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- FreeRDP 3.16 Released With Better SDL3 Client Support
FreeRDP 3.16 is out today as the newest update to this open-source Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) library and client implementation. This Apache-licensed project continues to be one of the leading implementations of the Microsoft RDP protocol for use outside the confines of Windows...
- Slowing the flow of core-dump-related CVEs
The handling of core dumps has indeed been a constant source of vulnerabilities for the Linux kernel. With luck, the 6.16 work will result in rather fewer of them in the future.
- Linuxiac Weekly Wrap-Up: Week 24 (Jun 9 – 15, 2025)
Catch up on the latest Linux news: Rocky 10, Kali 2025.2, KDE Frameworks 6.15, Archinstall 3.0.8, XBPS 0.60, Wine 10.10, Gitea 1.24, End of Windows 10: Don’t worry, be happy, and more.
- OpenMoonRay Introduces NUMA Support
Two years ago DreamWorks Animation open-sourced their MoonRay renderer that is an award-winning, state-of-the-art production MCRT renderer used for a number of feature films. Since then they have continued advancing this open-source code as OpenMoonRay and adding more features. The newest feature release of OpenMoonRay is now available with yet more capabilities for this impressive renderer...
- Linux 6.16-rc2 Released With An Initial Batch Of Fixes
Following the release of Linux 6.16-rc1 last Sunday that capped off the Linux 6.16 merge window, Linux 6.16-rc2 is now available with an initial week's worth of bug/regression fixes. Linux 6.16 development continues in aiming toward a stable release around the end of July...
- 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: June 15th, 2025
The 244th installment of the 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup is here for the week ending on June 15th, 2025, keeping you updated with the most important things happening in the Linux world.
- Gemini 435Le Features Active Stereo, Dual-Laser Modules, and 6-Axis IMU for 3D Vision
The Gemini 435Le is Orbbec’s newest 3D camera, designed to deliver robust, high-precision depth sensing for demanding industrial and outdoor robotics environments. Engineered with industrial-grade construction and IP67 protection, it supports logistics automation, robotic arms, and autonomous mobile robots operating in variable and dynamic conditions. The system employs stereo vision technology with a 95 mm […]
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- Google Cloud Caused Outage By Ignoring Its Usual Code Quality Protections
Google Cloud has attributed last week's widespread outage to a flawed code update in its Service Control system that triggered a global crash loop due to missing error handling and lack of feature flag protection. The Register reports: Google's explanation of the incident opens by informing readers that its APIs, and Google Cloud's, are served through our Google API management and control planes." Those two planes are distributed regionally and "are responsible for ensuring each API request that comes in is authorized, has the policy and appropriate checks (like quota) to meet their endpoints." The core binary that is part of this policy check system is known as "Service Control." On May 29, Google added a new feature to Service Control, to enable "additional quota policy checks." "This code change and binary release went through our region by region rollout, but the code path that failed was never exercised during this rollout due to needing a policy change that would trigger the code," Google's incident report explains. The search monopolist appears to have had concerns about this change as it "came with a red-button to turn off that particular policy serving path." But the change "did not have appropriate error handling nor was it feature flag protected. Without the appropriate error handling, the null pointer caused the binary to crash." Google uses feature flags to catch issues in its code. "If this had been flag protected, the issue would have been caught in staging." That unprotected code ran inside Google until June 12th, when the company changed a policy that contained "unintended blank fields." Here's what happened next: "Service Control, then regionally exercised quota checks on policies in each regional datastore. This pulled in blank fields for this respective policy change and exercised the code path that hit the null pointer causing the binaries to go into a crash loop. This occurred globally given each regional deployment." Google's post states that its Site Reliability Engineering team saw and started triaging the incident within two minutes, identified the root cause within 10 minutes, and was able to commence recovery within 40 minutes. But in some larger Google Cloud regions, "as Service Control tasks restarted, it created a herd effect on the underlying infrastructure it depends on ... overloading the infrastructure." Service Control wasn't built to handle this, which is why it took almost three hours to resolve the issue in its larger regions. The teams running Google products that went down due to this mess then had to perform their own recovery chores. Going forward, Google has promised a couple of operational changes to prevent this mistake from happening again: "We will improve our external communications, both automated and human, so our customers get the information they need asap to react to issues, manage their systems and help their customers. We'll ensure our monitoring and communication infrastructure remains operational to serve customers even when Google Cloud and our primary monitoring products are down, ensuring business continuity."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Intel Will Lay Off 15% To 20% of Its Factory Workers, Memo Says
