Feed aggregator

felix86 is a new open source Linux emulator to run x86-64 Linux programs on RISC-V processors  GamingOnLinux

felix86 is a new open source Linux emulator to run x86-64 Linux programs on RISC-V processors  GamingOnLinux

felix86 is a new open source Linux emulator to run x86-64 Linux programs on RISC-V processors  GamingOnLinux

I’m trying (and failing) to keep up with AI developments, but inside this interview with AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton (Wikipedia names him the Godfather of AI) was an interesting tidbit that relates to personal finance. Here is an excerpt from a transcript of the interview (emphasis mine):

GEOFFREY HINTON: Among the AI researchers, people are more aware of it. So the people I know who are kind of most depressed about it are serious AI researchers. I have started doing practical things because AI is going to be very good at designing cyber attacks. I don’t think the Canadian banks are safe anymore.

So Canadian banks are about as safe as you can get. They’re very well regulated compared with US banks. But over the next 10 years, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was a cyber attack that took down a Canadian bank.

BROOK SILVA-BRAGA: What does take down mean?

GEOFFREY HINTON: Suppose that the bank holds shares that I own. Right. Suppose the cyber attack sells those shares. Now my money’s gone. So I actually now spread my money between three banks. Okay. So that’s the first practical thing I’ve done because I think if a cyber attack takes down one Canadian bank, the others will get a lot more serious.

BROOK SILVA-BRAGA: Okay. Anything else like that? What else?

GEOFFREY HINTON: That’s the main thing. That’s where I noticed I actually did something practical that flowed from my belief that very scary times are coming.

In that context, Hinton is not just talking about separating his assets across multiple banks but also brokerage accounts that own shares of companies.

I believe this idea of keeping your assets separated into different silos is a good one. I plan to also avoid linking information from one brokerage account to another brokerage firm (either to initiate funds transfers, or to use in data-sharing services like “Full View”). Assume that any one major bank or brokerage firm may eventually go down in a complete mess, and it may take a very long time to clean up that mess. Hinton’s choice of three different places seems like a reasonable number.

It’s good to have some actionable advice, as opposed to pondering his concerns about bad actors using “lethal autonomous weapons”. 😨

The European Space Agency has launched the Biomass satellite to study the world's forests using the first space-based P-band synthetic aperture radar, aiming to accurately measure carbon storage and improve understanding of the global carbon cycle. CBS News reports: Forests on Earth collectively absorb and store about 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, the ESA said. That regulates the planet's temperature. Deforestation and degradation, especially in tropical regions, means that stored carbon is being released back into the atmosphere, the ESA said, which can contribute to climate change. There's a lack of accurate data on how much carbon the planet's estimated 1.5 trillion trees store and how much human activity can impact that storage, the ESA said. To "weigh" the planet's trees and determine their carbon dioxide capacity, Biomass will use a P-band synthetic aperture radar. It's the first such piece of technology in space. The radar can penetrate forest canopies and measure woody biomass, including trunks, branches and stems, the ESA said. Most forest carbon is stored in these parts of the trees. Those measurements will act as a proxy for carbon storage, the ESA said. [...] Once the radar takes the measurements, the data will be received by the large mesh reflector. It will then be sent to the ESA's mission control center.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux App Release Roundup (April 2025)  OMG! Ubuntu

Linux App Release Roundup (April 2025)  OMG! Ubuntu

Linux App Release Roundup (April 2025)  OMG! Ubuntu

Linux App Release Roundup (April 2025)  OMG! Ubuntu

Linux App Release Roundup (April 2025)  OMG! Ubuntu

KDE 3 lives to fight another day as Trinity Desktop 14.1.4 hits the shelves  theregister.com

KDE 3 lives to fight another day as Trinity Desktop 14.1.4 hits the shelves  theregister.com

FOSS Weekly #25.18: Linux Magazine, Modern Terminals, Muse Pi, apt Guide and More  It's FOSS

