Building off Friday's release of Wine 9.11, the development team has now also released Wine Staging 9.11 with some 428 patches, reports Phoronix founder Michael Larabel: Catching my interest was a patch for Bug 7955. That right away catches my attention since the latest Wine bug reports are at a bug ticket number over 56,000.... Yep, Bug 7955 dates back 14 years ago to April 2007. The #7955 bug report is over the S-Hoai Windows client displaying an application exception when clicking the "File" or "Projects" menu. S-Hoai is a Windows application used in Germany by architects and building engineers/contractors for managing estimates and billing according to German laws.

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Slashdot reader hackertourist shared this announcement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Edward C. Stone, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and project scientist of the Voyager mission for 50 years, died on June 9, 2024. He was age 88... Stone served on nine NASA missions as either principal investigator or a science instrument lead, and on five others as a co-investigator (a key science instrument team member). These roles primarily involved studying energetic ions from the Sun and cosmic rays from the galaxy. He had the distinction of being one of the few scientists involved with both the mission that has come closest to the Sun (NASA's Parker Solar Probe) and the one that has traveled farthest from it (Voyager). Stone is best known for his work on NASA's longest-running mission, Voyager, whose twin spacecraft launched in 1977 and are still exploring deep space today. He served as Voyager's sole project scientist from 1972 until his retirement in 2022. Under Stone's leadership, the mission took advantage of a celestial alignment that occurs just once every 176 years to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. During their journeys, the spacecraft revealed the first active volcanoes beyond Earth, on Jupiter's moon Io, and an atmosphere rich with organic molecules on Saturn's moon Titan. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to fly by Uranus and Neptune, revealing Uranus' unusual tipped magnetic poles, and the icy geysers erupting from Neptune's moon Triton. The mission "transformed our understanding of the solar system, and is still providing useful data today," writes hackertourist. (Watch Stone speak in this 2018 video about the Voyager 2 spacecraft.) NASA's announcement also includes stories of Stone's desire to engage the public and his thoughtfulness in considering the true boundary of interstellar space. As director of JPL, Stone was responsible for more than two dozen other missions, including landing NASA's Pathfinder mission with the first Mars rover in 1996. "Ed Stone was a trailblazer who dared mighty things in space. He was a dear friend to all who knew him, and a cherished mentor to me personally," said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Ed took humanity on a planetary tour of our solar system and beyond, sending NASA where no spacecraft had gone before. His legacy has left a tremendous and profound impact on NASA, the scientific community, and the world."

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The Washington Post reports: Commitments from Big Tech companies to identify and label fake artificial-intelligence-generated images on their platforms won't be enough to keep the tech from being used by other countries to try to influence the U.S. election, said the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. AI won't completely change the long-running threat of weaponized propaganda, but it will "inflame" it, CISA Director Jen Easterly said at The Washington Post's Futurist Summit on Thursday. Tech companies are doing some work to try to label and identify deepfakes on their platforms, but more needs to be done, she said. "There is no real teeth to these voluntary agreements," Easterly said. "There needs to be a set of rules in place, ultimately legislation...." In February, tech companies, including Google, Meta, OpenAI and TikTok, said they would work to identify and label deepfakes on their social media platforms. But their agreement was voluntary and did not include an outright ban on deceptive political AI content. The agreement came months after the tech companies also signed a pledge organized by the White House that they would label AI images. Congressional and state-level politicians are debating numerous bills to try to regulate AI in the United States, but so far the initiatives haven't made it into law. The E.U. parliament passed an AI Actt year, but it won't fully go into force for another two years.