Intel will lay off 15% to 20% of its factory workforce starting in July, potentially cutting over 10,000 jobs as part of a broader effort to streamline operations amid declining sales and mounting competitive pressure. "These are difficult actions but essential to meet our affordability challenges and current financial position of the company. It drives pain to every individual," Intel manufacturing Vice President Naga Chandrasekaran wrote to employees Saturday. "Removing organizational complexity and empowering our engineers will enable us to better serve the needs of our customers and strengthen our execution. We are making these decisions based on careful consideration of what's needed to position our business for the future." The company reiterated that "we will treat people with care and respect as we complete this important work." Oregon Live reports: Intel announced the pending layoffs in April and notified factory workers last week that the cuts would begin in July. It hadn't previously said just how deep the layoffs will go. The company had 109,000 employees at the end of 2024, but it's not clear how many of those worked in its factory division -- called Intel Foundry. The Foundry business includes a broad array of jobs, from technicians on the factory floor to specialized researchers who work years in advance to develop future generations of microprocessors. Intel is planning major cuts in other parts of its business, too, but employees say the company hasn't specified how many jobs it will eliminate in each business unit. Workers say they believe the impacts will vary within departments. Overall, though, the layoffs will surely eliminate several thousand jobs -- and quite possibly more than 10,000.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Vandals Cut Fiber-Optic Lines, Causing Outage For Spectrum Internet Subscribers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Subscribers in Southern California of Spectrum's Internet service experienced outages over the weekend following what company officials said was an attempted theft of copper lines located in Van Nuys, a suburb located 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The people behind the incident thought they were targeting copper lines, the officials wrote in a statement Sunday. Instead, they cut into fiber optic cables. The cuts caused service disruptions for subscribers in Van Nuys and surrounding areas. Spectrum has since restored service and is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the people responsible. Spectrum will also credit affected customers one day of service on their next bill. "Criminal acts of network vandalism have become an issue affecting the entire telecommunications industry, not just Spectrum, largely due to the increase in the price of precious metals," the officials wrote in a statement issued Sunday. "These acts of vandalism are not only a crime, but also affect our customers, local businesses and potentially emergency services. Spectrum's fiber lines do not include any copper." Outage information service Downdetector showed that thousands of subscribers in and around Van Nuys reported outages starting a little before noon on Sunday. Within about 12 hours, the complaint levels returned to normal. Spectrum officials told the Los Angeles Times that personnel had to splice thousands of fiber lines to restore service to affected subscribers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Threads Will Let You Hide Spoilers In Your Posts
Threads is testing a new feature that lets users hide spoiler content by blurring images or text, which can then be revealed with a tap. The Verge reports: Meta spokesperson Alec Booker told The Verge that this is a "global test," though it's not clear how many people will gain access to it. Spoilers will also look a bit different depending on which device you're using. On desktop, spoilers are hidden by a gray block, but they appear behind a bunch of floating dots on mobile (which you can see in the GIF embedded [here]). "This feature is currently optimized for mobile, but we're working to improve the experience for desktop," Booker said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Salesforce Study Finds LLM Agents Flunk CRM and Confidentiality Tests
