Feed aggregator

AI security firm Irregular has found that passwords generated by major large language models -- Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini -- appear complex but follow predictable patterns that make them crackable in hours, even on decades-old hardware. When researchers prompted Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 fifty times in separate conversations, only 30 of the returned passwords were unique, and 18 of the duplicates were the exact same string. The estimated entropy of LLM-generated 16-character passwords came in around 20 to 27 bits, far below the 98 to 120 bits expected of truly random passwords.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Turbostat With Linux 7.0 Can Report New L2 Cache Statistics  Phoronix

Despite the popular notion that the modern economy runs around the clock, a new NBER working paper analyzing fifty years of U.S. labor data from 1973 to 2023 finds that Americans have been steadily and consistently moving away from evening and night work toward traditional daytime hours [PDF]. The share of the workforce on the job at 11PM, for instance, fell by over 25% from its 1970s level. Economists Jeff Biddle and Daniel Hamermesh argue the primary driver is rising real incomes -- night work is essentially an inferior good that workers avoid as they earn more. The wage premium employers must pay for undesirable hours has grown by about three percentage points over the period. One sector bucked the trend: retail, where the rise of big-box chains, 24-hour Walmart supercenters and overnight distribution center restocking pushed more employees into late-night and early-morning shifts. The Covid-era surge in telework, rather than spreading work across the day, actually accelerated the concentration into prime hours -- especially among college-educated workers. France showed a similar pattern of daytime compression over 1966-2010, but the U.K. did not, likely because rapid de-unionization there eliminated the union wage premiums that had made night work comparatively attractive.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study [PDF] from Ramp's economics lab has found that businesses are steadily replacing freelance workers hired through platforms like Upwork and Fiverr with AI tools from OpenAI and Anthropic, and the substitution is happening at a fraction of the cost. The paper, authored by Ryan Stevens, Ramp's Director of Applied Sciences, tracked firm-level spending data from Q3 2021 to Q3 2025 across thousands of companies on Ramp's expense management platform. The share of total business spend going to online labor marketplaces fell from 0.66% in Q4 2021 to 0.14% in Q3 2025, while AI model provider spending rose from zero to 2.85% over the same period. More than half the businesses that used freelance marketplaces in Q2 2022 had stopped entirely by Q2 2025. The cost dynamics are particularly notable. Firms most exposed to AI -- those that historically spent the most on freelancers -- substituted at a rate of roughly $1 in reduced freelance spend for every $0.03 in AI spend. A middle-exposure group showed a ratio of $1 to $0.30. The study uses a difference-in-differences design built around the launch of ChatGPT in October 2022 as a natural experiment. Stevens notes that micro-level substitution does not imply aggregate job loss, as demand for workers who build and maintain AI systems could grow faster than displacement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

5 programs you need to know about as a Linux user  MakeUseOf

Linux is not a Windows substitute: Here's how you should approach it  How-To Geek

Three new Chrome features designed to give you a productivity boost: Split view, Save to Google Drive and PDF annotations.Three new Chrome features designed to give you a productivity boost: Split view, Save to Google Drive and PDF annotations.

Introducing Pomelli Photoshoot, turn product photos into professional studio shots instantly using Nano Banana.Introducing Pomelli Photoshoot, turn product photos into professional studio shots instantly using Nano Banana.

In 2025, we significantly enhanced the Google Play and Android app ecosystems.

Accenture has reportedly started tracking staff use of its AI tools and will take this into consideration when deciding on top promotions, as the consulting company tries to increase uptake of the technology by its workforce. From a report: The company told senior managers and associate directors that being promoted to leadership roles would require "regular adoption" of artificial intelligence, according to an internal email seen by the Financial Times. The consultancy has also begun collecting data on weekly log-ins to its AI tools by some senior staff members, the FT reports. Accenture has previously said it has trained 550,000 of its 780,000-strong workforce in generative AI, up from only 30 people in 2022, and has announced it is rolling out training to all of its employees as part of its annual $1bn annual spend on learning. Among the tools whose use will reportedly be monitored is Accenture's AI Refinery. The chief executive, Julie Sweet, has previously said this will "create opportunities for companies to reimagine their processes and operations, discover new ways of working, and scale AI solutions across the enterprise to help drive continuous change and create value."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI Helped Uncover A "50-80x Improvement" For Linux's IO_uring  Phoronix

My favourite thing about Linux gaming will now automagically apply crucial fan patches to your Metal Gear installs, making it even easier than on Windows  PC Gamer

My favourite thing about Linux gaming will now automagically apply crucial fan patches to your Metal Gear installs, making it even easier than on Windows  PC Gamer

My favourite thing about Linux gaming will now automagically apply crucial fan patches to your Metal Gear installs, making it even easier than on Windows  PC Gamer

My favourite thing about Linux gaming will now automagically apply crucial fan patches to your Metal Gear installs, making it even easier than on Windows  PC Gamer

My favourite thing about Linux gaming will now automagically apply crucial fan patches to your Metal Gear installs, making it even easier than on Windows  PC Gamer

Workplace grievances that once fit in a single email are now ballooning into 30-page documents stuffed with irrelevant historical detail, made-up legal precedents, and citations to laws from the wrong country -- and UK employment lawyers say generative AI is the likely culprit. Anna Bond, legal director at Lewis Silkin, says the complaints she now sees sometimes cite Canadian legislation or fabricated case law. Sinead Casey, employment partner at Linklaters, calls such filings "confidently incompetent" -- superficially persuasive even to lawyers. The flood of bloated claims is compounding pressure on an already stretched tribunal system: Ministry of Justice figures show new employment cases rose 33% in the three months to September, even as concluded cases fell 10% year over year. Investor Marc Andreessen, quipping on X: Overheard in Silicon Valley: "Marginal cost of arguing is going to zero."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

3.1 Pro is designed for tasks where a simple answer isn’t enough.3.1 Pro is designed for tasks where a simple answer isn’t enough.

I've used Windows for decades, but I tried Linux to see if it's truly 'easy' now - and one thing surprised me  ZDNet

Linux Kernel 7.0 Speeds Up File Cache Memory Reclaim by Up to 75%  TechPowerUp