Slashdot reader hcs_$reboot shared this report from NPR: A pair of switches that control the fuel supply to the engines were set to "cutoff" moments before the crash of Air India Flight 171, according to a preliminary report from India's Air Accident Investigation Bureau released early Saturday in India... Indian investigators determined the jet was properly configured and lifted off normally. But three seconds after takeoff, the engines' fuel switches were cut off. It's not clear why. According to the report, data from the flight recorders show that the two fuel control switches were switched from the "run" position to "cutoff" shortly after takeoff. In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots can be heard asking the other "why did he cutoff," the report says, while "the other pilot responded that he did not do so." Moments later, the report says, the fuel switches were returned to the "run" position. But by then, the plane had begun to lose thrust and altitude. Both the engines appeared to relight, according to investigators, but only one of them was able to begin generating thrust. The report does not draw any further conclusions about why the switches were flipped, but it does suggest that investigators are focused on the actions of the plane's pilots. The report does not present any evidence of mechanical failures or of a possible bird strike, which could have incapacitated both engines at the same time.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Contrary to popular belief, using cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools slowed down experienced software developers when they were working in codebases familiar to them, rather than supercharging their work, a new study found. AI research nonprofit METR conducted the in-depth study on a group of seasoned developers earlier this year while they used Cursor, a popular AI coding assistant, to help them complete tasks in open-source projects they were familiar with. Before the study, the open-source developers believed using AI would speed them up, estimating it would decrease task completion time by 24%. Even after completing the tasks with AI, the developers believed that they had decreased task times by 20%. But the study found that using AI did the opposite: it increased task completion time by 19%. The study's lead authors, Joel Becker and Nate Rush, said they were shocked by the results: prior to the study, Rush had written down that he expected "a 2x speed up, somewhat obviously." [...] The slowdown stemmed from developers needing to spend time going over and correcting what the AI models suggested. "When we watched the videos, we found that the AIs made some suggestions about their work, and the suggestions were often directionally correct, but not exactly what's needed," Becker said. The authors cautioned that they do not expect the slowdown to apply in other scenarios, such as for junior engineers or engineers working in codebases they aren't familiar with. Still, the majority of the study's participants, as well as the study's authors, continue to use Cursor today. The authors believe it is because AI makes the development experience easier, and in turn, more pleasant, akin to editing an essay instead of staring at a blank page. "Developers have goals other than completing the task as soon as possible," Becker said. "So they're going with this less effortful route."

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Major space industry players -- including SpaceX, Boeing, and Blue Origin -- are urging Congress to maintain funding for the TraCSS space traffic coordination program, warning that eliminating it would endanger satellite safety and potentially drive companies abroad. Under the proposed FY 2026 budget, the Office of Space Commerce's funding would be cut from $65 million to just $10 million. "That $55M cut is accomplished by eliminating the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) program," reports The Register. From the report: "One of OSC's most important functions is to provide space traffic coordination support to US satellite operators, similar to the Federal Aviation Administration's role in air traffic control," stated letters from space companies including SpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin, and others. The letters argue that safe space operations "in an increasingly congested space domain" are critical for modern services like broadband satellite internet and weather forecasting, but that's not all. "Likewise, a safe space operating environment is vital for continuity of national security space missions such as early warning of missile attacks on deployed US military forces," the letters added. Industry trade groups sent the letters to the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and Senate budget subcommittees for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, claiming to represent more than 450 US companies in the space, satellite, and defense sectors. The letters argue for the retention of the OSC's FY 2025 budget of $65 million, as well as keeping control of space traffic coordination within the purview of the Department of Commerce, under which the OSC is nested, and not the Department of Defense, where it was previously managed. "Successive administrations have recognized on a bipartisan basis that space traffic coordination is a global, commercial-facing function best managed by a civilian agency," the companies explained. "Keeping space traffic coordination within the Department of Commerce preserves military resources for core defense missions and prevents the conflation of space safety with military control." In the budget request document, the government explained the Commerce Department was unable to complete "a government owned and operated public-facing database and traffic coordination system" in a timely manner. The private sector, meanwhile, "has proven they have the capability and the business model to provide civil operators" with the necessary space tracking data. But according to the OSC, TraCSS would have been ready for operations by January 2026, raising the question of why the government would kill the program so late in the game.