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ZDNet published a new article this week with their own tips for new Linux users. It begins by arguing that switching to the Linux desktop "is easier than you think" and "you'll find help everywhere". (And also that "You won't want for apps.") That doesn't mean it has everything. For example, there is no version of Adobe Photoshop. There is GIMP (which is just as powerful as Photoshop) but for those of you accustomed to Adobe's de facto standard, you're out of luck. The worst-case scenario is you have to learn a new piece of software to meet your graphic needs. At the same time, you might have to turn to proprietary software. For open-source purists, that's a no-go. But for those who just need to get things done, you'll find a mixture of open-source and proprietary software will give you everything you need to be productive and entertained. Their article also recommends new users should "weed out Arch-based distributions," while warning that "Linux is more secure, but..." The truth is, any time you have a computer connected to a network, it's vulnerable and it doesn't matter what operating system you use. To that end, it's crucial that you keep your operating system (and the installed applications) up to date. Fortunately, most Linux operating systems make this very easy... You're probably used to the slow trickle of updates and improvements found in the likes of Windows or MacOS. On Linux, you can count on that process being considerably faster. This is especially important with updates. When a vulnerability is found in an application that affects Linux, it is fixed far faster than it would be on competing platforms. The reason for this is that most Linux software is created and maintained by developers who don't have to answer to boards or committees or have a painfully slow bug resolution process. It might be announced that a vulnerability has been discovered in an application and the fix is officially released the next day. I've seen that very thing happen more times than I can count. But it's not just about vulnerabilities. Developers add new features to software all the time and even listen to users. You could contact a developer of an open-source application with an idea and find it implemented in the next update. Linux is always evolving and it does so much faster than other operating systems. And there's one final caveat. "Not all hardware will work (but most will)." I'll say this (and I stand by it): Ubuntu Linux probably has the best hardware detection and support of any operating system on the market. But that doesn't mean it works with everything. Certain peripherals you own could have trouble working with Linux. Two of the more problematic pieces of hardware are scanners and wireless chips. When I find a piece of hardware that isn't supported, here's one thing I've often done: I try a different Linux distribution... (Fedora often ships with a newer kernel than Ubuntu Linux, and therefore supports more modern hardware.) Keep in mind that most Linux distributions are offered as Live images, which means you can test-drive them without making any changes to your hard drive. This is a great way to tell if a distribution will support all the hardware you need to use. Agree? Disagree? Share your reactions in the comments... And what advice would you give to a first-time Linux user?

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"Titanium that was distributed with fake documentation has been found in commercial Boeing and Airbus jets," reports CNN. America's Federal Aviation Administration is now investigating whether those components pose a safety hazard to the public," along with the manufacturers of the aircraft and supplier Spirit AeroSystems. "A parts supplier found small holes in the material from corrosion," the New York Times reported Friday: Boeing and Airbus both said their tests of affected materials so far had shown no signs of problems. Boeing said it directly purchased most of the titanium used in its plane production, so most of its supply was unaffected. "This industrywide issue affects some shipments of titanium received by a limited set of suppliers, and tests performed to date have indicated that the correct titanium alloy was used," Boeing said in a statement. "To ensure compliance, we are removing any affected parts on airplanes prior to delivery. Our analysis shows the in-service fleet can continue to fly safely."

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It's one of Saturn's 146 moons — just 310 miles in diameter (or 498 kilometers). Yet the European Space Agency plans to send a robot on a one-billion mile trip to visit it. Why? Because astronomers have discovered Enceladus "possesses geysers that regularly erupt from its surface and spray water into space," reports the Guardian: Even more astonishing, these plumes contain complex organic compounds, including propane and ethane. "Enceladus has three key ingredients that are considered to be essential for the appearance of life," said astronomer Professor Michele Dougherty of Imperial College London. "It has got liquid water, organic material and a source of heat. That combination makes it my favourite moon in the whole solar system." A panel of expert scientists have now recommended the Saturn moon for an ESA mission by 2040, according to the article, "with the aim of either landing on the moon or flying through the geysers spraying water and carbon chemicals from its surface into space. Preferably, both goals would be attempted, the panel added." It will be tricky. Dougherty warns that Enceladus "is small with weak gravity, which means you will need a lot of fuel to slow it down so that it does not whiz past its target into deep space. That is going to be a tricky issue for those designing the mission." But Dougherty has a special interest, as the principal investigator for the magnetometer flown on the Cassini mission that studied Saturn and its moons between 2004 and 2017. "At one point, Cassini passed close to Enceladus and our instrument indicated Saturn's magnetic field was being dragged round the moon in a way that suggested the little moon had an atmosphere," said Dougherty. Cassini's managers agreed to direct the probe to take a closer look and, in July 2005, the spaceship swept over the moon's surface at a height of 173km — and detected significant amounts of water vapour. "It was wonderful," recalls Dougherty. Subsequent sweeps produced even greater wonders. Huge geysers of water were pictured erupting from geological fault lines at the south pole. The only other body in the solar system, apart from Earth, possessing liquid water on its surface had been revealed. Finally came the discovery of organics in those plumes and Enceladus went from being rated a minor, unimportant moon to a world that is now set to trigger the expenditure of billions of euros and decades of effort by European astronomers and space engineers. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader thephydes for sharing the article.

