|
|
[ Reuters | Slashdot | BBC News ] [ Image Archive ] |
Slashdot
A Greek court has convicted four individuals linked to the marketing of Predator spyware in the wiretapping scandal that shook the country in 2022. The BBC reports: In what became known as "Greece's Watergate," surveillance software called Predator was used to target 87 people -- among them government ministers, senior military officials and journalists. The four who had marketed the software were found guilty by an Athens court of misdemeanours of violating the confidentiality of telephone communications and illegally accessing personal data and conversations. The court sentenced the four defendants to lengthy jail sentences, suspended pending appeal. Although they each face 126 years, only eight would be typically served which is the upper limit for misdemeanors. One in three of the dozens of figures targeted had also been under legal surveillance by Greece's intelligence services (EYP). Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who had placed EYP directly under his supervision, called it a scandal, but no government officials have been charged in court and critics accuse the government of trying to cover up the truth. The case dates back to the summer of 2022, when the current head of Greek Socialist party Pasok, Nikos Androulakis - then an MEP - was informed by the European Parliament's IT experts that he had received a malicious text message containing a link. Predator spyware, marketed by the Athens-based Israeli company Intellexa, can get access to a device's messages, camera, and microphone. Its use was illegal in Greece at that time but a new law passed in 2022 has since legalised state security use of surveillance software under strict conditions. Androulakis also discovered that he had been tracked for "national security reasons" by Greece's intelligence services. The scandal has since escalated into a debate over democratic accountability in Greece. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Colorado Lawmakers Push for Age Verification at the Operating System Level Colorado lawmakers are proposing SB26-051, a bill that would require operating systems to register a user's age bracket and share it with apps via an API. PCMag reports: The bill comes from state Sen. Matt Ball and Rep. Amy Paschal, both Democrats. "The intent is to create thoughtful safeguards for kids online through a privacy-forward framework for age assurance," Ball told PCMag. "Unlike some laws in other states, SB 51 doesn't require users to share personally identifiable information or use facial recognition technology." The legislation also promises to centralize the age check through the OS, rather than mandating that each app enforce their own age-verification mechanism, which can involve scanning the user's official ID, thus raising privacy and security concerns. The bill also forbids the sharing of the age-bracket data for any other purpose. But it looks like it's easy to bypass the age check proposed by SB26-051. The legislation itself doesn't mention any state ID check to verify the owner's age. In addition, the bill doesn't seem to cover websites, only apps and app stores. The report notes that the legislation was based on California's bill AB 1043, which was passed last year and expected to take effect January 1, 2027.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Jack Dorsey's Block Cuts Nearly Half of Its Staff In AI Gamble Jack Dorsey's Block is cutting more than 4,000 jobs, or nearly half its workforce, as part of a deliberate shift toward becoming a smaller, "intelligence-native" company built around AI. The Verge reports: "We're not making this decision because we're in trouble," Dorsey says. "Our business is strong. Gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. But something has changed. We're already seeing that the intelligence tools we're creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. And that's accelerating rapidly." Dorsey opted to do a big layoff instead of gradual cuts because "I'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome." The layoffs were announced on Thursday as part of the company's Q4 2025 earnings. In a shareholder letter (PDF), Dorsey says that "We believe Block will be significantly more valuable as a smaller, faster, intelligence-native company. Everything we do from here is in service of that."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - What's the Point of School When AI Can Do Your Homework? An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: There's a new agentic AI called Einstein that will, according to its developers, live the life of a student for them. Einstein's website claims that the AI will attend lectures for you, write your papers, and even log into EdTech platforms like Canvas to take tests and participate in discussions. Educators told me that Einstein is just one of many AI tools that can do homework for students, but should be seen as a warning to schools that are increasingly seen by students as a place to gain a diploma and status as opposed to the value of education itself. If an AI can go to school for you what's the point of going to school? For Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein, there isn't one. "I think about horses," he said. "They