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Submission + - Xubuntu website maybe compromised. (reddit.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Torrent downloads over at https://xubuntu.org/download/ are serving a zip file with a suspicious exe and a tos.txt inside. The TOS starts with Copyright (c) 2026 Xubuntu.org which is sus, because it is 2025. I opened the .exe with file-roller and couldn't find any .torrent inside.

???

Comment Re:That's just clever. (Score 2) 53

Two economists are walking in a forest when they come across a pile of shit.

The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.

They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.

Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."

"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"

Submission + - A blue jay and a green jay mated, offspring is a scientific marvel (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The vividly colored green jay is found in parts of South and Central America, Mexico and a limited portion of southern Texas. But since 2000, the tropical bird’s territory has expanded north by hundreds of kilometers — more than 100 miles and about 2 degrees of latitude — along the Rio Grande and up toward San Antonio.

While monitoring social media for green jay sightings in May 2023, Stokes came across an intriguing post on a Facebook group called Texbirds. A woman in a suburb of San Antonio shared a photo of an unusual bird that didn’t look like any jay Stokes or Keitt had ever seen.

The researchers tagged the mystery bird and drew blood for genetic sampling. They noted that their study subject displayed distinct traits of both blue and green jays — which aren’t that closely related and split off from a common ancestor around 7 million years ago.

The bird had blue feathers on its back and tail and white spots on its wings, similar to a blue jay. But it lacked a blue jay’s spiky crown and had a spot over its eye that is one telltale sign of a green jay. The outlier followed a flock of blue jays and made similar calls. But it also produced the clicks and rattling vocalizations of a green jay.

Upon returning to the lab, Keitt and Stokes completed a series of gene analyses, comparing the DNA they’d collected with that of a blue jay, a green jay and other jay species, and determined the mystery bird was the offspring of a male blue jay and a female green jay.

To Leighton, the odd pairing is something of a “biological curveball.”

“Both of these jay species form long-term social bonds with a mate,” he explained. “We would expect them to be pretty choosy about who they form these pair bonds with.” What’s more, corvids are extremely smart, and blue jays and green jays look quite different from one another. They should have no problem telling themselves apart.

Perhaps, Leighton speculated, it was the end of breeding season and the birds were under pressure. “If they aren’t having good luck finding an individual in their own species that is also without a mate, then maybe there’s a higher risk of making a mistake,” he said.

Submission + - US Lawmakers Push Location-Tracking/Phoning Homne For High Powered AI Chips (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. lawmaker plans to introduce legislation in coming weeks to verify the location of artificial-intelligence chips like those made by Nvidia after they are sold.

The effort to keep tabs on the chips, which drew bipartisan support from U.S. lawmakers, aims to address reports of widespread smuggling of Nvidia's chips into China in violation of U.S. export control laws.

U.S. Representative Bill Foster, a Democrat from Illinois who once worked as a particle physicist, said the technology to track chips after they are sold is readily available, with much of it already built in to Nvidia's chips. Independent technical experts interviewed by Reuters agreed.

Foster, who successfully designed multiple computer chips during his scientific career, plans to introduce in coming weeks a bill that would direct U.S. regulators to come up with rules in two key areas: Tracking chips to ensure they are where they are authorized to be under export control licenses, and preventing those chips from booting up if they are not properly licensed under export controls.

Foster's bill has support from fellow Democrats such as Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member on the House Select Committee on China. "On-chip location verification is one creative solution we should explore to stop this smuggling," Krishnamoorthi said in a statement.

Republicans are also supportive, though none have yet signed on to specific legislation because it has not yet been introduced. Representative John Moolenaar, who chairs the committee, supports the concept of location tracking and plans to meet with lawmakers in both the House and U.S. Senate this week on potential legislative approaches.

"The Select Committee has strong bipartisan support for requiring companies like Nvidia to build location-tracking into their high-powered AI chips — and the technology to do it already exists," Moolenaar told Reuters.

The technology for verifying the location of chips would rely on the chips communicating with a secured computer server that would use the length of time it takes for the signal to reach the server to verify where chips are, a concept that relies on knowing that computer signals move at the speed of light.

Comment Re:When a single game... (Score 1) 71

Just wondering exactly why NES/Genesis "cartridge" games costed more. Is it because of the physical media? The chips themselves cost a bit more money than just a disc. Therefore the amount of profit you make from the IP + software of the game itself might not have been as much, once we subtract the cost of manufacturing the physical game itself. Nowadays, a lot of games are simply "digital", with no physical media.

