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OpenAI won't say who audits its books. The company, which projects to hit an ARR of $20 billion this year and is valued at $500 billion, has committed to spending about $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next decade. It accounts for roughly two-thirds of unfulfilled contracts at Oracle and two-fifths at CoreWeave. Microsoft alone holds around $375 billion in unfulfilled contracts with OpenAI. Reuters reported the company may target a $1 trillion valuation for a potential IPO in coming years. Most companies at this scale use one of the Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte, EY, KPMG or PwC. OpenAI declined to comment to Financial Times. A person close to the organization told the publication the company has "an industry standard audit with one of the Big Four firms." The company's latest Form 990 filing lists Fontanello, Duffield, & Otake -- a small San Francisco accountancy firm -- as the paid preparer. The form does say an independent accountant audited the statements. Michael Burry, last night: "Can anyone name [OpenAI's] auditor?"

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Action1 Expands to Linux, Delivering a Unified Cross-Platform Solution for Autonomous Endpoint Management and Patching  PR Newswire

Action1 Expands to Linux, Delivering a Unified Cross-Platform Solution for Autonomous Endpoint Management and Patching  PR Newswire

Westinghouse has partnered with Google Cloud to develop a custom AI-powered platform.Westinghouse has partnered with Google Cloud to develop a custom AI-powered platform.

Firefox 147 Will Support The XDG Base Directory Specification  Phoronix

5 pioneering Linux distros that quietly faded into history  How-To Geek

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The White House is preparing to issue an executive order as soon as Friday that tells the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence, according to four people familiar with the matter and a leaked draft of the order obtained by POLITICO. The draft document, confirmed as authentic by three people familiar with the matter, would create an "AI Litigation Task Force" at the DOJ whose "sole responsibility" would be to challenge state AI laws. Government lawyers would be directed to challenge state laws on the grounds that they unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing federal regulations or otherwise at the attorney general's discretion. The task force would consult with administration officials, including the special adviser for AI and crypto -- a role currently occupied by tech investor David Sacks. The executive order, in the draft obtained by POLITICO, would also empower Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to publish a review of "onerous" state AI laws within 90 days and restrict federal broadband funds to states whose AI laws are found to be objectionable. It would direct the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether state AI laws that "require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models" are blocked by the FTC Act. And it would order the Federal Communications Commission to begin work on a reporting and disclosure standard for AI models that would preempt conflicting state laws.

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We’re partnering with the cloud gaming platform NVIDIA GeForce NOW to launch an all-new way to play, built exclusively for Chromebook users: the GeForce NOW Fast Pass.Wi…

Linux 6.19 Nova Driver Landing Boot42 Support For Next-Gen NVIDIA GPUs  Phoronix

Systemd 259 release candidate flexes musl support – with long list of caveats  theregister.com

Canadian librarian Ian Linkletter has ended a five-year legal battle with ed-tech firm Proctorio after being sued for sharing public YouTube help videos that exposed how the company's remote-proctoring AI works. Ars Technica reports: ... Together, the videos, the help center screenshot, and another screenshot showing course material describing how Proctorio works were enough for Proctorio to take Linkletter to court. The ed tech company promptly filed a lawsuit and obtained a temporary injunction by spuriously claiming that Linkletter shared private YouTube videos containing confidential information. Because the YouTube videos -- which were public but "unlisted" when Linkletter shared them -- had been removed, Linkletter did not have to delete the seven tweets that initially caught Proctorio's attention, but the injunction required that he remove two tweets, including the screenshots. In the five years since, the legal fight dragged on, with no end in sight until last week, as Canadian courts tangled with copyright allegations that tested a recently passed law intended to shield Canadian rights to free expression, the Protection of Public Participation Act. To fund his defense, Linkletter said in a blog announcing the settlement that he invested his life savings "ten times over." Additionally, about 900 GoFundMe supporters and thousands of members of the Association of Administrative and Professional Staff at UBC contributed tens of thousands more. For the last year of the battle, a law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, agreed to represent him on a pro bono basis, which Linkletter said âoewas a huge relief to me, as it meant I could defend myself all the way if Proctorio chose to proceed with the litigation." The terms of the settlement remain confidential, but both Linkletter and Proctorio confirmed that no money was exchanged. For Proctorio, the settlement made permanent the injunction that restricted Linkletter from posting the company's help center or instructional materials. But it doesn't stop Linkletter from remaining the company's biggest critic, as "there are no other restrictions on my freedom of expression," Linkletter's blog noted. "I've won my life back!" Linkletter wrote, while reassuring his supporters that he's "fine" with how things ended. "It doesn't take much imagination to understand why Proctorio is a nightmare for students," Linkletter wrote. "I can say everything that matters about Proctorio using public information."

