"South Korea is considering prohibiting the use of iPhones and smart wearable devices inside military buildings," reports the Defense Post, "due to increasing security concerns." But the blog Apple Insider argues the move "has less to do with security and more to do with a poorly crafted mobile device management suite coupled with nationalism..." A report on Tuesday morning claims that the ban is on all devices capable of voice recording and do not allow third-party apps to lock this down — with iPhone specifically named... According to sources familiar with the matter cited by Tuesday's report, the iPhone is explicitly banned. Android-based devices, like Samsung's, are exempt from the ban... The issue appears to be that the South Korean National Defense Mobile Security mobile device management app doesn't seem to be able to block the use of the microphone. This particular MDM was rolled out in 2013, with use enforced across all military members in 2021. The report talks about user complaints about the software, and inconsistent limitations depending on make, model, and operating system. A military official speaking to the publication says that deficiencies on Android would be addressed in a software update. Discussions are apparently underway to extend the total ban downwards to the entire military. The Army is said to have tried the ban as well... Seven in 10 South Korean military members are Samsung users. So, the ban appears to be mostly symbolic. Thanks to Slashdot reader Kitkoan for sharing the news.

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While AMD Zen 4 processors whether it be the Ryzen 7000/8000 desktop/mobile series or EPYC 8004/9004 series server processors are already performing very well on Linux and with great power efficiency against the competition as shown in dozens of Phoronix articles at this point, it turns out there's been a minor power/performance optimization left untapped yet under Linux for select Zen 4 processors. A new patch series posted this Sunday allows for this "fast CPPC" feature to be utilized on supported processors...

On top of prior DRM-Next pull requests for the AMD kernel graphics driver working on next-gen GPU support along with fixes and other low-level improvements, on Friday another batch of new feature code was submitted to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.10 merge window opening up in mid-May...

A commit made to the Linux kernel three weeks ago accidentally broke the default CPU security mitigations for non-x86 CPUs. With code sent in today via x86/urgent ahead of tonight's Linux 6.9-rc6 release, that accidental default breakage is being addressed...

It's another speech-recognizing, AI-powered handheld device "about half the size of a phone," writes CNET. (Though the $199 device comes with a keyboard and a tiny 2.8-inch screen.) "The Rabbit R1 can identify items in its environment. Point it at a plant, and it can tell you what kind it is. Aim it at your lunch, and it can tell you what's in it. "it also feels a bit like a novelty so far...." It can call an Uber, order dinner from Doordash, translate conversations, record voice memos, play songs from Spotify and more. Your phone can already do all of those things, but [CEO and founder Jesse] Lyu is promoting the Rabbit R1 as a faster and more natural way to do so... So far, the Rabbit R1 feels fun, fresh and interesting, but also frustrating at times. It intrigues me, but it also hasn't convinced me yet that there's room for another gadget in my life.... Many of the things it can do today feel smartphone-esque, like asking for the weather or playing songs on Spotify... Visual search is the most interesting feature so far... It's pretty accurate for the most part so far. When I pointed it at my salad during lunch, it was able to tell me most of the ingredients. That's not what I asked. After all, who orders a dish without knowing what's in it? I asked the Rabbit R1 to tell me how many calories were in my lunch. While it couldn't provide the answer I wanted, I was impressed with its response... Overall, Rabbit R1's visual analysis worked pretty well for identifying things like plants and characters from pop culture. When describing my colleague's sneakers, the Rabbit R1 got the brand wrong... So far, I've used the Rabbit R1 to take voice memos, translate speech from Spanish to English, and answer basic questions about things like weather forecasts. These features work as expected for the most part. The article points out that Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses "also have multimodal AI, meaning the eyewear can 'see' what you see and tell you about it," and "you can already do something like this on your phone through Google's Gemini assistant on Android phones (or the Gemini section of the Google app for the iPhone). "It's also very reminiscent of Google Lens, which has been around for years..."

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Cloud Hypervisor 39 was released on Saturday for this cloud-focused, Rust-based VMM started by Intel and now a multi-vendor Linux Foundation project...