A new Salesforce-led study found that LLM-based AI agents struggle with real-world CRM tasks, achieving only 58% success on simple tasks and dropping to 35% on multi-step ones. They also demonstrated poor confidentiality awareness. "Agents demonstrate low confidentiality awareness, which, while improvable through targeted prompting, often negatively impacts task performance," a paper published at the end of last month said. The Register reports: The Salesforce AI Research team argued that existing benchmarks failed to rigorously measure the capabilities or limitations of AI agents, and largely ignored an assessment of their ability to recognize sensitive information and adhere to appropriate data handling protocols. The research unit's CRMArena-Pro tool is fed a data pipeline of realistic synthetic data to populate a Salesforce organization, which serves as the sandbox environment. The agent takes user queries and decides between an API call or a response to the users to get more clarification or provide answers. "These findings suggest a significant gap between current LLM capabilities and the multifaceted demands of real-world enterprise scenarios," the paper said. [...] AI agents might well be useful, however, organizations should be wary of banking on any benefits before they are proven.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- The US Navy Is More Aggressively Telling Startups, 'We Want You'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: While Silicon Valley executives like those from Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI are grabbing headlines for trading their Brunello Cucinelli vests for Army Reserve uniforms, a quieter transformation has been underway in the U.S. Navy. How so? Well, the Navy's chief technology officer, Justin Fanelli, says he has spent the last two and a half years cutting through the red tape and shrinking the protracted procurement cycles that once made working with the military a nightmare for startups. The efforts represent a less visible but potentially more meaningful remaking that aims to see the government move faster and be smarter about where it's committing dollars. "We're more open for business and partnerships than we've ever been before," Fanelli told TechCrunch in a recent episode of StrictlyVC Download. "We're humble and listening more than before, and we recognize that if an organization shows us how we can do business differently, we want that to be a partnership." Right now, many of these partnerships are being facilitated through what Fanelli calls the Navy's innovation adoption kit, a series of frameworks and tools that aim to bridge the so-called Valley of Death, where promising tech dies on its path from prototype to production. "Your granddaddy's government had a spaghetti chart for how to get in," Fanelli said. "Now it's a funnel, and we are saying, if you can show that you have outsized outcomes, then we want to designate you as an enterprise service." In one recent case, the Navy went from a Request for Proposal (RFP) to pilot deployment in under six months with Via, an eight-year-old, Somerville, Massachusetts-based cybersecurity startup that helps big organizations protect sensitive data and digital identities through, in part, decentralization, meaning the data isn't stored in one central spot that can be hacked. (Another of Via's clients is the U.S. Air Force.) The Navy's new approach operates on what Fanelli calls a "horizon" model, borrowed and adapted from McKinsey's innovation framework. Companies move through three phases: evaluation, structured piloting, and scaling to enterprise services. The key difference from traditional government contracting, Fanelli says, is that the Navy now leads with problems rather than predetermined solutions. "Instead of specifying, 'Hey, we'd like this problem solved in a way that we've always had it,' we just say, 'We have a problem, who wants to solve this, and how will you solve it?'" Fanelli said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Obscure Chinese Stock Scams Dupe American Investors by the Thousands
Thousands of American investors have lost millions of dollars to sophisticated pump-and-dump schemes involving small Chinese companies listed on Nasdaq, prompting the Justice Department to declare the fraud a priority under the Trump administration's white-collar enforcement program. The scams recruit victims through social media ads and WhatsApp messages, directing them to purchase shares in obscure Chinese firms whose stock prices are artificially inflated before collapsing. Since 2020, nearly 60 China-based companies have conducted initial public offerings on Nasdaq raising $15 million or less each, with more than one-third experiencing sudden single-day price drops exceeding 50%. In one recent case, seven traders earned over $480 million by defrauding 600 victims who purchased shares in China Liberal Education Holdings.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- OpenAI, Growing Frustrated With Microsoft, Has Discussed Making Antitrust Complaints To Regulators