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ROG Xbox Ally Bazzite OS vs Steam Deck : Which Linux Handheld Wins the Battle?  Geeky Gadgets

Researchers in Germany achieved a major milestone for the future quantum internet by successfully teleporting quantum information between photons generated by two different, physically separated quantum dots -- something never accomplished before due to the difficulty of producing indistinguishable photons from remote sources. Phys.org reports: At the University of Stuttgart, the team succeeded in teleporting the polarization state of a photon originating from one quantum dot to another photon from a second quantum dot. One quantum dot generates a single photon, the other an entangled photon pair. Entangled means that the two particles constitute a single quantum entity, even when they are physically separated. One of the two particles travels to the second quantum dot and interferes with its light particle. The two overlap. Because of this superposition, the information of the single photon is transferred to the distant partner of the pair. Instrumental for the success of the experiment were quantum frequency converters, which compensate for residual frequency differences between the photons. These converters were developed by a team led by Prof. Christoph Becher, an expert in quantum optics at Saarland University. [...] In the Stuttgart experiment, the quantum dots were separated only by an optical fiber of about 10 m length. "But we are working on achieving considerably greater distances," says Strobel. In earlier work, the team had shown that the entanglement of the quantum dot photons remains intact even after a 36-kilometer transmission through the city center of Stuttgart. Another aim is to increase the current success rate of teleportation, which currently stands at just over 70%. Fluctuations in the quantum dot still lead to slight differences in the photons. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

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The Navy Federal Flagship Rewards Card is their “premium” travel rewards card, and it has always had some nice features for those that wanted a single everyday card because it offered a boosted 3X back in travel but also a flat 2X back on everything else. In addition, the points were directly redeemable for cash (not only offsetting past travel purchases).

However, the card also had a $49 annual fee. The sign-up bonus was usually pretty good and included a free year of Amazon Prime membership ($139 value), but it only promised it for a single year. The thing was, there were scattered reports that if you kept the Flagship card linked and charged your next year of Amazon Prime on it, NavyFed would still reimburse you for that second year. But it wasn’t official, and testing it out requires paying for another annual fee, which is a bit risky.

Well, this “secret” perk is finally official! I found this out via an Instagram ad.

I checked and indeed, the application page now says that all cardholders get a “free Amazon Prime® membership (a $139 value, annually)”.

Offer applies only to Amazon® Prime Annual membership that is paid with your Visa Signature® Flagship Rewards Credit Card and posted to your account. Offer is not valid for monthly payment Prime membership options such as Prime Monthly, Prime for Young Adults, and Prime Access. Limit of one Amazon statement credit per Visa Signature® Flagship Rewards Credit Card account, per year. Please allow 6-8 weeks after the Prime Annual membership is paid for the statement credit to post to your account.

The highlights including current sign-up bonus:

• 35,000 bonus points when you spend $3,500 within the first 90 days of opening a new card. 35,000 points is worth $350.
• Free year of Amazon Prime membership. Use the card to purchase an Amazon Prime annual membership, and they’ll reimburse you ($139 value). This now works once a year.
• 3X points per net dollar spent on travel.
• 2X points per net dollar spent on everything else.
• Global Entry or TSA PreCheck fee credit (up to $120), once every 4 years.
• No foreign transaction fees.
• $49 annual fee.

The overall catch here is that in order to apply, you must first become a NavyFed credit union member. Membership eligibility for NavyFed now goes beyond active duty members of the armed forces and DoD employees to include veterans and their immediate family members — including spouses, siblings, parents, children, grandparents and grandchildren.

A smaller catch is that each point is worth $0.01, with a minimum redemption 5,000 points = $50 statement credit. There is a max of $1,500 cash back redeemed each year this way, and you can also redeem 4,900 points to offset the $49 annual fee. Sometimes it gets annoying waiting to reach that $50 threshold. But at 2% cash back on base purchases and 3% back on travel, it’s not a horrible idea to put some purchases on this card. From the fine print:

Visa Signature Flagship cardholders can redeem points for cash (1 point is equal to $0.01). The minimum redemption level is 5,000 points for $50 cash back. The maximum level of redemption is $1,500 cash back, which is equivalent to 150,000 points. Cash back rewards will be credited to your Navy Federal savings account.

I don’t know how NavyFed mathed this one out, but if they keep this structure then this card moves solidly into the “keeper” category for those that already pay for Amazon Prime membership, as the card more than pays for itself each year at $139 vs. $49 annual fee. I also appreciate the straightforward rewards system and $120 towards Global Entry/TSA PreCheck every 4 years.

Side note: NavyFed shares their rules about credit card applications publicly as follows:

Is there a limit on the number of Navy Federal credit card accounts I can open?

Yes. Currently, Navy Federal allows each member to be a primary cardholder on up to 3 Navy Federal credit cards. In addition, we’ll approve only 1 new credit card per member within a 90-day period. This means we’ll decline your application for a new credit card if you opened a credit card within the last 90 days. Note: Home Equity Line Platinum credit cards and GO BIZ® Rewards credit cards aren’t included in this 3-card limit.

