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FSF Reminds Consumers That Truly Free OS's Exist

Slashdot.org - Sun, 10/19/2025 - 09:34
"Microsoft does everything in its power to keep Windows users under its control," warns the Free Software Foundation in a new blog post this week. They argue that the lack of freedom that comes with proprietary code "forces users to surrender to decisions made by Microsoft to maximize its profits and further lock users into its product ecosystem" — describing both the problem and one possible solution: [IT management company Lansweeper] found that of the 30 million enterprise systems they manage, over 40% are incompatible with Windows 11. This is due to the hardware requirements like Treacherous Platform Module version 2.0 — a proprietary chip that uses cryptography that users can't influence or audit to restrict their control over the system. The end of Windows 10 support is the perfect opportunity to break free from this cycle and switch to GNU/Linux operating system (GNU/Linux OS), a system that respects your freedom... The endless, freedom-restricting cycle of planned obsolescence is not inevitable. Instead of paying Microsoft for continued updates or buying new hardware, Windows users left behind by Microsoft should install GNU/Linux. Free Software Foundation certified GNU/Linux distributions respect the user's freedom to run their computer as they wish, to study and modify its source code, and to redistribute copies. They don't require update contracts, often run faster on older hardware, and, most importantly, put you in control. "If you're already a GNU/Linux user, you have an important role to play. Help your friends and family make the switch by sharing your knowledge, help them install a free-as-in-freedom OS. Show them what it means to have real control over their computing!"

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Extortion and Ransomware Drive Over Half of Cyberattacks — Sometimes Using AI, Microsoft Finds

Slashdot.org - Sun, 10/19/2025 - 06:34
Microsoft said in a blog post this week that "over half of cyberattacks with known motives were driven by extortion or ransomware... while attacks focused solely on espionage made up just 4%." And Microsoft's annual digital threats report found operations expanding even more through AI, with cybercriminals "accelerating malware development and creating more realistic synthetic content, enhancing the efficiency of activities such as phishing and ransomware attacks." [L]egacy security measures are no longer enough; we need modern defenses leveraging AI and strong collaboration across industries and governments to keep pace with the threat... Over the past year, both attackers and defenders harnessed the power of generative AI. Threat actors are using AI to boost their attacks by automating phishing, scaling social engineering, creating synthetic media, finding vulnerabilities faster, and creating malware that can adapt itself... For defenders, AI is also proving to be a valuable tool. Microsoft, for example, uses AI to spot threats, close detection gaps, catch phishing attempts, and protect vulnerable users. As both the risks and opportunities of AI rapidly evolve, organizations must prioritize securing their AI tools and training their teams... Amid the growing sophistication of cyber threats, one statistic stands out: more than 97% of identity attacks are password attacks. In the first half of 2025 alone, identity-based attacks surged by 32%. That means the vast majority of malicious sign-in attempts an organization might receive are via large-scale password guessing attempts. Attackers get usernames and passwords ("credentials") for these bulk attacks largely from credential leaks. However, credential leaks aren't the only place where attackers can obtain credentials. This year, we saw a surge in the use of infostealer malware by cybercriminals... Luckily, the solution to identity compromise is simple. The implementation of phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA) can stop over 99% of this type of attack even if the attacker has the correct username and password combination. "Security is not only a technical challenge but a governance imperative..." Microsoft adds in their blog post. "Governments must build frameworks that signal credible and proportionate consequences for malicious activity that violates international rules." (The report also found that America is the #1 most-targeted country — and that many U.S. companies have outdated cyber defenses.) But while "most of the immediate attacks organizations face today come from opportunistic criminals looking to make a profit," Microsoft writes that nation-state threats "remain a serious and persistent threat." More details from the Associated Press: Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have sharply increased their use of artificial intelligence to deceive people online and mount cyberattacks against the United States, according to new research from Microsoft. This July, the company identified more than 200 instances of foreign adversaries using AI to create fake content online, more than double the number from July 2024 and more than ten times the number seen in 2023. Examples of foreign espionage cited by the article: China is continuing its broad push across industries to conduct espionage and steal sensitive data... Iran is going after a wider range of targets than ever before, from the Middle East to North America, as part of broadening espionage operations.. "[O]utside of Ukraine, the top ten countries most affected by Russian cyber activity all belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — a 25% increase compared to last year." North Korea remains focused on revenue generation and espionage... There was one especially worrying finding. The report found that critical public services are often targeted, partly because their tight budgets limit their incident response capabilities, "often resulting in outdated software.... Ransomware actors in particular focus on these critical sectors because of the targets' limited options. For example, a hospital must quickly resolve its encrypted systems, or patients could die, potentially leaving no other recourse but to pay."