Tensions between OpenAI and Microsoft over the future of their famed AI partnership are flaring up. WSJ, minutes ago: OpenAI wants to loosen Microsoft's grip on its AI products and computing resources, and secure the tech giant's blessing for its conversion into a for-profit company. Microsoft's approval of the conversion is key to OpenAI's ability to raise more money and go public. But the negotiations have been so difficult that in recent weeks, OpenAI's executives have discussed what they view as a nuclear option: accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior during their partnership, people familiar with the matter said. That effort could involve seeking federal regulatory review of the terms of the contract for potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public campaign, the people said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- That 'Unsubscribe' Button Could Be a Trap, Researchers Warn
Researchers are cautioning users against clicking unsubscribe links embedded in email bodies, citing new data showing such actions can expose recipients to malicious websites and confirm active email addresses to attackers. DNSFilter found that one in every 644 clicks on unsubscribe links leads users to potentially malicious websites. "You've left the safe, structured environment of your email client and entered the open web," TK Keanini, DNSFilter's chief technology officer, told WSJ. The risks range from confirming to bad actors that an email address belongs to an active user to redirecting victims to fake websites designed to steal login credentials or install malware. Clicking such links "can make you a bigger target in the future," said Michael Bargury, CTO of security company Zenity.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Dutch Court Confirms Apple Abused Dominant Position in Dating Apps
A Dutch court on Monday confirmed a 2021 consumer watchdog's ruling saying that Apple had abused its dominant position by imposing unfair conditions on providers of dating apps in the App Store. From a report: The Rotterdam District Court ruled that the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) was therefore right to impose an order subject to a penalty for non-compliance. The court ruled that ACM was right in finding that dating app providers had to use Apple's own payment system, were not allowed to refer to payment options outside the App Store, and had to pay a 30% commission (15% for small providers) to Apple.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Windows Hello Face Unlock No Longer Works in the Dark and Microsoft Says It's Not a Bug
Microsoft has disabled Windows Hello's ability to authenticate users in low-light environments through a recent security update that now requires both infrared sensors and color cameras to verify faces. The change forces the system to see a visible face through the webcam before completing authentication with IR sensors. Windows Hello earlier relied solely on infrared sensors to create 3D facial scans, allowing the feature to work in complete darkness similar to iPhone's Face ID. Microsoft pushed the dual-camera requirement to address a spoofing vulnerability in the biometric system.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Japan Builds Near $700 Million Fund To Lure Foreign Academic Talent
An anonymous reader shares a report: Japan is the latest nation hoping to tempt disgruntled US researchers alarmed by the Trump administration's hostile attitude to academia to relocate to the Land of the Rising Sun. The Japanese government aims to create an elite research environment, and has detailed a $693 million package to attract researchers from abroad, including those from America who may have seen their budgets slashed or who fear a clampdown on their academic freedom.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Researchers Create World's First Completely Verifiable Random Number Generator
Researchers have built a breakthrough random number generator that solves a critical problem: for the first time, every step of creating random numbers can be independently verified and audited, with quantum physics guaranteeing the numbers were truly unpredictable. Random numbers are essential for everything from online banking encryption to fair lottery drawings, but current systems have serious limitations. Computer-based generators follow predictable algorithms -- if someone discovers the starting conditions, they can predict all future outputs. Hardware generators that measure physical processes like electronic noise can't prove their randomness wasn't somehow predetermined or tampered with. The new system, developed by teams at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, uses quantum entanglement -- Einstein's "spooky action at a distance" -- to guarantee unpredictability. The setup creates pairs of photons that share quantum properties, then sends them to measurement stations 110 meters apart. When researchers