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Last month TIOBE announced its estimate that the four most popular programming languages were: 1. Python 2. C 3. C++ 4. Java But this month C++ "overtook" C for the first time, TIOBE announced, becoming (according to the same methodology) the #2 most popular programming language, with C dropping to #3. " C++ has never been that high in the TIOBE index," says TIOBE Software CEO Paul Jansen in the announcement, "whereas C has never been that low." 1. Python 2. C++ 3. C 4. Java C++ started a new life as of 2011 with its consistent 3 yearly updates. Although most compilers and most engineers can't take up with this pace, it is considered a success to see the language evolve. The main strengths of C++ are its performance and scalability. Its downside is its many ways to get things done, i.e. its rich idiom of features, which is caused by its long history and aim for backward compatibility. C++ is heavily used in embedded systems, game development and financial trading software, just to name a few domains. There's different rankings from the rival PYPL index of programming language popularity. It lumps C and C++ together to award them a collective ranking (#5). But unlike TIOBE, it shows Java [and JavaScript and C#] all being more popular (with Python still the #1 most popular language). Of course, statistical anomalies could be also skewing the results. Visual Basic also lost two ranks in popularity in the last month, according to TIOBE, dropping from the #7 position to the #9 position (now falling just behind Go and SQL). This becomes the first time that Go has risen as high as #7, according to TIOBE's announcement — with Rust also reaching an all-time high of #17...

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The $22 million paid by Change Healthcare's parent company to unlock its systems "may have emboldened bad actors to further target the vulnerable industry," writes Axios: There were 44 attacks against the health care sector in April, the most that [cybersecurity firm] Recorded Future has seen in the four years it's been collecting data. It was also the second-largest month-over-month jump, after 30 ransomware attacks were recorded in March. There were 32 attacks in February and May. But an analysis by the security-focused magazine CSO says the "disastrous" incident also "starkly illustrated the fragility of the healthcare sector, prompting calls for regulatory action." In response to the attack, US politicians have called for mandated baseline cybersecurity standards in the health sector, as well as better information sharing. They have also raised concerns that industry consolidation is increasing cyber risk. So what went wrong? The attackers used a set of stolen credentials to remotely access the company's systems. But the article also notes Change Healthcare's systems "suffered from a lack of segmentation, which enables easy lateral movement of the attack" — and that the company's acquisition may have played a role: Mergers and acquisitions create new cyber threats because they involve the integration of systems, data, and processes from different organizations, each with its own security protocols and potential vulnerabilities. "During this transition, cybercriminals can exploit discrepancies in security measures, gaps in IT governance, and the increased complexity of managing merged IT environments," Aron Brand, CTO of CTERA told CSOonline. "Additionally, the heightened sharing of sensitive information between parties provides more opportunities for data breaches." And "In the end, paying the ransom failed to protect UHG from secondary attempts at extortion." In April, cybercriminals from the RansomHub group threatened to leak portions of 6TB of sensitive data stolen from the breach of Change Healthcare, and obtained through Nichy, according to an analysis by security vendor Forescout. An estimated one in three Americans had their sensitive data exposed as a result of the attack. Such secondary scams are becoming increasingly commonplace and healthcare providers are particularly at risk, according to compliance experts... The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is investigating whether a breach of protected health information occurred in assessing whether either UHG or Change Healthcare violated strict healthcare sector privacy regulations. Thanks to Slashdot reader snydeq for sharing the article.