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New Data Shows Record CO2 Levels in 2024. Are Carbon Sinks Failing?

Slashdot.org - Sun, 10/19/2025 - 02:34
The Guardian reports that atmospheric carbon dioxide "soared by a record amount in 2024 to hit another high, UN data shows." But what's more troubling is why: Several factors contributed to the leap in CO2, including another year of unrelenting fossil fuel burning despite a pledge by the world's countries in 2023 to "transition away" from coal, oil and gas. Another factor was an upsurge in wildfires in conditions made hotter and drier by global heating. Wildfire emissions in the Americas reached historic levels in 2024, which was the hottest year yet recorded. However, scientists are concerned about a third factor: the possibility that the planet's carbon sinks are beginning to fail. About half of all CO2 emissions every year are taken back out of the atmosphere by being dissolved in the ocean or being sucked up by growing trees and plants. But the oceans are getting hotter and can therefore absorb less CO2 while on land hotter and drier conditions and more wildfires mean less plant growth... Atmospheric concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide — the second and third most important greenhouse gases related to human activities — also rose to record levels in 2024. About 40% of methane emissions come from natural sources. But scientists are concerned that global heating is leading to more methane production in wetlands, another potential feedback loop. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

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OpenAI Cofounder Builds New Open Source LLM 'Nanochat' - and Doesn't Use Vibe Coding

Slashdot.org - Sat, 10/18/2025 - 22:34
An anonymous reader shared this report from Gizmodo: It's been over a year since OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy exited the company. In the time since he's been gone, he coined and popularized the term "vibe coding" to describe the practice of farming out coding projects to AI tools. But earlier this week, when he released his own open source model called nanochat, he admitted that he wrote the whole thing by hand, vibes be damned. Nanochat, according to Karpathy, is a "minimal, from scratch, full-stack training/inference pipeline" that is designed to let anyone build a large language model with a ChatGPT-style chatbot interface in a matter of hours and for as little as $100. Karpathy said the project contains about 8,000 lines of "quite clean code," which he wrote by hand — not necessarily by choice, but because he found AI tools couldn't do what he needed. "It's basically entirely hand-written (with tab autocomplete)," he wrote. "I tried to use claude/codex agents a few times but they just didn't work well enough at all and net unhelpful."

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Repair Plan Underway to Restore Power at Ukrainian Nuclear Plant

Slashdot.org - Sat, 10/18/2025 - 20:34
Repair Plan Underway to Restore Power at Ukrainian Nuclear Plant The Associated Press reports: Work has begun to repair the damaged power supply to Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog said Saturday. The repairs are hoped to end a precarious four-week outage that saw it dependent on backup generators. Russian and Ukrainian forces established special ceasefire zones for repairs to be safely carried out, said the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi... "Both sides engaged constructively with the IAEA to enable the complex repair plan to proceed," Grossi said in a statement... The Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest nuclear power station, has been operating on diesel back-up generators since Sept. 23 when its last remaining external power line was severed in attacks that Russia and Ukraine each blamed on the other. The plant is in an area under Russian control since early in Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is not in service, but it needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.

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