Oui, vous ne rêvez pas, nous vous proposons de gagner, en partenariat avec ZOTAC et NVIDIA, de gagner une énormissime carte graphique, à savoir la RTX 4080 SUPER AMP EXTREME AIRO... V'là le cadeau de folie les copains... Le concours se fait via Gleam et vous avez diverses opérations plutôt faciles à mener pour participer. ATTENTION, c'est le dernier jour pour participer... […]

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Les prix des processeurs maintenant. On commence chez les bleus, avec le 13400F qui prend 3 euros, le 13600K qui perd 5 euros, le 13900K qui se fait + 5 euros, le 14600K fait également + 5 euros. Le 14700K baisse, de son côté, de 7 euros. Le 14900K reste au même tarif. Et chez AMD alors ? Eh bien, nous avons de dire que c'est un peu la même, des hausses et des baisses. […]

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Since going beta in 2020, the Zrythm open-source digital audio workstation software has been inching its way toward a v1.0 release. On Saturday marked the release of v1.0.0-rc.1 as a release candidate for the upcoming v1.0 release of this GTK-based digital audio workstation (DAW) software...

Merged on Friday to the development codebase for the LLVM/Clang 19 compiler is support for the Arm Neoverse N3, V3, and V3AE SoCs...

Semaine variée dans les tests avec un combat acharné de processeurs, du refroidissement, un boitier, un clavier... Deux alimentations ! Pas d'équité donc, mais des produits fort intéressants, voire originaux. On (re)découvre ça de suite ! […]

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Japan's moon lander "has woken up again," reports the Register, "having survived three lunar nights." A post on social media from the lander's X account confirmed that once more, Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had defied the odds and snapped a picture of the lunar surface using its navigation camera. SLIM was revived a few weeks ago, after a second lunar night. However, with telemetry showing that some of the electronics (temperature sensors) and battery cells were malfunctioning, the chances of the lander making it through a third lunar night seemed remote. Yet against all odds, SLIM has stirred once more on the lunar surface despite lacking heaters to keep its electronics warm.

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What happened after India banned TikTok? The move "mostly drew widespread support" notes the Associated Press, in a country "where protesters had been calling for a boycott of Chinese goods since the deadly confrontation in the remote Karakoram mountain border region." "There was a clamour leading up to this, and the popular narrative was how can we allow Chinese companies to do business in India when we're in the middle of a military standoff," said Nikhil Pahwa, a digital policy expert and founder of tech website MediaNama. Just months before the ban, India had also restricted investment from Chinese companies, Pahwa added. "TikTok wasn't a one-off case. Today, India has banned over 500 Chinese apps to date." At the time, India had about 200 million TikTok users. And the company also employed thousands of Indians. TikTok users and content creators, however, needed a place to go — and the ban provided a multi-billion dollar opportunity to snatch up a big market. Within months, Google rolled out YouTube Shorts and Instagram pushed out its Reels feature. Both mimicked the short-form video creation that TikTok had excelled at. "And they ended up capturing most of the market that TikTok had vacated," said Pahwa. TikTok is also banned in Nepal and Somalia, according to Mashable, and the Associaterd Press adds that it's now also banned in Pakistan, Nepal and Afghanistan "and restricted in many countries in Europe." Their article concludes that "for the most part, content creators and users in the four years since the ban have moved on to other platforms." They quote one frequent TikTok user as saying they just switched to Instagram after the ban, and "It wasn't really a big deal."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: Tech giant Cisco Systems on Wednesday joined Microsoft and IBM in signing onto a Vatican-sponsored pledge to ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used ethically and to benefit the common good... The pledge outlines key pillars of ethical and responsible use of AI. It emphasizes that AI systems must be designed, used and regulated to serve and protect the dignity of all human beings, without discrimination, and their environments. It highlights principles of transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality and security as necessary to guide all AI developments. The document was unveiled and signed at a Vatican conference on Feb. 28, 2020... Pope Francis has called for an international treaty to ensure AI is developed and used ethically, devoting his annual peace message this year to the topic.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Times of India: Several Apple customers were inexplicably locked out of their Apple ID accounts Friday evening in a major service disruption, forcing them to reset their passwords across all devices and services. According to user reports on social media, the widespread outage began around 8 p.m. ET. People complained that they were abruptly signed out of their Apple IDs on Macs, iPhones, iPads, and other Apple devices. When attempting to sign back in with their existing passwords, they received an error message preventing access... To regain access, users had to go through Apple's account recovery process to reset their Apple ID passwords. However, many reported difficulties even completing the reset process initially due to high demand... The outage affected iCloud services like iCloud Drive, iMessage, FaceTime, and the App Store. Third-party apps and services that integrate with Apple ID sign-in were also disrupted for those impacted.

