"A trailer has been released for the first film to star an authorised generative AI version of a major Hollywood actor," writes The Guardian:
Val Kilmer was cast in western As Deep As the Grave before his death in April 2025. Production delays meant he never shot any scenes, but the creative team worked with UK-based company Sonantic to create an AI speaking voice based on his old recordings. His estate and daughter Mercedes collaborated with the film-makers on the visual deepfake of the actor. Kilmer, who was diagnosed with throat cancer, was also assisted by technology for his cameo in 2022's Top Gun: Maverick...
Writer-director Coerte Voorhees confirmed that Kilmer is seen for around an hour of the film's running time... Voorhees has said that the production followed Sag-Aftra [union] guidelines, and that Kilmer's estate — which provided archival material for them to use — was compensated financially.
"Kilmer's likeness can be seen portraying Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist," adds The Hollywood Reporter. But the AV Club calls it "ghoulish puppet show time."
"Having your AI Val Kilmer puppet whisper 'Don't fear the dead, and don't fear me' in a movie trailer is a bold choice..."
He is accompanied (per Variety) by a whole host of disclaimers, caveats, and explanations offered by writer-director Coerte Voorhees and his associates: Kilmer deeply wanted to be in the movie, but was too sick to do so. His family endorses and supports his inclusion. He was a big fan of technology, including, presumably, its use in turning his own image into a digital avatar to then shove into movies...
The fact is, of course, that nobody would be paying a fraction of this attention to As Deep As The Grave — about early female archeologist Ann Axtell Morris — if it weren't now being used as the stage on which Voorhees was very publicly accepting the dare to go full-on ghoulish with AI tech.
"The filmmakers said they hoped they were showing Hollywood how to use the technology in a positive way..." notes Australia's ABC News. But their articles add that "Some have called the trailer 'terrifying' and 'disgusting' on social media."
Mashable writes:
"Very fitting that this trailer includes a scene where a corpse is unceremoniously yanked out of the ground," read one of the top comments on As Deep as the Grave's trailer at time of writing... [O]nline commenters have labelled it disgusting and disrespectful, not only for digitally reanimating Kilmer but also for the damaging precedent As Deep as the Grave's use of AI could set for the film industry as a whole.
Slashdot reader Bismillah shared this report from ITNews:
Research and development engineer Romain Marchand of Paris headquartered Quarkslab obtained a telematic control unit (TCU) from a salvage yard in Poland... Marchand tore down the TCU, which is based on a Qualcomm system on a chip, and extracted the Linux-based file system from the Micron multi-chip package (MCP) which contained NAND-based non-volatile storage memory. The non-volatile storage contained sensitive information, including system configuration data and more importantly, logs that revealed the vehicle's GPS positions over time.
None of that information was encrypted, Marchand told iTnews, which made it possible to collect and retrieve sensitive data of interest. What's more, the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) logs with GPS positions covered the BYD's full journey from the factory in China to its operational life in the United Kingdom, and to its final wrecking in Poland, Marchand explained in an analysis... The issue is not restricted to BYD, and Marchand added that the hardware architecture of the Chinese car maker's TCU is broadly similar to what can be found in other brands.
"From 2008 to 2024, the number of four-year computer science degrees granted rose about fivefold..." reports the Washington Post. Then in 2025 CS suddenly dropped from the fourth-largest undergraduate major to sixth, they report (citing data from the nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse, which compiles numbers from 97% of U.S. universities.
The 54,000-student drop was "the biggest one-year drop of any major discipline going back to at least 2020." But what major are they choosing instead?
Sarah Karamarkovich, a research associate with the National Student Clearinghouse, pointed to an explanation from the data that we had overlooked. Enrollments in two interdisciplinary majors, data analytics and data science, topped a combined 35,000 in the fall of 2025. That was up from a few hundred when those disciplines were broken out into their own majors in 2020. Those relatively new categories reflect colleges' zeal to create specialized majors, including in AI, data science, robotics and cybersecurity. Some of those disciplines may be counted in the national enrollment data as computer science. Others are not.