used to pull carriages, but when cars came around, I'd argue horses became a lot more free," he said. "They can do whatever they want now. It would be weird if horses revolted and said 'no, I want to pull carriages, this is my purpose in life.'" But humans aren't horses. "This is much bigger than Einstein," Matthew Kirschenbaum told 404 Media. "Einstein is symptomatic. I doubt we'll be talking about Einstein, as such, in a year. But it's symptomatic of what's about to descend on higher ed and secondary ed as well." [...] The attractiveness of agentic AIs is a symptom of a decades-long trend in higher education. "Universitiesby and large adopted a transactive model of education," Kirschenbaum said. "Students see their diploma as a credential. They pay tuition and at the end of four years, sometimes five years, they receive the credential and, in theory at least, that is then the springboard to economic stability and prosperity." Paliwal seems to agree. He told 404 Media that he attempted to change the university from the inside while working as a TA, but felt stymied by politics. "The only way to force these institutions to evolve is to bring reality to their face. And usually the loudest critics are the ones who can't do their own job well and live in fear of automation," he said. "I think we really need to question what learning even is and whether traditional educational institutions are actually helping or harming us," said Paliwal. "We're seeing a rise in unemployment across degree holders because of AI, and that makes me question whether this is really what humans are born to do. We've been brainwashed as a society into valuing ourselves by the output of our productive work, and I think humanity is a lot more beautiful than that. Is it really education if we're just memorizing things to perform a task well?" Kirschenbaum added: "What we're finding is that if forms of education can be transacted then we've just about arrived at the point where autonomous software AI agents are capable of performing the transaction on your behalf," he said. "And so the whole educational paradigm has come back to essentially bite itself in the ass."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Google Launches Nano Banana 2 Model With Faster Image Generation Google has launched Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image), a faster, more realistic image generation model that becomes the default across Gemini, Search, Lens, and Flow. TechCrunch reports: The new Nano Banana 2 retains some of the high-fidelity characteristics of the Pro model but produces images faster. The company says you can create images with a resolution ranging from 512px to 4K, in different aspect ratios. Nano Banana 2 can maintain character consistency for up to five characters and fidelity of up to 14 objects in one workflow for better storytelling. Users can also issue complex requests with detailed nuances for image generation, Google says. In addition, users can create media with more vibrant lighting, richer textures, and sharper detail. [...] On Google's higher-end plans, Google AI Pro and Ultra, subscribers can continue to use Nano Banana Pro for specialized tasks by regenerating images via the three-dot menu. [...] The company said that all images created through the new model will have a SynthID watermark, which is Google's mark to denote AI-generated images. The images are also interoperable with C2PA Content Credentials, created by an industry body consisting of companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Meta. Google said that since launching the SynthID verification in the Gemini app in November, people have used it over 20 million times.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Chinese Official's Use of ChatGPT Revealed a Global Intimidation Opperation New submitter sabbede shares a report from CNN Politics: A sprawling Chinese influence operation -- accidentally revealed by a Chinese law enforcement official's use of ChatGPT -- focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident's social media account taken down. "This is what Chinese modern transnational repression looks like," Ben Nimmo, principal investigator at OpenAI, told reporters ahead of the report's release. "It's not just digital. It's not just about trolling. It's industrialized. It's about trying to hit critics of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] with everything, everywhere, all at once." Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official focused on emerging technologies, said the report from OpenAI "clearly demonstrates the way that China is actively employing AI tools to enhance information operations. US-China AI competition is continuing to intensify. This competition is not just taking place at the frontier, but in how China's government is planning and implementing the day-to-day of their surveillance and information apparatus."