapping a project because its screenplay wasn't ready. The director, who previously helmed three "Guardians of the Galaxy" films for Marvel, said Disney's corporate directive to increase output destroyed the studio's creative process. "They were under a corporate mandate, yeah. That wasn't fair. It wasn't right. And it killed them," Gunn said, referring to Marvel's mandated production quotas for movies and television shows. By contrast, Gunn said DC Studios operates without numerical mandates. "We don't have the mandate to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we're going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality," he explained.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused Meta of attempting to poach his developers with $100 million sign-on bonuses and higher compensation packages as the social media giant races to catch up in AI race. Altman said Meta, which has a $1.8 trillion market capitalization, began making the offers to his team members after falling behind in AI efforts. "I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor," Altman said on the Uncapped podcast [video] hosted by his brother. None of his "best people" had accepted Zuckerberg's offers, he said. Meta has been recruiting top researchers and engineers from rival companies to build a new "superintelligence" team focused on developing AGI. The Facebook parent company has struggled this year to match competitors, facing criticism over its Llama 4 language model and delaying its flagship "Behemoth" AI model.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.