Submission + - US tariffs causing Sony to raise PS5 price substantially in UK and Europe? (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sony has raised the price of most of its PlayStation 5 console hardware in the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand by 10-15 percent, blaming âoea challenging economic environment.â With rising US import costs thanks to tariffs likely a contributing factor, an equivalent price rise in the US is probably on the way.

Sony manufactures the majority of its PlayStation 5 hardware in China, now subject to 145 percent tariffs on imports into the US, and game consoles arenâ(TM)t included in the pause on some tech tariffs announced Friday. A price increase in other markets may be a way of limiting how sharply prices will need to rise in the US, which is a key market for Sony.

Sonyâ(TM)s blog post announcing the change blamed it on âoehigh inflation and fluctuating exchange rates,â though made no mention of Trumpâ(TM)s tariffs or increased import costs into the US, where prices are remaining the same â" for now. Analyst Serkan Toto told CNBC that he âoewould be very surprised if Sony was able to keep the PlayStation prices in the US stable,â calling now âoethe ârightâ(TM) timeâ for the company to raise prices.

Submission + - Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water (bbc.com) 1

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: Utah has become the first US state to ban the use of fluoride in its public water, following concerns raised by health secretary Robert F Kennedy that the mineral poses potential health risks.

Governor Spencer Cox signed the ban into law this week, which will go into effect on 7 May. Other states, including Florida and Ohio, are weighing similar legislation.

Fluoride has been added to US drinking water since 1945 to prevent cavities.

Utah's move to remove the mineral has been criticised by experts, who worry it will have consequences for oral health, especially for children.

The bill, signed by Cox on Thursday, prohibits communities from adding fluoride to their public water supplies.

The law does not mention any public health concerns related to the mineral, but Republican state lawmaker Stephanie Gricius — who introduced the bill in the state legislature — has argued that there is research suggesting fluoride could have possible cognitive effects in children.

Gricius has said that her bill would give citizens a choice whether they want to consume fluoride or not.

This concern over fluoride was previously raised by Kennedy, the US health secretary, who said in November that "the Trump White House will advise all US water systems to remove fluoride from public water".

He alleged the chemical found in toothpaste and regularly used by dentists "is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease".

Most of western Europe does not add fluoride to its water. In England, about one in 10 people has fluoridated drinking water, though a programme has since been introduced to fluoridate water for 1.6 million people in north-east England.

By contrast, around 63% of the US population have fluoridated water.

Experts who support putting fluoride in water says studies show that community water fluoridation prevents at least 25% of tooth decay in children and adults.

Comment Wants it for mass surveillance. (Score 1) 105

by Hmmmmmm (#65162017) Attached to: Oracle's Ellison Calls for Governments To Unify Data To Feed AI

"Ellison said AI would be used in the future to constantly watch and analyze vast surveillance systems, like security cameras, police body cameras, doorbell cameras, and vehicle dashboard cameras.

"We're going to have supervision," Ellison said. "Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there's a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on."

Ellison also expects AI drones to replace police cars in high-speed chases. "You just have a drone follow the car," Ellison said. "It's very simple in the age of autonomous drones." He did not say if those drones would broadcast the chases on network news."

https://www.businessinsider.co...

Comment Re:WHO is basically run by China (Score 1) 320

by Hmmmmmm (#65107507) Attached to: US To Exit WHO

Wiki states...

The World Health Organization (WHO) Constitution does not recognise an observer status but the Rules of Procedure of its highest decision-making body World Health Assembly (WHA) give the Director-General right to invite observers to the annual Assembly meeting, provided that they are "States having made application for membership, territories on whose behalf application for associate membership has been made, and States which have signed but not accepted the Constitution."

Taiwan isn't recognize as a state by the large majority of the world, and almost all international bodies.

Submission + - Slashdot Dies A Slow Death with Crippling Advertisements (slashdot.org) 2

Submitted by zamboni1138
zamboni1138 writes: Anybody familiar with the technology news web forum known as Slashdot have known about the recent decline in quality of stories and comments. Recently Slashdot decided to "upgrade" their advertisement experience resulting in an almost broken user experience for users that implement any kind of ad-blocking technology. Over the last week visitors to the site using ad blockers have noticed a unique experience with javascript alerts explaining "This page could not be loaded properly due to incorrect / bad filtering rule(s) of adblockers in use. Please disable all adblockers to continue using the website. (click OK if you'd like to learn more)". These notices are almost non-stop while trying to load/read a page making the site unusable.

Submission + - Slashdot goes mental with advertising 9

Submitted by sizzlinkitty
sizzlinkitty writes: Has anyone else noticed Slashdot failing to load because of your ad blocker? I know I sure have and it's breaking my user experience like no other.

Please post the blocking patterns you're using to make Slashdot usable again.

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