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The New York Times magazine remembers that once upon a time, in the early 1990s, "some prominent researchers were promoting, and the media helped popularize, the idea that moderate drinking...was linked to greater longevity. "The cause of that association was not clear, but red wine, researchers theorized, might have anti-inflammatory properties that extended life and protected cardiovascular health..." More recently, though, research has piled up debunking the idea that moderate drinking is good for you. Last year, a major meta-analysis that re-examined 107 studies over 40 years came to the conclusion that no amount of alcohol improves health; and in 2022, a well-designed study found that consuming even a small amount brought some risk to heart health. That same year, Nature published research stating that consuming as little as one or two drinks a day (even less for women) was associated with shrinkage in the brain — a phenomenon normally associated with aging... [M]ore people are now reporting that they consume cannabis than alcohol on a daily basis. Some governments are responding to the new research by overhauling their messaging. Last year, Ireland became the first country to pass legislation requiring a cancer warning on all alcohol products sold there, similar to those found on cigarettes: "There is a direct link between alcohol and fatal cancers," the language will read. And in Canada, the government has revised its alcohol guidelines, announcing: "We now know that even a small amount of alcohol can be damaging to health." The guidelines characterize one to two drinks a week as carrying "low risk" and three to six drinks as carrying "moderate risk." (Previously the guidelines suggested that women limit themselves to no more than two standard drinks most days, and that men place that limit at three.)

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Wednesday The Information reported that OpenAI had doubled its annualized revenue — a measure of the previous month's revenue multiplied by 12 — in the last six months. It's now $3.4 billion (which is up from around $1 billion last summer, notes Engadget). And now an anonymous reader shares a new report from The Information: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently told some shareholders that the artificial intelligence developer is considering changing its governance structure to a for-profit business that OpenAI's nonprofit board doesn't control, according to a person who heard the comments. One scenario Altman said the board is considering is a for-profit benefit corporation, which rivals such as Anthropic and xAI are using, this person said. Such a change could open the door to an eventual initial public offering of OpenAI, which currently sports a private valuation of $86 billion, and may give Altman an opportunity to take a stake in the fast-growing company, a move some investors have been pushing. More from Reuters: The restructuring discussions are fluid and Altman and his fellow directors could ultimately decide to take a different approach, The Information added. In response to Reuters' queries about the report, OpenAI said: "We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone. The nonprofit is core to our mission and will continue to exist." Is that a classic non-denial denial? Note that the nonprofit's "continuing to exist" does not in any way preclude OpenAI from becoming a for-profit business — with a spin-off nonprofit, continuing to exist...