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - iPhone and iPad Are First Consumer Devices Cleared for NATO Classified Data Apple's iPhone and iPad running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 have become the first consumer mobile devices cleared for NATO-restricted classified data. No special software or settings are required. MacRumors reports: Apple's devices are the first and only consumer mobile products that have reached this government certification level after security testing and evaluation by the German government. iPhones and iPads running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 are now certified for use with classified data in all NATO nations. In an announcement of the security clearance, Apple touted its security features: "Apple designs security into all of its products from the start, ensuring the most sophisticated protections are built in across hardware, software, and Apple silicon. This unique approach allows Apple users to benefit from industry-leading security protections such as best-in-class encryption, biometric authentication with Face ID, and groundbreaking features like Memory Integrity Enforcement. These same protections are now recognized as meeting stringent government and international security requirements, even for restricted data."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Firefox 148 Lets You Kill All AI Features in One Click Mozilla has released Firefox 148 for Windows, macOS and Linux, bringing a new AI Settings section that lets users disable all of the browser's AI-powered features in one click and then selectively re-enable the ones they actually want, such as the local translation tool that works locally rather than in the cloud. The update also patches more than 50 security vulnerabilities -- none known to be under active exploitation -- over half of which Mozilla classifies as high risk, including five sandbox escape flaws and eight use-after-free bugs in the JavaScript engine that could allow code execution.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Which Piece of Speculative Fiction Had the Greatest Single-Day Stock Market Impact? Speaking of the Citrini's blog post, which imagines a near-future AI-driven economic collapse, and which ended up help triggering the S&P 500's worst single-day drop in nearly two weeks on Monday, FT Alphaville decided to track how US stock markets have moved on the release days of notable dystopian speculative fiction throughout history. The story adds: You may contend that this is facile. We would agree. You might contend that the comparisons make no sense because it's possible to read a blog post during a single work shift, but it's tricker to complete a whole novel (or sneak out to watch a movie). We would contend: do you really think traders read? Let's begin. The methodology -- tracking S&P 500 daily moves for post-1986 releases and DJIA moves for pre-1986 ones -- crowned The Matrix as the all-time leader, its March 1999 US debut coinciding with a 1.11% drop in the index. Citrini's "The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis" came in a close second at -1.04%. On the positive end, the 2013 release of Her, a film about a man falling in love with an AI agent, coincided with the largest gain in the set at +1.66%.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - The Government Just Made it Harder to See What Spy Tech it Buys An anonymous reader shares a report: It might look like something from the early days of the internet, with its aggressively grey color scheme and rectangles nested inside rectangles, but FPDS.gov is one of the most important resources for keeping tabs on what powerful spying tools U.S. government agencies are buying. It includes everything from phone hacking technology, to masses of location data, to more Palantir installations. Or rather, it was an incredible tool and the basis for countless of my own investigations and others. Because on Wednesday, the government shut it down. Its replacement, another site called SAM.gov with Uncle Sam branding, frankly sucks, and makes it demonstrably harder to reliably find out what agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are spending tax payers dollars on. "FPDS may have been a little clunky, but its simple, old-school interface made it extremely functional and robust. Every facet of government operations touches on contracting at one point, and this was the first tool that many investigative journalists and researchers would reach for to quickly find out what the government is buying and who is selling it, and how these contracts all fit together," Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - The AI Case Against Indian IT Ignores What Indian IT Actually Does A fictional memo set in June 2028, published by short seller Citrini Research, wiped roughly $10 billion off Indian IT stocks in a single trading session on February 24 and sent the Nifty IT index down as much as 5.3% -- its worst single-day fall since August 2023 -- on the argument that AI coding agents have collapsed the cost advantage of Indian developers to the price of electricity. The index has shed more than $68 billion in market value in February alone, its worst month since 2003. But the core claim that India's entire $205 billion software export industry rests on cheap labor is roughly 15 years out of date, an analysis argues, custom application maintenance alone accounts for about 35% of a typical Indian IT firm's revenue, per HSBC, and enterprise platforms require deterministic outputs that probabilistic AI systems cannot wholesale replace. HSBC estimates gross AI-led revenue deflation for the sector at 14-16%, a measured headwind rather than an extinction event. The story adds: 24 years of software export data that has never posted a decline, $200 billion in annual revenue, partnerships with the very AI labs whose products are supposed to be the instrument of the sector's destruction, possibly a new $1.5 trillion market category emerging at the intersection of services and software, and the largest U.S. corporates in the middle of mapping their entire workforces into process architectures that require technology partners to modernise. I think India's IT is going to be fine.