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This week Russia vetoed a UN resolution that proposed banning nuclear weapons in space, CNN reports. But it all happened "amid U.S. intelligence-backed concerns that Moscow is trying to develop a nuclear device capable of destroying satellites." In February, President Joe Biden confirmed the US has intelligence that Russia is developing a nuclear anti-satellite capability. Three sources familiar with the intelligence subsequently told CNN the weapon could destroy satellites by creating a massive energy wave when detonated... US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Wednesday's vote "marks a real missed opportunity to rebuild much-needed trust in existing arms control obligations." A US and Japan-drafted resolution had received cross-regional support from more than 60 member states. It intended to strengthen and uphold the global non-proliferation regime, including in outer space, and reaffirm the shared goal of maintaining outer space for peaceful purposes. It also called on UN member states not to develop nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction designed to be placed in Earth's orbit.... Experts say this kind of weapon could have the potential to wipe out mega constellations of small satellites, like SpaceX's Starlink, which has been successfully used by Ukraine to counter Russian troops. This would almost certainly be "a last-ditch weapon" for Russia, the US official and other sources said — because it would do the same damage to whatever Russian satellites were also in the area. The article notes that in March Russian President Vladimir Putin "told officials that space projects, including the setup of a nuclear power unit in space, should be a priority and receive proper financing." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

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"A former high school athletic director was arrested Thursday morning," reports CBS News, "after allegedly using artificial intelligence to impersonate the school principal in a recording..." One-time Pikesville High School employee Dazhon Darien is facing charges that include theft, stalking, disruption of school operations and retaliation against a witness. Investigators determined he faked principal Eric Eiswert's voice and circulated the audio on social media in January. Darien's nickname, DJ, was among the names mentioned in the audio clips he allegedly faked, according to the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office. Baltimore County detectives say Darien created the recording as retaliation against Eiswert, who had launched an investigation into the potential mishandling of school funds, Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said on Thursday. Eiswert's voice, which police and AI experts believe was simulated, made disparaging comments toward Black students and the surrounding Jewish community. The audio was widely circulated on social media. The article notes that after the faked recording circulated on social media the principal "was temporarily removed from the school, and waves of hate-filled messages circulated on social media, while the school received numerous phone calls." The suspect had actually used the school's network multiple times to perform online searches for OpenAI tools, "which police linked to paid OpenAI accounts."

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Reuters reports that America's Federal Aviation Administration "is investigating a union's claims that Boeing retaliated against two employees who in 2022 insisted the planemaker re-evaluate prior engineering work on 777 and 787 jets." The employees' union "said the two unidentified engineers were representatives of the FAA, which delegates some of its oversight authority and certification process to Boeing workers." The FAA noted on Tuesday that in 2022 it boosted oversight of planemakers by protecting aviation industry employees who perform agency functions from interference by their employers. A December 2021 Senate report found "FAA's certification process suffers from undue pressure on line engineers and production staff." "Boeing can tell Congress and the media all it wants about how retaliation is strictly prohibited," said SPEEA Director of Strategic Development Rich Plunkett. "But our union is fighting retaliation cases on a regular basis, and, in this specific case, Boeing is trying to hide information that would shed light on what happened...." Last week, Boeing quality engineer whistleblower Sam Salehpour, who raised questions about Boeing widebody jets, told senators he was told to "shut up" when he flagged safety concerns. He has said he was removed from the 787 program and transferred to the 777 jet due to his questions. Boeing has "zero tolerance for retaliation," according a statement quoted by Reuters, in which the company says they "encourage our employees to speak up when they see an issue. After an extensive review of documentation and interviewing more than a dozen witnesses, our investigators found no evidence of retaliation or interference. We have determined the allegations are unsubstantiated." The union's version of the story? "After nearly six months of debate, the two engineers, with backing from the FAA, prevailed. Boeing re-did the required analysis." The two engineers were still Boeing employees, however, and Boeing management was not pleased. When they came up for their next performance reviews, the two engineers received identical negative evaluations... Even after the manager of the two engineers admitted that he had rated them both poorly at the request of the 777 and 787 managers who had been forced to resubmit their work, Boeing refused to change the engineers' performance evaluations. At this point, one of the engineers left in disgust; the other filed a formal "Speak Up" complaint with Boeing.

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