Submission + - Donald Trump secures China trade deal that may ease smartphone and PC prices (betanews.com)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: President Trump just pulled off what might be one of the biggest wins of his second term, and it could have major implications for the tech world. After some high-stakes negotiations in Geneva, the United States and China have struck a trade deal that could reshape the global electronics industry. While the full details should be revealed tomorrow, what we know today already has industry insiders buzzing.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer both confirmed that meaningful progress was made, thanks in part to the productive setting provided by the Swiss. But letâ(TM)s not kid ourselves; this deal wasnâ(TM)t born in the Alps.

This deal was clearly the result of a long-term strategy from President Trump, who took a lot of heat early on for slapping tariffs on Chinese goods and declaring a national emergency over the countryâ(TM)s enormous $1.2 trillion trade deficit. At the time, critics called it reckless. Now, it looks more like Donald Trump was playing chess while others were busy playing Chinese checkers.

Submission + - The Honeynet Project

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: “The Honeynet Project is an international, non-profit (501c3) research organisation dedicated to improving the security of the internet. For the past 20 years, our volunteers have developed open source tools and released cyber security research associated with cyber attacks and deception to the public at no cost.”

Submission + - A Blast From The Past: The UCSD p-System and Apple Pascal

Submitted by mbessey
mbessey writes: As we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the first release of UCSD Pascal, I thought it would be interesting to poke around in it a bit, and work on some tools to bring this "portable operating system" back to life on modern hardware, in a modern language (Rust).

The series is ongoing, but it starts here:
https://markbessey.blog/2025/0...

Submission + - OpenAI and Microsoft Go to Washington

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On Thursday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft President Brad Smith were joined by partners AMD and CoreWeave as they testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on 'Winning the AI Race', which was described as a two-horse race between the US and China (hearing transcript).

So, what's needed? According to Microsoft's Smith, faster permitting of AI datacenters (as well as more electricity and more electricians to bring them to life), government and private sector R&D spending, open access to government data for use in AI training, adoption of AI by the government and throughout society, skilling the American workforce (including funding of K-12 AI learning and literacy), and fewer constraints on exporting AI technology.

So, is what's good for AI tech companies good for the USA?

Submission + - Nintendo says your Switch 2 isn't really yours even if you paid for it (betanews.com) 1

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: The new Nintendo Switch 2 is almost here. Next month, eager fans will finally be able to get their hands on the highly anticipated follow-up to the wildly popular hybrid console. But before you line up (or frantically refresh your browser for a preorder), you might want to read the fine print, because Nintendo might be able to kill your console.

Yes, really. That’s not just speculation, folks. According to its newly updated user agreement, Nintendo has granted itself the right to make your Switch 2 “permanently unusable” if you break certain rules. Yes, the company might literally brick your device.

Buried in the legalese is a clause that says if you try to bypass system protections, modify software, or mess with the console in a way that’s not approved, Nintendo can take action. And that action could include completely disabling your system. The exact wording makes it crystal clear: Nintendo may “render the Nintendo Account Services and/or the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.”

Submission + - Anthropic can now track the bizarre inner workings of a large language model

Submitted by tomatoguy
tomatoguy writes: Having psychology-adjacent interests (and perhaps because it's a Friday afternoon), I found this fascinating.

What the firm found challenges some basic assumptions about how this technology really works.

MIT Technology Review

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/27/1113916/anthropic-can-now-track-the-bizarre-inner-workings-of-a-large-language-model/ (paywalled)

https://archive.is/4mujU (free)

= This caught my eye first: studying something that claims to be brainy using brain-investigation tools and approaches.

Anthropic says it was inspired by brain-scan techniques used in neuroscience to build what the firm describes as a kind of microscope that can be pointed at different parts of a model while it runs. The technique highlights components that are active at different times. Researchers can then zoom in on different components and record when they are and are not active.

= Secondly, LLMs get "better" when they know when to shut up.

The latest generation of large language models, like Claude 3.5 and Gemini and GPT-4o, hallucinate far less than previous versions, thanks to extensive post-training (the steps that take an LLM trained on text scraped from most of the internet and turn it into a usable chatbot). But Batson’s team was surprised to find that this post-training seems to have made Claude refuse to speculate as a default behavior. When it did respond with false information, it was because some other component had overridden the “don’t speculate” component.

Submission + - DOGE software engineer's computer infected by info-stealing malware (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by gkelley
gkelley writes: Login credentials belonging to an employee at both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Government Efficiency have appeared in multiple public leaks from info-stealer malware, a strong indication that devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years.