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In June 2025, solar power became the leading source of electricity in the EU for the first time, surpassing nuclear and wind, while coal hit a record low. CBC reports: Solar generated 22.1 percent of the EU's electricity last month, up from 18.9 percent a year earlier, as record sunshine and continued solar installations pushed output to 45.4 terawatt hours. Nuclear followed closely at 21.8 percent and wind contributed 15.8 percent of the mix. At least 13 EU countries, including Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, recorded highest-ever monthly solar generation, [data from energy think tank Ember showed on Thursday.] Coal's share of the EU electricity mix fell to a record low of 6.1 percent in June, compared to 8.8 percent last year, with 28 percent less electricity generated than a year earlier. Germany and Poland, which together generated nearly 80 percent of the 27-country bloc's coal-fired electricity in June, also saw record monthly lows. Coal accounted for 12.4 per cent of Germany's electricity mix and 42.9 percent of Poland's. Spain, nearing a full phase-out of coal, generated just 0.6 per cent of its electricity from coal in the same period. Wind power also set new records in May and June, rebounding after poor wind conditions resulted in a weak start to the year. But despite record solar and wind output in June, fossil fuel usage in the first half of 2025 grew 13 percent from last year, driven by a 19 percent increase in gas generation to offset weak hydro and wind output earlier in the year. Electricity demand in the EU rose 2.2 percent in the first half of the year, with five of the first six months showing year-on-year increases. The next challenge for Europe's power system is to expand battery storage and grid flexibility to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels during non-solar hours, Ember said in the report.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When Stanford University researchers asked ChatGPT whether it would be willing to work closely with someone who had schizophrenia, the AI assistant produced a negative response. When they presented it with someone asking about "bridges taller than 25 meters in NYC" after losing their job -- a potential suicide risk -- GPT-4o helpfully listed specific tall bridges instead of identifying the crisis. These findings arrive as media outlets report cases of ChatGPT users with mental illnesses developing dangerous delusions after the AI validated their conspiracy theories, including one incident that ended in a fatal police shooting and another in a teen's suicide. The research, presented at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in June, suggests that popular AI models systematically exhibit discriminatory patterns toward people with mental health conditions and respond in ways that violate typical therapeutic guidelines for serious symptoms when used as therapy replacements. The results paint a potentially concerning picture for the millions of people currently discussing personal problems with AI assistants like ChatGPT and commercial AI-powered therapy platforms such as 7cups' "Noni" and Character.ai's "Therapist." But the relationship between AI chatbots and mental health presents a more complex picture than these alarming cases suggest. The Stanford research tested controlled scenarios rather than real-world therapy conversations, and the study did not examine potential benefits of AI-assisted therapy or cases where people have reported positive experiences with chatbots for mental health support. In an earlier study, researchers from King's College and Harvard Medical School interviewed 19 participants who used generative AI chatbots for mental health and found reports of high engagement and positive impacts, including improved relationships and healing from trauma. Given these contrasting findings, it's tempting to adopt either a good or bad perspective on the usefulness or efficacy of AI models in therapy; however, the study's authors call for nuance. Co-author Nick Haber, an assistant professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Education, emphasized caution about making blanket assumptions. "This isn't simply 'LLMs for therapy is bad,' but it's asking us to think critically about the role of LLMs in therapy," Haber told the Stanford Report, which publicizes the university's research. "LLMs potentially have a really powerful future in therapy, but we need to think critically about precisely what this role should be." The Stanford study, titled "Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providers," involved researchers from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Texas at Austin.

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Stanford researchers have developed a blood-based AI tool that calculates the biological age of individual organs to reveal early signs of aging-related disease. The Mercury News reports: The tool, unveiled in Nature Medicine Wednesday, was developed by a research team spearheaded by Tony Wyss-Coray. Wyss-Coray, a Stanford Medicine professor who has spent almost 15 years fixated on the study of aging, said that the tool could "change our approach to health care." Scouring a single draw of blood for thousands of proteins, the tool works by first comparing the levels of these proteins with their average levels at a given age. An artificial intelligence algorithm then uses these gaps to derive a "biological age" for each organ. To test the accuracy of these "biological ages," the researchers processed data for 45,000 people from the UK Biobank, a database that has kept detailed health information from over half a million British citizens for the last 17 years. When they analyzed the data, the researchers found a clear trend for all 11 organs they studied; biologically older organs were significantly more likely to develop aging-related diseases than younger ones. For instance, those with older hearts were at much higher risk for atrial fibrillation or heart failure, while those with older lungs were much more likely to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But the brain's biological age, Wyss-Coray said, was "particularly important in determining or predicting how long you're going to live." "If you have a very young brain, those people live the longest," he said. "If you have a very old brain, those people are going to die the soonest out of all the organs we looked at." Indeed, for a given chronological age, those with "extremely aged brains" -- the 7% whose brains scored the highest on biological age -- were over 12 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease over the next decade than those with "extremely youthful brains" -- the 7% whose brains inhabited the other end of the spectrum. Wyss-Coray's team also found several factors -- smoking, alcohol, poverty, insomnia and processed meat consumption -- were directly correlated with biologically aged organs. Poultry consumption, vigorous exercise, and oily fish consumption were among the factors correlated with biologically youthful organs. Supplements like glucosamine and estrogen replacements also seemed to have "protective effects," Wyss-Coray said. [...] The test ... would cost $200 once it could be operated at scale.

