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McKinsey is asking graduate applicants to "collaborate" with an AI tool as part of its recruitment process, as competence with the technology becomes a requirement in competing for top-level jobs. From a report: The blue-chip consultancy is incorporating an "AI interview" into some final-round interviews, according to CaseBasix, a US company that helps candidates apply for posts at leading strategic consulting companies. In an online post, CaseBasix said candidates in "select final rounds" in the US have been asked to complete tests using McKinsey's internal AI tool, Lilli. They are required to carry out practical consulting tasks with the help of Lilli. "In the McKinsey AI interview, you are expected to prompt the AI, review its output, and apply judgment to produce a clear and structured response. The focus is on collaboration and reasoning rather than technical AI expertise," CaseBasix said.

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Google Trends is redesigning its Explore page, using Gemini to find and understand trending searches.Google Trends is redesigning its Explore page, using Gemini to find and understand trending searches.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once told an audience that he views local PC hardware the same way he views a 100-year-old electric generator he saw in a brewery museum -- as a relic of a pre-grid era, destined to be replaced by centralized utilities that users simply rent rather than own. The anecdote, shared at a talk a few years ago, positioned Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as the inevitable successors to the desktop tower. Bezos argued that users would eventually abandon local computing for cloud-based solutions, much as businesses once abandoned on-site power generation for the electrical grid. Current market dynamics have made that prediction feel more plausible. DRAM prices have become increasingly untenable for consumers, and companies like Dell and ASUS have signaled price increases across their PC ranges. Micron has shut down its consumer DRAM operations entirely, prioritizing AI datacenter demand instead. SSD storage is expected to face similar constraints. Cloud gaming services from Amazon Luna, NVIDIA GeForce Now and Xbox are seeing steady growth. Microsoft previously developed a consumer version of its business-grade Windows 365 cloud PC product, though the company deprioritized it -- the economics didn't work when cheap laptops remained available. That calculus could shift. Xbox Game Pass's 1440p cloud gaming runs $30 monthly and NVIDIA recently imposed a 100-hour cap on its cloud platform. The infrastructure remains expensive to operate, but rising local hardware costs may eventually close that gap.

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Matthew McConaughey is taking a novel legal approach to combat unauthorized AI fakes: trademarking himself. From a report: Over the past several months, the "Interstellar" and "Magic Mike" star has had eight trademark applications approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office featuring him staring, smiling and talking. His attorneys said the trademarks are meant to stop AI apps or users from simulating McConaughey's voice or likeness without permission -- an increasingly common concern of performers. The trademarks include a seven-second clip of the Oscar-winner standing on a porch, a three-second clip of him sitting in front of a Christmas tree, and audio of him saying "Alright, alright, alright," his famous line from the 1993 movie "Dazed and Confused," according to the approved applications. "My team and I want to know that when my voice or likeness is ever used, it's because I approved and signed off on it," the actor said in an email. "We want to create a clear perimeter around ownership with consent and attribution the norm in an AI world."

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The chief constable of one of Britain's largest police forces has admitted that Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant made a mistake in a football (soccer) intelligence report. From a report: The report, which led to Israeli football fans being banned from a match last year, included a nonexistent match between West Ham and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Copilot hallucinated the game and West Midlands Police included the error in its intelligence report without fact checking it. "On Friday afternoon I became aware that the erroneous result concerning the West Ham v Maccabi Tel Aviv match arose as result of a use of Microsoft Co Pilot [sic]," says Craig Guildford, chief constable of West Midlands Police, in a letter to the Home Affairs Committee earlier this week. Guildford previously denied in December that the West Midlands Police had used AI to prepare the report, blaming "social media scraping" for the error.

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Chinese-Linked VoidLink Malware Targets Linux Clouds and Kubernetes  WebProNews

Linux Mint 22.3 Brings a Refined Upgrade Experience  findarticles.com

How To Check RHEL Version in Linux  About Chromebooks

Personal Intelligence connects the Gemini app to your Google apps to provide more personalized suggestions.Personal Intelligence connects the Gemini app to your Google apps to provide more personalized suggestions.

VoidLink: The Cloud-Native Malware Framework Weaponizing Linux Infrastructure  CXOToday.com

After spending years pushing digital payments to combat tax evasion and money laundering, European Union ministers decided in December to ban businesses from refusing cash. The reversal comes as 12% of European businesses flatly refused cash in 2024, up from 4% three years earlier. Over one in three cinemas in the Netherlands no longer accept notes and coins. Cash usage across the euro area dropped from 79% of in-person transactions in 2016 to just 52% in 2024. Sweden leads the digital shift where 90% of purchases now happen digitally and cash represents under 1% of GDP compared to 22% in Japan. The policy change stems from concerns about financial inclusion for elderly and poor populations who struggle with digital systems. Resilience worries also drove the decision after Spaniards facing nationwide power cuts last spring found themselves unable to buy food. European officials worry about dependence on American payment giants Visa and MasterCard. The EU now recommends citizens store enough cash to survive a week without electricity or internet access.