Kyle Schutt is a 30-something-year-old software engineer who, according to Dropsite News, gained access in February to a “core financial management system” belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As an employee of DOGE, Schutt accessed FEMA’s proprietary software for managing both disaster and non-disaster funding grants. Under his role at CISA, he likely is privy to sensitive information regarding the security of civilian federal government networks and critical infrastructure throughout the US.

Submission + - Police Dismantles Botnet Selling Hacked Routers As Residential Proxies (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Law enforcement authorities have dismantled a botnet that infected thousands of routers over the last 20 years to build two networks of residential proxies known as Anyproxy and 5socks. The U.S. Justice Department also indicted three Russian nationals (Alexey Viktorovich Chertkov, Kirill Vladimirovich Morozov, and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shishkin) and a Kazakhstani (Dmitriy Rubtsov) for their involvement in operating, maintaining, and profiting from these two illegal services.

During this joint action dubbed 'Operation Moonlander,' U.S. authorities worked with prosecutors and investigators from the Dutch National Police, the Netherlands Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie), and the Royal Thai Police, as well as analysts with Lumen Technologies' Black Lotus Labs. Court documents show that the now-dismantled botnet infected older wireless internet routers worldwide with malware since at least 2004, allowing unauthorized access to compromised devices to be sold as proxy servers on Anyproxy.net and 5socks.net. The two domains were managed by a Virginia-based company and hosted on servers globally.

On Wednesday, the FBI also issued a flash advisory (PDF) and a public service announcement warning that this botnet was targeting patch end-of-life (EoL) routers with a variant of the TheMoon malware. The FBI warned that the attackers are installing proxies later used to evade detection during cybercrime-for-hire activities, cryptocurrency theft attacks, and other illegal operations. The list of devices commonly targeted by the botnet includes Linksys and Cisco router models, including:

— Linksys E1200, E2500, E1000, E4200, E1500, E300, E3200, E1550
— Linksys WRT320N, WRT310N, WRT610N
— Cisco M10 and Cradlepoint E100

Submission + - AI Use Damages Professional Reputation, Study Suggests (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Using AI can be a double-edged sword, according to new research from Duke University. While generative AI tools may boost productivity for some, they might also secretly damage your professional reputation. On Thursday, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a study showing that employees who use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini at work face negative judgments about their competence and motivation from colleagues and managers. "Our findings reveal a dilemma for people considering adopting AI tools: Although AI can enhance productivity, its use carries social costs," write researchers Jessica A. Reif, Richard P. Larrick, and Jack B. Soll of Duke's Fuqua School of Business.

The Duke team conducted four experiments with over 4,400 participants to examine both anticipated and actual evaluations of AI tool users. Their findings, presented in a paper titled "Evidence of a social evaluation penalty for using AI," reveal a consistent pattern of bias against those who receive help from AI. What made this penalty particularly concerning for the researchers was its consistency across demographics. They found that the social stigma against AI use wasn't limited to specific groups.

Submission + - Kids Are Short-Circuiting Their School-Issued Chromebooks For TikTok Clout (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Schools across the US are warning parents about an Internet trend that has students purposefully trying to damage their school-issued Chromebooks so that they start smoking or catch fire. Various school districts, including some in Colorado, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington, have sent letters to parents warning about the trend that’s largely taken off on TikTok. Per reports from school districts and videos that Ars Technica has reviewed online, the so-called Chromebook Challenge includes students sticking things into Chromebook ports to short-circuit the system. Students are using various easily accessible items to do this, including writing utensils, paper clips, gum wrappers, and pushpins.

The Chromebook challenge has caused chaos for US schools, leading to laptop fires that have forced school evacuations, early dismissals, and the summoning of first responders. Schools are also warning that damage to school property can result in disciplinary action and, in some states, legal action.

In Plainville, Connecticut, a middle schooler allegedly “intentionally stuck scissors into a laptop, causing smoke to emit from it,” Superintendent Brian Reas told local news station WFSB. The incident reportedly led to one student going to the hospital due to smoke inhalation and is suspected to be connected to the viral trend. “Although the investigation is ongoing, the student involved will be referred to juvenile court to face criminal charges,” Reas said.

Submission + - A simple question tripped up a North Korean spy (yahoo.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Over the past year there have been stories about North Korean spies unknowningly, or knowingly, being hired to work in western companies. During an interview by Kraken, a crypto exchange, the interviewers became suspicious about the candidate. Instead of cutting off the interview, Kraken decided to continue the candidate through the hiring process to gain more information. One simple question confirmed the user wasn't who they said they were and even worse, was a North Korean spy. From the article:

The interview was scheduled for Halloween, a classic American holiday—especially for college students in New York—that Smith seemed to know nothing about.