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joshuark writes: A Russian basketball player, Daniil Kasatkin, was arrested on June 21 in France at the request of the United States as he allegedly is part of a network of hackers. Daniil Kasatkin, aged 26, is accused by the United States of negotiating the payment of ransoms to this hacker network, which he denies. He has been studied in the United States, and is the subject of a U.S. arrest warrant for "conspiracy to commit computer fraud" and "computer fraud conspiracy." His lawyer alleges that Kasatkin is not guilty of these crimes and that they are instead linked to a second-hand computer that he purchased. "He bought a second-hand computer. He did absolutely nothing. He's stunned," his lawyer, Freric Belot, told the media. "He's useless with computers and can't even install an application. He didn't touch anything on the computer: it was either hacked, or the hacker sold it to him to act under the cover of another person." The report notes that Kasatkin briefly played NCAA basketball at Penn State before returning to Russia in 2019. He also appeared in 172 games with MBA-MAI before he left the team.

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iFixit has harsh words for Nintendo's $85 Switch 2 Pro controller, calling it a "piss-poor excuse for a controller" due to its difficult repairability, use of outdated drift-prone joysticks, and poor internal accessibility. The Verge reports: Opening the controller requires you to first forcefully remove a faceplate held in place by adhesive tape before a single screw is visible. But you'll need to extract several other parts and components, including the controller's mainboard, before its battery is even accessible. As previously revealed, the Pro 2 is still using older potentiometer-based joysticks that are prone to developing drift over time. They do feature a modular design that will potentially make them easier to swap with third-party Hall effect or TMR replacements, but reassembling the controller after that DIY upgrade will require you to replace all the adhesive tape you destroyed during disassembly. You can watch the full teardown on YouTube.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: JPMorgan Chase has told financial-technology companies that it will start charging fees amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars for access to their customers' bank account information -- a move that threatens to upend the industry's business models. The largest US bank has sent pricing sheets to data aggregators -- which connect banks and fintechs -- outlining the new charges, according to people familiar with the matter. The fees vary depending on how companies use the information, with higher levies tied to payments-focused companies, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. A representative for JPMorgan said the bank has invested significant resources to create a secure system that protects consumer data. "We've had productive conversations and are working with the entire ecosystem to ensure we're all making the necessary investments in the infrastructure that keeps our customers safe," the spokesperson said in a statement. The fees -- expected to take effect later this year depending on the fate of a Biden-era regulation -- aren't final and could be negotiated. [The open-banking measure, finalized in October, enables consumers to demand, download and transfer their highly-coveted data to another lender or financial services provider for free.] The charges would drastically reshape the business for fintech firms, which fundamentally rely on their access to customers' bank accounts. Payment platforms like PayPal's Venmo, cryptocurrency wallets such as Coinbase and retail-trading brokerages like Robinhood all use this data so customers can send, receive and trade money. Typically, the firms have been able to get it for free. Many fintechs access data using aggregators such as Plaid and MX, which provide the plumbing between fintechs and banks. The new fees -- which vary from firm to firm -- could be passed from the aggregators to the fintechs and, ultimately, consumers. The aggregator firms have been in discussions with JPMorgan about the charges, and those talks are constructive and ongoing, another person familiar with the matter said.

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OpenAI's planned acquisition of Windsurf has fallen apart. Instead, Google is hiring Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, cofounder Douglas Chen, and parts of its R&D team to join DeepMind and focus on agentic coding for Gemini. Google will not acquire Windsurf but will receive a non-exclusive license to some of its technology, while Windsurf continues independently under new leadership. The Verge reports: Effective immediately, Jeff Wang, Windsurf's head of business, has become interim CEO, and Graham Moreno, its VP of global sales, will be Windsurf's new president. "Gemini is one of the best models available and we've been investing in its advanced capabilities for developers," Chris Pappas, a spokesperson for Google, told The Verge in a statement. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding." "We are excited to be joining Google DeepMind along with some of the Windsurf team," Mohan and Chen said in a statement. "We are proud of what Windsurf has built over the last four years and are excited to see it move forward with their world class team and kick-start the next phase." Google didn't share how much it was paying to bring on the team. OpenAI was previously reported to be buying Windsurf for $3 billion.