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Linux distro designed to look like Windows hits 2 million downloads since the end of Windows 10 support  PC Guide

The European Union published guidance on December 30 that reclassified nuclear weapons as acceptable investments under its sustainable finance framework, completing a policy change approved in November that narrowed the definition of banned armaments from "controversial" to "prohibited." The shift addresses earlier vagueness that the Commission said hindered efforts to raise $932 billion in defense investments over four years. Under the revised rules, only four weapon categories remain expressly outlawed by a majority of EU states: personnel mines, cluster munitions, and biological and chemical weapons. Nuclear weapons manufacturers avoided exclusion because only Austria, Ireland and Malta signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, though all EU members support non-proliferation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The updated guidance also permits ESG labeling for companies handling depleted uranium for anti-tank ammunition and white phosphorus, which is toxic but not classified as a chemical weapon. European ESG funds currently hold minimal defense stocks, according to Jefferies data. The Commission's notice now makes these investments eligible for funds operating under Article 8 and Article 9 sustainable investment mandates.

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Community Benchmarks on Kaggle lets the community build, share and run custom evaluations for AI models.Community Benchmarks on Kaggle lets the community build, share and run custom evaluations for AI models.

Intel Panther Lake GSC Firmware Published Ahead Of Laptop Availability  Phoronix

Experts warn this new Chinese Linux malware could be preparing something seriously worrying  TechRadar

5 popular Linux terminal-based file managers—ranked  How-To Geek

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers have discovered a never-before-seen framework that infects Linux machines with a wide assortment of modules that are notable for the range of advanced capabilities they provide to attackers. The framework, referred to as VoidLink by its source code, features more than 30 modules that can be used to customize capabilities to meet attackers' needs for each infected machine. These modules can provide additional stealth and specific tools for reconnaissance, privilege escalation, and lateral movement inside a compromised network. The components can be easily added or removed as objectives change over the course of a campaign. VoidLink can target machines within popular cloud services by detecting if an infected machine is hosted inside AWS, GCP, Azure, Alibaba, and Tencent, and there are indications that developers plan to add detections for Huawei, DigitalOcean, and Vultr in future releases. To detect which cloud service hosts the machine, VoidLink examines metadata using the respective vendor's API. Similar frameworks targeting Windows servers have flourished for years. They are less common on Linux machines. The feature set is unusually broad and is "far more advanced than typical Linux malware," said researchers from Checkpoint, the security firm that discovered VoidLink. Its creation may indicate that the attacker's focus is increasingly expanding to include Linux systems, cloud infrastructure, and application deployment environments, as organizations increasingly move workloads to these environments. "VoidLink is a comprehensive ecosystem designed to maintain long-term, stealthy access to compromised Linux systems, particularly those running on public cloud platforms and in containerized environments," the researchers said in a separate post. "Its design reflects a level of planning and investment typically associated with professional threat actors rather than opportunistic attackers, raising the stakes for defenders who may never realize their infrastructure has been quietly taken over." The researchers note that VoidLink poses no immediate threat or required action since it's not actively targeting systems. However, defenders should remain vigilant.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers have discovered a never-before-seen framework that infects Linux machines with a wide assortment of modules that are notable for the range of advanced capabilities they provide to attackers. The framework, referred to as VoidLink by its source code, features more than 30 modules that can be used to customize capabilities to meet attackers' needs for each infected machine. These modules can provide additional stealth and specific tools for reconnaissance, privilege escalation, and lateral movement inside a compromised network. The components can be easily added or removed as objectives change over the course of a campaign. VoidLink can target machines within popular cloud services by detecting if an infected machine is hosted inside AWS, GCP, Azure, Alibaba, and Tencent, and there are indications that developers plan to add detections for Huawei, DigitalOcean, and Vultr in future releases. To detect which cloud service hosts the machine, VoidLink examines metadata using the respective vendor's API. Similar frameworks targeting Windows servers have flourished for years. They are less common on Linux machines. The feature set is unusually broad and is "far more advanced than typical Linux malware," said researchers from Checkpoint, the security firm that discovered VoidLink. Its creation may indicate that the attacker's focus is increasingly expanding to include Linux systems, cloud infrastructure, and application deployment environments, as organizations increasingly move workloads to these environments. "VoidLink is a comprehensive ecosystem designed to maintain long-term, stealthy access to compromised Linux systems, particularly those running on public cloud platforms and in containerized environments," the researchers said in a separate post. "Its design reflects a level of planning and investment typically associated with professional threat actors rather than opportunistic attackers, raising the stakes for defenders who may never realize their infrastructure has been quietly taken over." The researchers note that VoidLink poses no immediate threat or required action since it's not actively targeting systems. However, defenders should remain vigilant.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Niche Linux System Becomes a 'Phenomenal Hit' Forced by Microsoft: 2M Downloads in 3 Months, 1.5M Windows Users 'Defect'  36Kr