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Have scientists discovered infrared radiation, evidence of waste heat generated by the energy-harvesting star-surrounding spheres first proposed by British American physicist Freeman Dyson? CNN reports: [A] new study that looked at 5 million stars in the Milky Way galaxy suggests that seven candidates could potentially be hosting Dyson spheres — a finding that's attracting scrutiny and alternate theories... Using historical data from telescopes that pick up infrared signatures, the research team looked at stars located within less than 1,000 light-years from Earth: "We started with a sample of 5 million stars, and we applied filters to try to get rid of as much data contamination as possible," said lead study author Matías Suazo, a doctoral student in the department of physics and astronomy of Uppsala University in Sweden. "So far, we have seven sources that we know are glowing in the infrared but we don't know why, so they stand out...." Among the natural causes that could explain the infrared glow are an unlucky alignment in the observation, with a galaxy in the background overlapping with the star, planetary collisions creating debris, or the fact that the stars may be young and therefore still surrounded by disks of hot debris from which planets would later form... An earlier study, published in March and using data from the same sources as the new report, had also found infrared anomalies among a sample dataset of 5 million stars in our galaxy. "We got 53 candidates for anomalies that cannot be well explained, but can't say that all of them are Dyson sphere candidates, because that's not what we are specifically looking for," said Gabriella Contardo, a postdoctoral research fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, who led the earlier study. She added that she plans to check the candidates against Suazo's model to see how many tie into it. "You need to eliminate all other hypotheses and explanations before saying that they could be a Dyson sphere," she added. "To do so you need to also rule out that it's not some kind of debris disk, or some kind of planetary collision, and that also pushes the science forward in other fields of astronomy — so it's a win-win." Both Contardo and Suazo agree that more research is needed on the data, and that ultimately they could turn to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope for more information, as it is powerful enough to observe the candidate stars directly. However, because of the lengthy, competitive procedures that regulate use of the telescope, securing access might take some time. CNN adds that "A May 23 paper published in response to the one by Suazo and his colleagues suggests that at least three of the seven stars have been 'misidentified' as Dyson spheres and could instead be 'hot DOGs' — hot dust-obscured galaxies — and that the remaining four could probably be explained this way as well." But "As for Dyson himself, if he were still alive, he also would be highly skeptical that these observations represent a technological signature, his son George argued: 'But the discovery of new, non-technological astronomical phenomena is exactly why he thought we should go out and look.' "

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This week the Rust Foundation jointly announced "the Safety-Critical Rust Consortium" with industry partners including Arm, AdaCore, Lynx Software Technologies, and Toyota's mobility tech subsidiary Woven. Its goal is supporting "responsible use" of Rust "in safety-critical software — systems whose failure can impact human life or cause severe environmental or property harm." "This is exciting," said Rust creator Graydon Hoare in a statement. "I am truly pleased to see the Rust Foundation and anyone in the safety-critical space coming together on this topic." From the announcement: "Safety is our foremost priority in vehicle software development. Traditionally, achieving the highest levels of safety has been a complex and lengthy endeavor, requiring the use of specialized tools and processes beyond the programming language," said JF Bastien, Distinguished Engineer at Woven by Toyota. "We are therefore pleased to collaborate with leading experts in the safety industry to integrate new tools such as Rust into our safety-critical systems...." Industries that are particularly concerned with functional safety include transportation (such as automotive, aviation, space), energy, life sciences, and more. Because of their potential impacts, these industries are often regulated, have liability considerations, and are guided by standards... These industries have decades of experience delivering products, learning from iterating based on real-world feedback, and improving processes. An ecosystem of tools and tool vendors have evolved, and best practices have been learned to create a safety culture around tooling. Rust offers particular advantages in terms of developer ergonomics, productivity and software quality; however, it lacks a deep and established well of safety-processes and collective industry knowledge of safety-critical systems. Without closing this gap, a developer must primarily rely on best practices and normative precautions, which can limit innovation. Rust developers who stray from the well-trod path can find themselves facing an inquiry were an accident to occur. In these circumstances, anything that seems unusual will be investigated for fault. This risk creates a disincentive to widespread Rust adoption, leaving developers unable to reap all its advantages while potentially facing financial, reputational and moral costs. The gap in safety-critical resources within the Rust programming language ecosystem is also an exciting opportunity. By rapidly incorporating lessons learned from years of careful development and past mistakes in the wider open source ecosystem, Rust can become a valuable component of a safety toolkit adaptable to various safety-critical industries and severity levels. "Work under the consortium will begin with the creation of a public charter and goals," according to the announcement, with a scope possibly including "the development of guidelines, linters, libraries, static analysis tools, formal methods and language subsets to meet industrial and legal requirements. The group may further shepherd Rust Foundation-funded implementation work, including grants to existing academic teams or FOSS projects... The group will further attempt to coordinate with and expand on existing safety-critical projects and standards including SAE JA1020. The group will maintain communication with the larger Rust Project, and "The Consortium's deliverables will be developed and licensed in a manner compatible with other Rust Project endeavors."