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BYD has unveiled fully autonomous Level 4 self-parking across its vehicle lineup, powered by its advanced multi-sensor "God's Eye" system that's used by more than 1 million cars across China. "The company is so confident in the technology that it announced that it will cover any damages to your car or any other vehicle if things go wrong," adds Fast Company. "This means if anything happens, the owner won't have to file a claim and have their premiums go up." From the report: BYD's confidence stems from a sophisticated sensor architecture. The God's Eye system deploys multiple sensing technologies working in concert, unlike Tesla's problematic camera-only approach. Even the entry-level God's Eye C variant -- one of three autonomous driving levels included in most affordable models -- includes 12 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic sensors with 1-centimeter accuracy. The mid-tier God's Eye B adds a lidar sensor, while the premium God's Eye A variant features three lidar sensors for maximum precision. The system's parking accuracy allows the car to get within 0.8 inches of other objects, enabled by multiple redundant sensors that create a three-dimensional map. This allows the vehicle a deep understanding of its environment. This multi-sensor approach allows the system to detect obstacles. It can even recognize hanging objects over the roof line of the car. The company reports that more than 1 million vehicles now carry the God's Eye system, an impressive deployment scale that starts with the most inexpensive models, like the $9,550 BYD Seagull, and go all the way to the $236,000 BYD Yangwang U9, a hypercar that can detect potholes on the road and jump over them. Yes. If the God's Eye detects an obstacle on the road, it will literally jump over it.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For the second time in a year, Google has announced that it will render some of its past phones almost unusable with a software update, and users don't have any choice in the matter. After nerfing the Pixel 4a's battery capacity earlier this year, Google has now confirmed a similar update is rolling out to the Pixel 6a. The new July Android update adds "battery management features" that will make the phone unusable. Given the risks involved, Google had no choice but to act, but it could choose to take better care of its customers and use better components in the first place. Unfortunately, a lot more phones are about to end up in the trash. [...] Pixel 4a units contained one of two different batteries, and only the one manufactured by a company called Lishen was downgraded. For the Pixel 6a, Google has decreed that the battery limits will be imposed when the cells hit 400 charge cycles. Beyond that, the risk of fire becomes too great -- there have been reports of Pixel 6a phones bursting into flames. Clearly, Google had to do something, but the remedies it settled on feel unnecessarily hostile to customers. It had a chance to do better the second time, but the solution for the Pixel 6a is more of the same. [...] When Google killed the Pixel 4a's battery life, it offered a few options. You could have the battery replaced for free, get $50 cash, or accept a $100 credit in the Google Store. However, claiming the money or free battery was a frustrating experience that was rife with fees and caveats. The store credit is also only good on phones and can't be used with other promotions or discounts. And the battery swap? You'd better hope there's nothing else wrong with the device. If it has any damage, like cracked glass, it may not qualify for a free battery replacement. Now we have the Pixel 6a Battery Performance Program with all the same problems. Pixel 6a owners can get $100 in cash or $150 in store credit. Alternatively, Google offers a free battery replacement with the same limits on phone condition. This is all particularly galling because the Pixel 6a is still an officially supported phone, with its final guaranteed update coming in 2027. Google also pulled previous software packages for this phone to prevent rollbacks. [...] If you have a Pixel 6a, the battery-killing update is rolling out now. You'll have no choice but to install it if you want to remain on the official software. Google has a support site where you can try to get a free battery swap or some cash.

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Apple added the 2013 "Trash Can" Mac Pro to its vintage products list alongside the 2019 13-inch MacBook Air, 2019 iMac, 2018 iPad Pro models, and the 128GB iPhone 8. The cylindrical Mac Pro remained on sale until December 2019, when Apple replaced it with the redesigned "Cheese Grater" model. Products typically reach vintage status five years after their last distribution date. The 2013 Mac Pro's radical cylindrical design prevented internal component upgrades and created thermal limitations that Apple acknowledged in 2017. "I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner," Apple hardware chief Craig Federighi said at the time. Apple also moved several AirPort devices to its obsolete list, including the second-generation AirPort Express and AirPort Time Capsules. The 2013 Mac Pro's radical design created thermal limitations that Apple acknowledged in 2017.