“Watch out tonight because some people might be ringing your doorbell, kids with chain saws,” Percoco said, referring to the tradition of trick or treating. “What do you do when those people show up?”

Smith shrugged and shook his head. “Nothing special,” he said.

Smith was also unable to answer simple questions about Houston, the town he had supposedly been living in for two years. Despite having listed "food" as an interest on his résumé, Smith was unable to come up with a straight answer when asked about his favorite restaurant in the Houston area. He looked around for a few seconds before mumbling, “Nothing special here.”

Submission + - Lithium deposit valued at $1.5T discover in Oregon (earth.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: McDermitt Caldera in Oregon is attracting attention for what could be one of the largest lithium deposits ever identified in the United States. Many view it as a potential boost for domestic battery production, while local communities voice concern over the impact on wildlife and cultural sites.

The excitement stems from estimates that value the deposit at about $1.5 trillion. Some geologists say these ancient volcanic sediments could contain between 20 and 40 million metric tons of lithium.

Submission + - Bill Gates plans to give away money shutter foundation (axios.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Bill Gates, once the richest man in the world, vowed to give away "virtually all" of his wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next two decades. Then, the foundation will close its doors on Dec. 31, 2045. Gates wrote in a Thursday Gates Notes essay that the original plan was to sunset the foundation several decades after he and his then-wife died. Now, Gates believes that a "shorter timeline" is feasible after his divorce. It's unclear whether the world's richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people," Gates wrote.

Submission + - Hackers Exploit SAP RCE Flaw (thehackernews.com)

Submitted by bleedingobvious
bleedingobvious writes: A China-linked unnamed threat actor dubbed Chaya_004 has been observed exploiting a recently disclosed security flaw in SAP NetWeaver.

Forescout Vedere Labs, in a report published Thursday, said it uncovered a malicious infrastructure likely associated with the hacking group weaponizing CVE-2025-31324 (CVSS score: 10.0) since April 29, 2025.

CVE-2025-31324 refers to a critical SAP NetWeaver flaw that allows attackers to achieve remote code execution (RCE) by uploading web shells through a susceptible "/developmentserver/metadatauploader" endpoint.

The vulnerability was first flagged by ReliaQuest late last month when it found the shortcoming being abused in real-world attacks by unknown threat actors to drop web shells and the Brute Ratel C4 post-exploitation framework.

According to Onapsis, hundreds of SAP systems globally have fallen victim to attacks spanning industries and geographies, including energy and utilities, manufacturing, media and entertainment, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, retail, and government organizations.

Submission + - SpaceX gets approval to sell Starlink in India (behindtheblack.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Almost immediately after India's government issued this week new tightened regulations for allowing private satellite constellations to sell their services in India, it also apparently completed negotiations with SpaceX to allow it to sell Starlink in India based on these rules.

According to sources, the DoT [Department of Transportation] granted the LoI [Letter of Intent] after Starlink accepted 29 strict security conditions, including requirements for real-time terminal tracking, mandatory local data processing, legal interception capabilities, and localisation of at least 20% of its ground segment infrastructure within the first few years of operation.

Starlink’s nod came amid heightened national security sensitivities, coinciding with India’s pre-dawn Operation Sindoor strikes on terror camps across the border in response to the Pahalgam massacre. However, DoT officials clarified that the decision to approve Starlink was independent of these military developments.

At the moment SpaceX's chief competitors, OneWeb and Amazon's Kuiper constellation, have not yet obtained the same permissions. This allows SpaceX to grab a large portion of the market share in India before either of these other companies.

Submission + - AI tried to predict the next pope. Here's why it failed (science.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Habemus papam! Minutes ago, the Vatican announced that U.S. Cardinal Robert Prevost would be the next pope. Artificial intelligence (AI) made its own prediction earlier this week—but Prevost was not on the shortlist. In a paper posted on the preprint site arXiv, a machine learning algorithm that analyzed the ideological positions of the 133 high-ranking Catholic Church officials who made this decision predicted that Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin would be the next head of the Catholic Church. Though the program was off this time, experts say its approach could eventually be useful in predicting other types of electoral contests.

AI algorithms that analyze text, such as social media posts and candidates’ speeches, can be very accurate at predicting political election outcomes. But papal conclaves present a unique challenge. The election process, which takes place over multiple rounds until one person receives two-thirds of the vote, has remained the same for centuries. There are no polls or primary elections to analyze, and the papabili are sworn to secrecy about their votes.