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - New York Sues Valve For Enabling 'Illegal Gambling' With Loot Boxes New York state has filed a lawsuit against Valve alleging that randomized loot boxes in games like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2 amount to a form of unregulated gambling, letting users "pay for the chance to win a rare virtual item of significant monetary value." From a report: While many randomized video game loot boxes have drawn attention and regulation from various government bodies in recent years, the New York suit calls out Valve's system specifically for "enabl[ing] users to sell the virtual items they have won, either through its own virtual marketplace, the Steam Community Market, or through third-party marketplaces." The vast majority of Valve's in-game loot boxes contain skins that can only be resold for a few cents, the suit notes, while the rarest skins can be worth thousands of dollars through marketplaces on and off of Steam. That fits the statutory definition of gambling as "charging an individual for a chance to win something of value based on luck alone," according to the suit. The Steam Wallet funds that users get through directly reselling skins "have the equivalent purchasing power on the Steam platform as cash," the suit notes. But if a user wants to convert those Steam funds to real cash, they can do so relatively easily by purchasing a Steam Deck and reselling it to any interested party, as an investigator did while preparing the lawsuit.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Burger King Will Use AI To Check If Employees Say 'Please' and 'Thank You' An anonymous reader shares a report: Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees. The voice-enabled chatbot, called "Patty," is part of an overarching BK Assistant platform that will not only assist employees with meal preparation but also evaluate their interactions with customers for "friendliness." Thibault Roux, Burger King's chief digital officer, tells The Verge that the company compiled information from franchisees and guests on how to measure friendliness, resulting in the fast food chain training its AI system to recognize certain words and phrases, such as "welcome to Burger King," "please," and "thank you." Managers can then ask the AI assistant how their location is performing on friendliness. "This is all meant to be a coaching tool," Roux says, adding that the company is "iterating" on capturing the tone of conversations as well.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - HBO Max's Password-Sharing Crackdown Will Expand Globally in 2026 HBO Max will be cracking down on password sharing around the world. From a report: The streamer first started cracking down on password sharing in the United States late last August. Subscribers are now able to add an additional out-of-household account for $7.99 a month. Before that August change, Warner Bros. Discovery had been testing for months to determine who may or may not be a "legitimate user," as CEO and President for Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming and Games JB Perrette described the plan. On Thursday during the company's fourth quarter earnings call for 2025, WBD revealed that the streaming limitations would be expanding. This news came as part of an answer about which levers the company plans to pull to grow HBO Max. Password crackdowns have proven to be a lucrative way to both boost revenue and subscriptions. Netflix, for example, saw 9 million more subscribers after its first wave of password crackdowns in 2024. The caveat is that password crackdowns do not lead to consistent growth, and they often infuriate subscribers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - EBay Is Laying Off About 800 Workers, 6% of Global Workforce EBay is cutting about 800 jobs, or 6% of its full-time employees, saying the layoffs are needed to align its workforce with strategic priorities. From a report: "We are taking steps to reinvest across our business and align our structure with our strategic priorities, which will affect certain roles across our workforce," the San Jose, California-based company said early Thursday in a statement. "We are grateful for the contributions of the employees impacted and are committed to supporting them with care and respect." EBay will continue to hire in key areas. The cuts come a week after the company said it would acquire secondhand fashion marketplace Depop for about $1.2 billion in an effort to draw younger shoppers and after it reported robust quarterly results. Revenue increased 15% to $3 billion in the fourth quarter, surpassing analyst estimates.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
|