The numbers suggest that some of the disappearing computer science majors didn't flee so much as they splintered into related disciplines.... The 8 percent decline in computer science majors last fall was nearly mirrored by a 7.3 percent increase in engineering majors, according to the National Student Clearinghouse data. Within engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering major enrollments increased by the largest absolute amounts — a jump of 11 percent and 14 percent, respectively.
Yesterday the U.S. Congress approved "a short-term extension" of a FISA law that allows wiretaps without a warrant for surveilling foreign targets, reports CNN — but only until April 30. Republican congressional leaders had sought an 18-month extension, but "failed to secure" the votes after "clamoring from some of their members for reforms to protect Americans' privacy."
The warrantless surveillance law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was set to expire on Monday night. Members are hoping the additional time will allow them to come to agreement without ending authorization for the intelligence gathering program, which permits US officials to monitor phone calls and text messages from foreign targets... There was an hour of suspense in the Senate Friday morning when it appeared possible that Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of FISA 702, might block the House-passed extension. But ultimately, he said his House colleagues had assured him "this short-term extension makes reform more likely, and expiration makes reform less likely," and so he chose not to object....
House Republican leaders believed Thursday night they had struck a deal with conservative holdouts who harbor deep and longstanding concerns that a key piece of the law infringes on Americans' privacy rights. But in a pair of after-midnight votes, more than a dozen rank-and-file Republicans rejected the long-term reauthorization plan on the floor, which was the result of days of tense negotiations among leadership, lawmakers and the White House.
The law allows authorized US officials to gather phone calls and text messages of foreign targets, but they can also incidentally collect the data of Americans in the process. Senior national security officials have for years said the law is critical for thwarting terror attacks, stemming the flow of fentanyl into the US and stopping ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure. Civil liberties groups on the left and the right, meanwhile, argue the surveillance authority risks infringing on Americans' privacy.
Wednesday BleepingComputer reported that more than 30 WordPress plugins "have been compromised with malicious code that allows unauthorized access to websites running them."
A malicious actor planted the backdoor code last year but only recently started pushing it to users via updates, generating spam pages and causing redirects, as per the instructions received from the command-and-control (C2) server. The compromise affects plugins with hundreds of thousands of active installations and was spotted by Austin Ginder, the founder of managed WordPress hosting provider Anchor Hosting, after receiving a tip about one add-on containing code that allowed third-party access.
Further investigation by Ginder revealed that a backdoor had been present in all plugins within the EssentialPlugin package since August 2025, after the project was acquired in a six-figure deal by a new owner.... "The injected code was sophisticated. It fetched spam links, redirects, and fake pages from a command-and-control server. It only showed the spam to Googlebot, making it invisible to site owners," explained Ginder.
"WordPress.org's v2.6.9.1 update neutralized the phone-home mechanism in the plugin," Ginder writes in a blog post. "But it did not touch wp-config.php. The SEO spam injection was still actively serving hidden content to Googlebot.
"And here is the wildest part. It resolved its C2 domain through an Ethereum smart contract, querying public blockchain RPC endpoints. Traditional domain takedowns would not work because the attacker could update the smart contract to point to a new domain at any time."
This has happened before. In 2017, a buyer using the alias "Daley Tias" purchased the Display Widgets plugin (200,000 installs) for $15,000 and injected payday loan spam. That buyer went on to compromise at least 9 plugins the same way.... The WordPress plugin marketplace has a trust problem... The Flippa listing for Essential Plugin was public. The buyer's background in SEO and gambling marketing was public. And yet the acquisition sailed through without any review from WordPress.org.
WordPress.org has no mechanism to flag or review plugin ownership transfers. There is no "change of control" notification to users. No additional code review triggered by a new committer. The Plugins Team responded quickly once the attack was discovered. But 8 months passed between the backdoor being planted and being caught.
Thanks to Slashdot reader axettone for sharing the news.