Apple violated a court order requiring it to open up the App Store to third-party payment options and must stop charging commissions on purchases outside its software marketplace, a federal judge said in a blistering ruling that referred the company to prosecutors for a possible criminal probe. From a report: U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sided Wednesday with "Fortnite" maker Epic Games over its allegation that the iPhone maker failed to comply with an order she issued in 2021 after finding the company engaged in anticompetitive conduct in violation of California law. Gonzalez Rogers also referred the case to federal prosecutors to investigate whether Apple committed criminal contempt of court for flouting her 2021 ruling. The U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco declined to comment. The changes the company must now make could put a sizable dent in the double-digit billions of dollars in revenue the App Store generates each year. The judge's order [PDF]: Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court's Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple. It Is So Ordered.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: Windows 7 came onto the market in 2009 and put Microsoft back on the road to success after Windows Vista's annoying failures. But Windows 7 was not without its faults, as this curious story proves. Some users apparently encountered a vexing problem at the time: if they set a single-color image as the background, their Windows 7 PC always took 30 seconds to start the operating system and switch from the welcome screen to the desktop. In a recent blog post, Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen explains the exact reason for this. According to him, a simple programming error meant that users had to wait longer for the system to boot. After logging in, Windows 7 first set up the desktop piece by piece, i.e. the taskbar, the desktop window, icons for applications, and even the background image. The system waited patiently for all components to finish loading and received feedback from each individual component. Or, it switched from the welcome screen to the desktop after 30 seconds if it didn't receive any feedback. The problem here: The code for the message that the background image is ready was located within the background image bitmap code, which means that the message never appeared if you did not have a real background image bitmap. And a single color is not such a bitmap. The result: the logon system waited in vain for the message that the background has finished loading, so Windows 7 never started until the 30 second fallback activated and sent users to the desktop. The problem could also occur if users had activated the "Hide desktop icons" group policy. This was due to the fact that such policies were only added after the main code had been written and called by an If statement. However, Windows 7 was also unable to recognize this at first and therefore took longer to load.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

openSUSE Leap 16 Beta is here with Wayland and a modern Linux foundation  BetaNews

Investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs reports: A 23-year-old Scottish man thought to be a member of the prolific Scattered Spider cybercrime group was extradited last week from Spain to the United States, where he is facing charges of wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft. U.S. prosecutors allege Tyler Robert Buchanan and co-conspirators hacked into dozens of companies in the United States and abroad, and that he personally controlled more than $26 million stolen from victims. Scattered Spider is a loosely affiliated criminal hacking group whose members have broken into and stolen data from some of the world's largest technology companies. Buchanan was arrested in Spain last year on a warrant from the FBI, which wanted him in connection with a series of SMS-based phishing attacks in the summer of 2022 that led to intrusions at Twilio, LastPass, DoorDash, Mailchimp, and many other tech firms. The complain against Buchanan is available here (PDF).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter LDA6502 writes: The Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is proposing a new annual federal vehicle registration fee of $200 for full EVs, $100 for hybrid EVs, and $20 for combustion vehicles. The tax would be tied to inflation, would be collected by the states, and would expire in 2035. Critics of the proposal note that it could result in low mileage EVs paying a far higher tax rate than heavy ICE trucks and SUVs. Ars Technica notes that the bill "exempts commercial vehicles, which should see a rush from tax avoiders to register their vehicles under their businesses [...]." Farm vehicles will also be exempt from the tax. "The Eno Center for Transportation calculates that this new tax will contribute an extra $110 billion to the highway Trust Fund by 2035 but that cuts to other taxes and more spending mean that the fund will still be $222 billion short of its commitments -- assuming that this added fee doesn't further dampen EV adoption in the U.S., that is."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After 10 consecutive quarters of rising AI-related investment, Microsoft has put on the brakes, spending over $1 billion less than the previous quarter (source paywalled; alternative source). Despite the slight slowdown, Microsoft posted stronger-than-expected results with $70 billion in revenue and $25.8 billion in profit. The New York Times reports: In the first three months of 2025, Microsoft spent $21.4 billion on capital expenses, down more than $1 billion from the previous quarter. The company is still on track to spend more than $80 billion on capital expenses in the current fiscal year, which ends in June. But the pullback, though slight, is an indication that the tech industry's appetite for spending on A.I. is not limitless. Overall, Microsoft's results showed unexpected strength in its business. Sales surpassed $70 billion, up 13 percent from the same period a year earlier. Profit rose to $25.8 billion, up 18 percent. The results far surpassed Wall Street's expectations. "Cloud and A.I. are the essential inputs for every business to expand output, reduce costs, and accelerate growth," Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple sent notifications this week to several people who the company believes were targeted with government spyware, according to two of the alleged targets. In the past, Apple has sent similar notifications to targets and victims of spyware, and directed them to contact a nonprofit that specializes in investigating such cyberattacks. Other tech companies, like Google and WhatsApp, have in recent years also periodically sent such notifications to their users. As of Wednesday, only two people appear to have come forward to reveal they were among those who received the notifications from Apple this week. One is Ciro Pellegrino, an Italian journalist who works for online news outlet Fanpage. Pellegrino wrote in an article that he received an email and a text message from Apple on Tuesday notifying him that he was targeted with spyware. The message, according to Pellegrino, also said he wasn't the only person targeted. "Today's notification is being sent to affected users in 100 countries," the message read, according to Pellegrino's article. "Did this really happen? Yes, it is not a joke," Pellegrino wrote. The second person to receive an Apple notification is Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a Dutch right-wing activist, who posted on X on Wednesday. "Apple detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against your iPhone," the Apple alert said, according to a screenshot shown in a video that Vlaardingerbroek posted on X. "This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it's never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning -- please take it seriously." Reacting to the notification, Vlaardingerbroek said that this was an "attempt to intimidate me, an attempt to silence me, obviously."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.