So with the help of Michele Re Fiorentin, a physicist at the Polytechnic University of Turin, and University of Madrid mathematician Alberto Antonioni, Valdano set out to develop a way to predict papal elections. When it was announced in February that Pope Francis was ill, this group was already studying the emergence of political and ideological factions within the church, using an algorithm the researchers had trained on five centuries of meticulous “genealogical” records of bishops and the successors they appointed. The researchers’ logic is that a bishop’s or pope’s decision to appoint a new bishop or to elevate one to a cardinal may be partly determined by shared ideology. And when the time comes to appoint a new pope, the thinking goes, each elector is more likely to vote for a colleague who shares his own stances.

To model how these dynamics could play out in the current conclave, the researchers chose four broad topics likely to be important to this year’s papabili: attitudes toward same-sex couples, international migration and poverty, the Catholic Church’s ongoing dialogues with other religions, and synodality—the degree of autonomy and authority enjoyed by local church leaders relative to the pope. Using data from a website that compiles cardinals’ public statements, the researchers trained an AI model to determine how progressive or conservative each elector’s stance on each issue is. The model then categorized the 135 eligible electors (two cardinals didn’t attend the conclave)—and Pope Francis—by their ideological similarity to other candidates.

Next, the scientists simulated the conclave election process among their virtual cardinals. After eight or nine rounds of voting, the electors typically converged on one candidate: Parolin, currently the Vatican’s secretary of state. As the Vatican’s top diplomat and second-in-command to Pope Francis, Parolin is widely considered a front-runner and has the best odds on online betting sites.

The authors’ analysis had put Prevost’s views near the center on all four ideological topics, meaning he was likely elected as a compromise candidate. Electing a U.S. pope could also help shore up support from Catholic communities there.

Re Fiorentin says the model probably missed Prevost as a likely pope because it didn’t consider political and geographical factors that played a role in the election. Lacking that information, he says, “is a major shortcoming of our model.”

In the future, he adds, the model could incorporate geographic information about the candidates. “However, we think that other important data about geopolitical influence, lobbying, etc., are much more difficult to obtain and to use.”

Submission + - Senate Passes 'Cruel' Republican Plan To Block Wi-Fi Hotspots For Schoolkids (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The US Senate today voted along party lines to kill a Federal Communications Commission program to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren, with Democrats saying the Republican-led vote will make it harder for kids without reliable Internet access to complete their homework. The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify the hotspot rule, which was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2024 under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The program would be eliminated if the House version passes and President Trump signs the joint resolution of disapproval.

The Rosenworcel FCC's rule expanded E-Rate, a Universal Service Fund program, allowing schools and libraries to use E-Rate funding to lend out Wi-Fi hotspots and services that could be used off-premises. The FCC rule was titled, "Addressing the Homework Gap through the E-Rate Program," and the hotspot lending program was scheduled to begin in funding year 2025, which starts in July 2025. Today's Senate vote on the resolution of disapproval was 50–38. There was a 53–47 vote on Tuesday that allowed the Senate measure to proceed to the final step. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said on Tuesday that "this resolution would prevent millions of students, educators, and families from getting online."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Trouble with Microsoft Intune Autopilot 2

Submitted by Z00L00K
Z00L00K writes: At the company where I work we have now three times encountered cases where some Windows 11 computers have either been reassigned to another company or removed from the company where I work and ended up being a generic Microsoft account computer.

This is first visualized on the Let's add your Microsoft account page where the logo is incorrect over the Sign In field. In my most recent case the computer has been removed from Intune, but has still been present in Entra. The end result has been a computer with a quite weird behavior limiting its usability.

All computers have been Dell computers of various models, but I doubt that it's a Dell only issue.

So my question is if anyone else has encountered the same phenomenon?

Submission + - High tariffs become 'real' with our first $36K bill (adafruit.com)

Submitted by ptorrone
ptorrone writes: We're no stranger to tariff bills, although they have definitely ramped up over the last two months. However, this is our first 'big bill', where a large portion was subjected to a 125%+20%+25% import markup. Unlike other taxes like sales tax where we collect on behalf of the state and then submit it back at the end of the month, or income taxes, where we only pay if we are profitable, tariff taxes are paid before we sell any of the products and are due within a week of receipt which has a big impact on cash flow.

In this particular case, we're buying from a vendor, not a factory, so we can't second-source the items (and these particular products we couldn't manufacture ourselves even if we wanted to, since the vendor has well-deserved IP protections). And the products were booked & manufactured many months ago, before the tariffs were in place. Since they are electronics products/components, there's a chance we may be able to request reclassification on some items to avoid the 125% 'reciprocal' tariff, but there's no assurance that it will succeed, and even if it does, it is many, many months until we could see a refund.

We'll have to increase the prices on some of these products, but we're not sure if people will be willing to pay the higher cost, so we may well be 'stuck' with unsellable inventory that we have already paid a large fee on.

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