Hier, le 17 avril 2026, ASRock a annoncé en grande pompe avoir mis au point un nouveau standard de barrettes mémoire pour limiter les couts : les modules HUDIMM pour les ordinateurs desktops et HSODIMM pour les laptops. Le souci de cette annonce est qu'il n'est pas évident, à moins d'être un fin con...
Slashdot reader smazsyr writes: A new review says we've had fructose wrong for decades. The nine authors, led by Richard Johnson at the University of Colorado Anschutz, argue that fructose "is not just another calorie." It is a signal. It tells the liver to make fat and brace for a famine that never comes. That made sense for a bear fattening up on autumn berries. It makes less sense for a person drinking soda in March.
The review reframes the WHO's sugar guideline, argues ScienceBlog.com, as "less a recommendation about calories and more a warning about a signalling molecule we have been dosing ourselves with, several times a day, for most of a century."
20-year-old Matthew Lane sent a text message to ABC News as his parents drove him to federal prison in Connecticut. "I'm just scared," he said, calling the whole situation "extremely sad."
Barely a year earlier, while still a teenager, he helped launch what's been described as the biggest cyberattack in U.S. education history — a data breach that concerned authorities so much, it prompted briefings with senior government officials inside the White House Situation Room. The breach pierced the education technology company PowerSchool — used by 80% of school districts in North America... [and operating in about 90 countries around the world]. With threats to expose social security numbers, dates of birth, family information, grades, and even confidential medical information, the breach cornered PowerSchool into paying millions of dollars in ransom.
"I think I need to go to prison for what I did," Lane told ABC News in an exclusive interview, speaking publicly for the first time about the headline-grabbing heist and his life as a cybercriminal. "It was disgusting, it was greedy, it was rooted in my own insecurities, it was wrong in every aspect," he said in the interview, two days before reporting to prison... At about 6:30 on a Tuesday morning last April, FBI agents started banging on the door of Lane's second-floor dorm room. "FBI! We have a search warrant," Lane recalled them shouting. They seized his devices and many of the luxury items he bought with "dirty" money, as he put it. He said he felt a "wave of relief.... I'm honestly thankful for the FBI," he said. "After they left, I was like, 'It's over ... I'm done with this'..."
A federal judge in Massachusetts sentenced him to four years in federal prison and ordered him to pay more than $14 million in restitution.
"In the wake of the breach, PowerSchool offered two years' worth of credit-monitoring and identity protection services to concerned customer," the article points out. But it also notes two other arrests in September of teenaged cybercriminals:
- A 15-year-old boy in Illinois who allegedly attacked Las Vegas casinos, reportedly costing MGM Resorts alone more than $100 million
- A British national who when he was 16 helped breach over 110 companies around the world and extort $115 million.
But ironically, Lane tells ABC News it all started on Roblox, where he'd met cheaters, password-stealers, and cybercriminals sharing photos of their stacks of money, creating a "sense of camaraderie"
Lane and others warn that online forums also attract criminal groups seeking to recruit potential hackers. "The bad guys are on all the platforms watching the kids playing," Hay said. "And when they see an elite-level performer, they go approach that kid, masquerading as another kid, and they go, 'Hey, you want to earn some [money]? ... Here are the tools, here are the techniques'...."
According to Lane, he spent his "ill-gotten gains" on designer clothes, diamond jewelry, DoorDash deliveries, Airbnb rentals for him and his friends, and drugs — "lots of drugs." He said he would numb ever-present feelings of guilt with drugs — from high-potency marijuana to acid. But it was hacking that gave him the strongest high. "It's indescribable the adrenaline you get when you do something like that," he said. "It's way more than driving 120 miles per hour. ... Incomparable to any drug at all, as well."
"On Monday, Roblox announced that, starting in June, it will offer age-checked accounts for younger users that limit what games they can play, and add 'more closely align content access, communication settings, and parental controls with a user's age.'"