measure each photon's properties, quantum mechanics ensures the results are fundamentally random and cannot be influenced by any classical communication between the stations. The team created a system called "Twine" that distributes the random number generation process across multiple independent parties, with each step recorded in tamper-proof digital ledgers called hash chains. This means no single organization controls the entire process, and anyone can verify that proper procedures were followed. During a 40-day demonstration, the system successfully generated random numbers in 7,434 of 7,454 attempts -- a 99.7% success rate. Each successful run produced 512 random bits with mathematical certainty of randomness bounded by an error rate of 2^-64, an extraordinarily high level of confidence.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Trump Organization Announces Mobile Plan, $499 Smartphone
The Trump Organization on Monday unveiled a mobile phone plan and a $499 smartphone that is set to launch in September. CNBC: The new service, Trump Mobile, will offer a $47.45-per-month plan that includes "unlimited" talk, text and data, as well as roadside assistance and a "Telehealth and Pharmacy Benefit," according to its website. The company, owned by President Donald Trump, also announced it will sell a "T1" smartphone, which appears to feature a gold-colored metal case etched with an American flag. Further reading: I Tried Pre-Ordering the Trump Phone. The Page Failed and It Charged My Credit Card the Wrong Amount.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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- Scattered Spider has moved from retail to insurance
Google threat analysts warn the team behind the Marks & Spencer break-in has moved on
Cyber-crime crew Scattered Spider has infected US insurance companies following a series of ransomware attacks against American and British retailers, according to Google, which urged this sector to be on "high alert."…
- UK students flock to AI to help them cheat
No need to plagiarize if you can have AI do it for you
A series of Freedom of Information requests shows that students in British universities are increasingly getting busted for using AI to cheat.…
- Penn State boffins create silicon-free two-dimensional computer
Clock speed of 25 kHz means 2D CMOS system won't run Doom quite yet
Gaze into the temporal distance and you might spot the end of the age of silicon looming somewhere out there, as a research team at Penn State University claims to have built the first working CMOS computer entirely from two-dimensional materials.…
- Japan builds near $700M fund to lure foreign academic talent
For researchers yearning to earn some yen and escape Trump 2.0
Japan is the latest nation hoping to tempt disgruntled US researchers alarmed by the Trump administration's hostile attitude to academia to relocate to the Land of the Rising Sun.…
- ISS leaks push Axiom Mission 4 launch to no earlier than June 19
Evaluation of latest repairs to Russian segment ongoing
NASA has pushed back the launch of Axiom Mission 4 to the International Space Station (ISS), citing concerns over persistent leaks aboard the aging orbital outpost. A new No Earlier Than (NET) date is set for June 19.…
- BT chief says AI could deliver more job cuts, hints at Openreach sell-off
As others roll back use of tech due to quality, customers preferring to talk to humans
Not content with a corporate blueprint to cut up to 55,000 employees by 2030, UK telecoms giant BT now says even more staff could be replaced with AI, despite the experience of some orgs that have already tried this.…
- Spy school dropout: GCHQ intern jailed for swiping classified data
Student 'believed he could finish' software dev 'project alone and therefore that the rules did not apply to him'
A former GCHQ intern was jailed for seven-and-a-half years for stealing top-secret files during a year-long placement at the British intelligence agency.…
- Northern Ireland government confirms it did not ask Fujitsu to continue bidding for project
Scandal-hit IT giant said it wouldn't take on new UK.gov contracts or continue bidding on existing ones unless asked
Exclusive The Northern Ireland government did not ask Fujitsu to continue bidding for a £125 million ($167 million) contract, yet the Japanese tech giant to continued to do so, despite promising to quit competing for UK government work during the fallout from the Horizon scandal.…
- Techie exposed giant tax grab, maybe made government change the rules
Custom text fields can be a powerful form of protest
Who, Me? The only certainties in life are death, taxes … and tech causing trouble, a topic that The Register covers each week in this reader-contributed column we call “Who, Me?” that celebrates the moments you made trouble at work and somehow escaped.…
- Dems demand audit of CVE program as Federal funding remains uncertain
PLUS: Discord invite links may not be safe; Miscreants find new way to hide malicious JavaScript; and more!