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The U.S. government has canceled a proposed $900 million project to study in unprecedented detail the afterglow of the Big Bang, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Science magazine: Known as CMB-S4, the project envisioned new arrays of ultrasensitive microwave telescopes at the South Pole and in Chile's Atacama Desert. Their goal: to detect patterns in the ancient light that would prove the newborn universe expanded in an exponential growth spurt called cosmic inflation. The project, which could have delivered smoking gun evidence for a key theory in cosmology, was supposed to be a joint venture between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE). However, yesterday, the agencies sent an unsigned statement to the leaders of the collaboration saying the project is off. "DOE and NSF have jointly decided that they can no longer support the CMB-S4 Project," it reads.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: This week has seen the shortest days of the year so far. According to data from the U.S. Naval Observatory and the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, Tuesday's rotation was about 1.34 milliseconds less than 24 hours. More quick spins are expected this week, later this month and in early August, according to predictions from the website Time and Date. This isn't completely out of the ordinary: Our world's spins have been faster than usual lately. The average day has mostly shortened over the past decade, and within the past five years or so, the full rotation has clocked in at a hair less than 24 hours more often than not. Factors driving the change include movements at Earth's core, atmospheric changes and the moon's position. But long-term trends do not suggest that the days will shorten in perpetuity. In fact, it is just the opposite. For many millenniums, the days have been growing longer. A Tyrannosaurus rex that lived 70 million years ago would have experienced an average daily rotation of about 23 1/2 hours, studies have found.

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Denmark's Parliament adopted a law in May raising the retirement age to 70 by 2040, up from the current 67, affecting anyone born after December 31, 1970. The country indexed its official retirement age to life expectancy in 2006 and revises it every five years, with the age set to increase to 68 in 2030 and 69 in 2035. Few Danes actually work until the legal retirement age -- in 2022, when the official age was 67, the actual average retirement age was around 64, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. About 20% of Danish retirees leave work because they cannot find employment or are too sick to continue. The universal public pension currently provides 7,198 kroner ($1,130) per month, supplemented by mandatory and optional employer-funded pensions.

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Four years of research following the 2021 western North American heat wave has revealed both the meteorological conditions that fuel extreme temperatures and evidence that heat has physical limits. The 2021 event "shocked everyone, including specialists working on the subject. People were completely stunned," said Robin Noyelle, a postdoctoral researcher in climate science at ETH Zurich. Scientists now focus on temperature departures from local averages rather than absolute readings. The most anomalously warm temperature was recorded in Antarctica, where temperatures rose 39C above average in March 2022. North Pole temperatures surged 20C higher than normal in February, reaching the melting point in winter. Research has identified five key factors that enable extreme heat: cloudless skies, high pressure, dark surfaces, lower altitudes, and lack of water. "Basically all of these conditions are met in Death Valley, but not in many other places in the world," said climate scientist Friederike Otto. Scientists insist that there are heat limits, though these upper bounds will rise with global warming, they caution.

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Warner Bros. releases a $225 million Superman reboot this week that executives consider the studio's final chance to build a successful cinematic universe rivaling Marvel's dominance. The film, written and directed by James Gunn, serves as the foundation for DC Studios' planned expansion into multiple films and television shows. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav appointed Gunn and producer Peter Safran to lead the newly unified DC Studios in 2022, ending decades of corporate infighting that prevented the company's superheroes from matching Marvel's success. The Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe has generated $32 billion across 36 films since 2008. Warner executives want the movie to gross over $500 million globally, according to WSJ. If successful, this would mark the first year since 2008 that DC outperforms Marvel at the box office.

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New submitter RJFerret shares a Belkin support page: After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to end technical support for older Wemo products, effective January 31, 2026. After this date, several Wemo products will no longer be controllable through the Wemo app. Any features that rely on cloud connectivity, including remote access and voice assistant integrations, will no longer work.' List of devices found in the link (four Thread based unaffected).

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A Russian professional basketball player has been arrested in France at the request of the United States, which reportedly accused him of being involved in a ransomware group that allegedly targeted hundreds of American companies and federal institutions. From a report: Daniil Kasatkin, 26, was detained in June at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport shortly after arriving in the country with his fiancee, according to local media reports. He is currently being held in extradition custody, with a U.S. warrant reportedly issued against him. Kasatkin previously studied and played basketball in the U.S., at Penn State University. The unnamed ransomware network Kasatkin is suspected of being part of is believed to have targeted nearly 900 entities between 2020 and 2022. Local media, citing court proceedings in Paris, reported that Kasatkin allegedly helped negotiate ransom payments, though the extent of the damage caused by the attacks has not been disclosed.

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