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French photovoltaics group Hespul tested solar panels installed in 1992, reports PV Magazine: The testing showed that the modules still produce on average 79.5% of their initial power after 31 years of operation. In a previous testing carried out 11 years ago, the panels were found to produce 91.7% of their initial power. "This result exceeds the performance promised by the manufacturers who said the panels would have maintained 80% of their output after 25 years," said Hespul. The drop in performance is on average 20.5%, or 0.66% per year over 31 years, and 1.11% per year over the last 11 years... Another more recent study carried out by the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on 1,700 American sites totaling 7.2 GW of power, showed a median degradation of around -0.75%/year. Moveover, another research study focused on 4,300 residential installations in operation in Europe and used different data processing methodologies. Depending on the methods, a median loss of -0.36% to -0.67%/year was obtained. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader storkus for sharing the news.

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Slashdot reader BrianFagioli shares his report from BetaNews: The PC community is abuzz with Qualcomm's recent announcement of its Snapdragon X Elite SoC, a powerhouse chipset that promises to revolutionize the performance and energy efficiency of laptops and tablets. While Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs are set to feature this advanced processor, Linux enthusiasts have reasons to celebrate as well. You see, TUXEDO Computers is bringing this cutting-edge technology to the Linux world with its upcoming ARM notebook, positioning it as a strong competitor to Windows 11 Copilot+ devices. In a recent update, TUXEDO Computers revealed its ambitious project of developing an ARM notebook powered by the Snapdragon X Elite SoC from Qualcomm. This announcement has generated significant excitement, as it presents a viable alternative to traditional x86 notebooks, offering comparable performance with lower energy consumption, directly challenging the dominance of Windows 11 Copilot+... Benchmarks suggest that the Snapdragon X Elite can not only rival but potentially surpass Apple's M2 SoCs, boasting higher energy efficiency. TUXEDO's preliminary tests confirm these impressive claims, setting the stage for a fierce competition with Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs. "We recently presented a prototype of the ARM notebook we are working on at the Computex computer trade fair in Taiwan," according to TUXEDO's announcement. "On the software side, a port of TUXEDO OS with KDE Plasma to the ARM platform is our goal for this project running internally under the working title Drako... "It is quite conceivable that an ARM notebook from TUXEDO will be under your Christmas tree in 2024... If you have subscribed to our newsletter, you will be the first to know."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from Futurism: An AI chatbot named VIC, or Virtually Integrated Citizen, is trying to make it onto the ballot in this year's mayoral election for Wyoming's capital city of Cheyenne. But as reported by Wired, Wyoming's secretary of state is battling against VIC's legitimacy as a candidate — and now, an investigation is underway. According to Wired, VIC, which was built on OpenAI's GPT-4 and trained on thousands of documents gleaned from Cheyenne council meetings, was created by Cheyenne resident and library worker Victor Miller. Should VIC win, Miller told Wired that he'll serve as the bot's "meat puppet," operating the AI but allowing it to make decisions for the capital city.... "My campaign promise," Miller told Wired, "is he's going to do 100 percent of the voting on these big, thick documents that I'm not going to read and that I don't think people in there right now are reading...." Unfortunately for the AI and its — his? — meat puppet, however, they've already made some political enemies, most notably Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray. As Gray, who has challenged the legality of the bot, told Wired in a statement, all mayoral candidates need to meet the requirements of a "qualified elector." This "necessitates being a real person," Gray argues... Per Wired, it's also run amuck with OpenAI, which says the AI violates the company's "policies against political campaigning." (Miller told Wired that he'll move VIC to Meta's open-source Llama 3 model if need be, which seems a bit like VIC will turn into a different candidate entirely.) The Wyoming Tribune Eagle offers more details: [H]is dad helped him design the best system for VIC. Using his $20-a-month ChatGPT subscription, Miller had an 8,000-character limit to feed VIC supporting documents that would make it an effective mayoral candidate... While on the phone with Miller, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle also interviewed VIC itself. When asked whether AI technology is better suited for elected office than humans, VIC said a hybrid solution is the best approach. "As an AI, I bring unique strengths to the role, such as impartial decision-making, data-driven policies and the ability to analyze information rapidly and accurately," VIC said. "However, it's important to recognize the value of human experience and empathy and leadership. So ideally, an AI and human partnership would be the most beneficial for Cheyenne...." The artificial intelligence said this unique approach could pave a new pathway for the integration of human leadership and advanced technology in politics.