Infosec In Brief A pair of Congressional Democrats have demanded a review of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program amid uncertainties about continued US government funding for the scheme.…
- Windows 95 testing almost stalled due to cash register overflow
Microsoft veteran on breaking down numbers at the computer store
Windows 95 will soon turn 30. Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen recalled that when testing Microsoft's reimagining of Windows, an overflow was discovered that had nothing to do with the operating system itself.…
- Cyber weapons in the Israel-Iran conflict may hit the US
With Tehran’s military weakened, digital retaliation likely, experts tell The Reg
The current Israel–Iran military conflict is taking place in the era of hybrid war, where cyberattacks amplify and assist missiles and troops, and is being waged between two countries with very capable destructive cyber weapons.…
- Larry Ellison is still not the world's richest person
Oracle’s 80-year-old co-founder pulls off a $25 billion cloud day to leapfrog Zuck and Bezos into the No. 2 spot
Oracle co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison has reclaimed the No. 2 spot on Forbes's real-time billionaire list, trailing only Elon Musk after leapfrogging Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.…
- PCIe 7.0 specs finalized at 512 GBps bandwidth, PCIe 8.0 in the pipeline
Work on next gen already underway, while bandwidth needs for datacenters just keep rising
The PCI Special Interest Group (PIC-SIG) just released official specs for PCIe 7.0, doubling the bandwidth again for high-performance kit such as network cards, while hinting that PCIe 8.0 may not achieve the same.…
- Apple fixes zero-click exploit underpinning Paragon spyware attacks
Zero-day potentially tied to around 100 suspected infections in 2025 and a spyware scandal on the continent
Apple has updated its iOS/iPadOS 18.3.1 documentation, confirming it introduced fixes for the zero-click vulnerability used to infect journalists with Paragon's Graphite spyware.…
- The trendline doesn’t look good for hard disk drives
Sales of HDDs to non-hyperscale outfits increasingly rare, say analysts
Feature In early May, independent digital storage analyst Thomas Coughlin shared news of falling sales and revenue in the first quarter of 2025, continuing a trend that started in around 2010. Coughlin cites data from that year showing around 600 million annual hard disk shipments.…
- Wanted: Junior cybersecurity staff with 10 years' experience and a PhD
Infosec employers demanding too much from early-career recruits, says ISC2
Cybersecurity hiring managers need a reality check when it comes to hiring junior staff, with job adverts littered with unfair expectations that are hampering recruitment efforts, says industry training and cert issuer ISC2.…
- Friday the 13th strikes for Barclays' corporate customers
Superstitions stoked by blackout of iPortal centralized platform when no maintenance was scheduled
Barclays Bank is wrestling with some digital gremlins affecting its corporate banking services this Friday the 13th of June – the final day of the working week for many of us, but perhaps not the poor techies beavering away to restore normal play.…
- Danish department determined to dump Microsoft
Jutes revolt against Redmond: Minister for Digital Affairs aims the longboats away from Vinland
Comment The boss of Denmark's Ministry for Digitalization says her department will move away from Microsoft – starting with LibreOffice.…
- UK unis to cough up to £10M on Java to keep Oracle off their backs
Deal includes 'waiver of historic fees'
UK universities and colleges have signed a framework worth up to £9.86 million ($13.33 million) with Oracle to use its controversial Java SE Universal Subscription model, in exchange for a "waiver of historic fees due for any institutions who have used Oracle Java since 2023."…
- User demanded a ‘wireless’ computer and was outraged when its battery died
Abusive manager had to be told there's no such thing as an atomic laptop
On Call By Friday morning, Reg readers’ batteries can sometimes be a little low, which is why we always use the day to offer a jolt of amusement in the form of On Call – the reader contributed column in which we celebrate the lows and lows of tech support.…
- I'm just a Barbie Girl in a ChatGPT world
Mattel-OpenAI deal paves the way for an AI beach-off
Toy giant Mattel has signed a deal with OpenAI to bring the tech industry's buzziest technology to the very youngest generation.…
- Ransomware scum disrupted utility services with SimpleHelp attacks
Good news: The vendor patched the flaw in January. Bad news: Not everyone got the memo
Ransomware criminals infected a utility billing software providers' customers, and in some cases disrupted services, after exploiting unpatched versions of SimpleHelp’s remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool, according to a Thursday CISA alert.…
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