FOSS Weekly #25.47: AI Mode in Firefox, Nitrux 5, GNOME Panel, Rust Alternative Commands and More Linux Stuff  It's FOSS

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: When Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, unveiled the company's Superintelligence Lab in June, he named 11 artificial intelligence researchers who were joining his ambitious effort to build a machine more powerful than the human brain. All 11 were immigrants educated in other countries. Seven were born in China, according to a memo viewed by The New York Times. Although many American executives, government officials and pundits have spent months painting China as the enemy of America's rapid push into A.I., much of the groundbreaking research emerging from the United States is driven by Chinese talent. Two new studies show that researchers born and educated in China have for years played major roles inside leading U.S. artificial intelligence labs. They also continue to drive important A.I. research in industry and academia, despite the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration and growing anti-China sentiment in Silicon Valley. The research, from two organizations, provides a detailed look at how much the American tech industry continues to rely on engineers from China, particularly in A.I. The findings also offer a more nuanced understanding of how researchers in the two countries continue to collaborate, despite increasingly heated language from Washington and Beijing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

- Cyprus Shipping News  Cyprus Shipping News

Our Taipei office will be Google’s largest AI infrastructure hardware engineering center outside of the U.S.

Longtime Slashdot reader ukoda shares a report from the Associated Press: China is replacing its diesel trucks with electric models faster than expected, potentially reshaping global fuel demand and the future of heavy transport. In 2020, nearly all new trucks in China ran on diesel. By the first half of 2025, battery-powered trucks accounted for 22% of new heavy truck sales, up from 9.2% in the same period in 2024, according to Commercial Vehicle World, a Beijing-based trucking data provider. The British research firm BMI forecasts electric trucks will reach nearly 46% of new sales this year and 60% next year. China's trucking fleet, the world's second-largest after the U.S., still mainly runs on diesel, but the landscape is shifting. Transport fuel demand is plateauing, according to the International Energy Agency and diesel use in China could decline faster than many expect, said Christopher Doleman, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Electric trucks now outsell LNG models in China, so its demand for fossil fuels could fall, and "in other countries, it might never take off," he said. [...] The share of electrics in new truck sales, from 8% in 2024 to 28% by August 2025, has more than tripled as prices have fallen. Electric trucks outsold LNG-powered vehicles in China for five consecutive months this year, according to Commercial Vehicle World. While electric trucks are two to three times more expensive than diesel ones and cost roughly 18% more than LNG trucks, their higher energy efficiency and lower costs can save owners an estimated 10% to 26% over the vehicle's lifetime, according to research by Chinese scientists. "When it comes to heavy trucks, the fleet owners in China are very bottom-line driven," Doleman said.

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A Tokyo court ruled that Cloudflare is liable for aiding manga piracy after failing to act on infringement notices and continuing to cache and serve content for major piracy sites, awarding about $3.2 million in damages. TorrentFreak says the decision sets a significant precedent in Japan, suggesting CDN providers can face direct liability when they don't verify customers or respond adequately to large-scale copyright abuse. From the report: After a wait of more than three and a half years, the Tokyo District Court rendered its decision this morning. In a statement provided to TorrentFreak by the publishers, they declare "Victory Against Cloudflare" after the Court determined that Cloudflare is indeed liable for the pirate sites' activities. In a statement provided to TorrentFreak, the publishers explain that they alerted Cloudflare to the massive scale of the infringement, involving over 4,000 works and 300 million monthly visits, but their requests to stop distribution were ignored. "We requested that the company take measures such as stopping the distribution of pirated content from servers under its management. However, Cloudflare continued to provide services to the manga piracy sites even after receiving notices from the plaintiffs," the group says. The publishers add that Cloudflare continued to provide services even after receiving information disclosure orders from U.S. courts, leaving them with "no choice but to file this lawsuit." "The judgment recognized that Cloudflare's failure to take timely and appropriate action despite receiving infringement notices from the plaintiffs, and its negligent continuation of pirated content distribution, constituted aiding and abetting copyright infringement, and that Cloudflare bears liability for damages to the plaintiffs," they write. "The judgment, in that regard, attached importance to the fact that Cloudflare, without conducting any identity verification procedures, had enabled a massive manga piracy site to operate "under circumstances where strong anonymity was secured,' as a basis for recognizing the company's liability." The publishers believe that the judgment clarifies the conditions under which a company such as Cloudflare incurs liability for copyright infringement. Failure to carry out identity verification appears at the top of the publishers' list, followed by a lack of timely and appropriate action in response to infringement notices sent by rightsholders. "We believe this is an important decision given the current situation where piracy site operators often hide their identities and repeatedly conduct large-scale distribution using CDN services from overseas. We hope that this judgment will be a step toward ensuring proper use of CDN services. We will continue our efforts to protect the rights of works, creators, and related parties, while aiming for further expansion of legitimate content," the publishers conclude. Cloudflare plans to appeal the verdict.

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