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Friday the Python Software Foundation published several blog posts about this year's "Python Language Summit" May 15th (before PyCon US), which featured talks and discussions by core developers, triagers, and Python implementation maintainers. There were several lightning talks. One talk came from the maintainer of the PyO3 project, offering Rust bindings for the Python C API (which requires mapping Rust concepts to Python — leaving a question as to how to map Rust's error-handling panic! macro). There was a talk on formalizing the PEP prototype process, and a talk on whether the Python team should have a more official presence in the Apple App Store (and maybe the Google Play Store). One talk suggested changing the formatting of error messages for assert statements, and one covered a "highly experimental" project to support structured data sharing between Python subinterpreters. One talk covered Python's "unsupported build" warning and how it should behave on platforms beyond Python's officially supported list. Python Foundation blog posts also covered some of the longer talks, including one on the idea of using type annotations as a mechanism for transformers. One talk covered the new interactive REPL interpreter coming to Python 3.13. And one talk focused on Python's security model after the xz-utils backdoor: Pablo Galindo Salgado, Steering Council member and the release manager for Python 3.10 and 3.11, brought this topic to the Language Summit to discuss what could be done to improve Python's security model... Pablo noted the similarities shared between CPython and xz-utils, referencing the previous Language Summit's talk on core developer burnout, the number of modules in the standard library that have one or zero maintainers, the high ratio of maintainers to source code, and the use of autotools for configuration. Autotools was used by [xz's] Jia Tan as part of the backdoor, specifically to obscure the changes to tainted release artifacts. Pablo confirmed along with many nods of agreement that indeed, CPython could be vulnerable to a contributor or core developer getting secretly malicious changes merged into the project. For multiple reasons like being able to fix bugs and single-maintainer modules, CPython doesn't require reviewers on the pull requests of core developers. This can lead to "unilateral action", meaning that a change is introduced into CPython without the review of someone besides the author. Other situations like release managers backporting fixes to other branches without review are common. Much discussion ensued about the possibility of altering workflows (including pull request reviews), identity verification, and the importance of post-incident action plans. Guido van Rossum suggested a "higher bar" for granting write access, but in the end "Overall it was clear there is more discussion and work to be done in this rapidly changing area." In another talk, Hugo van Kemenade, the newly announced Release Manager for Python 3.14 and 3.15, "started the Language Summit with a proposal to change Python's versioning scheme. The perception of Python using semantic versioning is a source of confusion for users who don't expect backwards incompatible changes when upgrading to new versions of Python. In reality almost all new feature releases of Python include backwards incompatible changes such as the removal of "dead batteries" where PEP 594 marked 19 modules for removal in Python 3.13. Calendar Versioning (CalVer) encompasses a wide array of different versioning schemes that have one property in common: using the release date as part of a release's version... Hugo offered multiple proposed versioning schemes, including: - Using the release year as minor version (3.YY.micro, "3.26.0") - Using the release year as major version (YY.0.micro, "26.0.0") - Using the release year and month as major and minor version (YY.MM.micro, "26.10.0") [...] Overall the proposal to use the current year as the minor version was well-received, Hugo mentioned that he'd be drafting up a PEP for this change.

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SpaceX's successful launch (and reentry) of Starship was just the beginning, reports Space.com: SpaceX now aims to build on the progress with its Starship program as continues work on Starfactory, a new manufacturing facility under construction at the company's Starbase site in South Texas... "When you step into this factory, it is truly inspirational. My heart jumps out of my chest," Kate Tice, manager of SpaceX Quality Systems Engineering, said [during SpaceX's livestream of the Starship flight test]. "Now this will enable us to increase our production rate significantly as we build toward our long-term goal of producing one Ship per day and coming off the production line soon, Starship Version Two." This new version of Starship is designed to be more easy to mass produce, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on social media. Space.com argues that the long-term expansion comes as SpaceX "looks to use Starship to eventually make humanity interplanetary."

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At a New York Yankees baseball game, one fan discovered its concession stand doesn't accept cash. "An employee directed him to a kiosk that could convert his greenbacks into plastic," reports the Wall Street Journal, where the fan, "fed $200 into the reverse ATM, which subtracted a $3.50 fee and spat out a debit card with a balance of $196.50." Paying with cash used to be a way to get a discount. These days it can often cost an extra $1 to $6 — the sort of transaction fees once limited to swiping a credit card or using an out-of-network ATM. Reverse ATMs like those at Yankee Stadium are now common at cashless venues and restaurants across the country as a way to cater to those who prefer paying in cash. People who want to pay their parking tickets, tolls, taxes or phone bills in cash, meanwhile, often learn that government agencies and businesses have outsourced that option to companies that usually charge a fee. All that can amount to a penalty on the people who prefer paying cash. Though it is more common to buy things with cards and mobile devices, cash remains the third-most popular way to pay, accounting for 16% of all payments in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve. That's down 2 percentage points from the year before, continuing a steady decline that accelerated during the pandemic. "It's unbelievable that we actually have to tell retailers, 'This is U.S. currency and it's something that should be accepted,' " said Jonathan Alexander, executive director of the Consumer Choice in Payment Coalition, a group of businesses and nonprofits lobbying for the continued acceptance of cash. There aren't federal laws that require businesses to accept cash. States like Colorado and Rhode Island and cities like New York banned cashless retail establishments after many stores shifted to card-only transactions to reduce the spread of Covid-19, speed up transactions and cut back on theft. In 2023, lawmakers in the House of Representatives and the Senate introduced bills requiring that businesses accept cash for all in-person purchases under $500, unless they provide devices like a reverse ATM that don't charge fees. The bills haven't passed. Cashless businesses can be a burden for older or lower-income shoppers who are less likely to have access to digital payments. They also pose challenges for younger people who haven't yet set up credit cards or bank accounts. The article includes the story of an 18-year-old who earned cash by babysitting, then went to a hockey game and "was charged a 50-cent fee after putting $20 into a reverse ATM...to order chicken nuggets and a bottle of water." (Others who prefer cash "say paper money is anonymous, helps them keep spending under control and is better for tips," the article adds noting that roughly six in 10 Americans use cash for at least some of their purchases, according to Pew Research Center.) The makers of one "reverse ATM" tell the Journal that whether or not someone gets charged a fee actually depends on what state they're in — and on the preferences of the venue that installed the ATM machine.

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New Atlas reports on a research team that successfuly used GPT-4 to exploit 87% of newly-discovered security flaws for which a fix hadn't yet been released. This week the same team got even better results from a team of autonomous, self-propagating Large Language Model agents using a Hierarchical Planning with Task-Specific Agents (HPTSA) method: Instead of assigning a single LLM agent trying to solve many complex tasks, HPTSA uses a "planning agent" that oversees the entire process and launches multiple "subagents," that are task-specific... When benchmarked against 15 real-world web-focused vulnerabilities, HPTSA has shown to be 550% more efficient than a single LLM in exploiting vulnerabilities and was able to hack 8 of 15 zero-day vulnerabilities. The solo LLM effort was able to hack only 3 of the 15 vulnerabilities. "Our findings suggest that cybersecurity, on both the offensive and defensive side, will increase in pace," the researchers conclude. "Now, black-hat actors can use AI agents to hack websites. On the other hand, penetration testers can use AI agents to aid in more frequent penetration testing. It is unclear whether AI agents will aid cybersecurity offense or defense more and we hope that future work addresses this question. "Beyond the immediate impact of our work, we hope that our work inspires frontier LLM providers to think carefully about their deployments." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

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