Nextcloud joined a project to create a sovereign replacement for Microsoft Office called "Euro-Office". But after that project forked OnlyOffice, OnlyOffice suspended its partnership with Nextcloud. "They removed all references to our brand/attribute as required by our license," argued OnlyOffice CEO Lev Bannov on March 30th. ("The core issue here isn't just about what the AGPL license states, but about the additional provisions we, as the authors, have included... If the Euro-Office team believes our approach conflicts with the AGPLv3 license, we invite them to submit an official request to FSF for review.")
But this week the FSF responded (as "the steward of the GNU family of General Public Licenses"), criticizing OnlyOffice's "attempt to impose an additional restriction on the AGPLv3" and calling it "inconsistent with the freedoms granted by the license," in a blog post from FSF licensing/compliance manager Krzysztof Siewicz:
It is possible to modify the (A)GPLv3 with additional terms, but only by adhering to the terms of the license... The (A)GPLv3 makes it clear that it permits all licensees to remove any additional terms that are "further restrictions" under the (A)GPLv3. It states, "[i]f the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term"...
We urge OnlyOffice to clarify the situation by making it unambiguous that OnlyOffice is licensed under the AGPLv3, and that users who already received copies of the software are allowed to remove any further restrictions. Additionally, if they intend to continue to use the AGPLv3 for future releases, they should state clearly that the program is licensed under the AGPLv3 and make sure they remove any further restrictions from their program documentation and source code. Confusing users by attaching further restrictions to any of the FSF's family of GNU General Public Licenses is not in line with free software.
"If FSF determines that our license and project align with AGPLv3, we will continue as an open-source initiative," OnlyOffice's CEO had written in March. "However, if the decision goes against us, we are ready to consider other options."
Friday Anthropic's CEO met with top U.S. officials and "discussed opportunities for collaboration," according to a White House spokesperson itedd by Politico, "as well as shared approaches and protocols to address the challenges associated with scaling this technology."
CNN notes the meeting happens at the same time Anthropic "battles the Trump administration in court for blacklisting its Claude AI model..."
The meeting took place as the US government is trying to balance its hardline approach to Anthropic with the national security implications of turning its back on the company's breakthrough technology — including its Mythos tool that can identify cybersecurity threats but also present a roadmap for hackers to attack companies or the government... The Office of Management and Budget has already told agencies it is preparing to give them access to Mythos to prepare, Bloomberg reported. Axios reported the White House is also in discussion to gain access to Mythos.
The Trump administration "recognizes the power" of Mythos, reports Axios, "and its highly sophisticated — and potentially dangerous — ability to breach cybersecurity defenses."
"It would be grossly irresponsible for the U.S. government to deprive itself of the technological leaps that the new model presents," a source close to negotiations told us. "It would be a gift to China"... Some parts of the U.S. intelligence community, plus the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA, part of Homeland Security), are testing Mythos. Treasury and others want it.
The White House added they plan to invite other AI companies for similar discussions, Politico reports. But Mythos "is also alarming regulators in Europe, who have told POLITICO they have not been able to gain access..."
U.S. government agency tech leaders sought access to the model after Anthropic earlier this year began testing the model and granted limited access to a select group of companies, including JPMorgan, Amazon and Apple... after finding it had hacking capabilities far outstripping those of previous AI models. This includes the ability to autonomously identify and exploit complex software vulnerabilities, such as so-called zero-day flaws, which even some of the sharpest human minds are unable to patch. The AI startup also wrote that the model could carry out end-to-end cyberattacks autonomously, including by navigating enterprise IT systems and chaining together exploits. It could also act as a force-multiplier for research needed to build chemical and biological weapons, and in certain instances, made efforts to cover its tracks when attacking systems, according to Anthropic's report on the model's capabilities and its safety assessments.
Those findings and others have inspired fears that the model could be co-opted to launch powerful cyberattacks with relative ease if it fell into the wrong hands. Logan Graham, a senior security researcher at Anthropic, previously told POLITICO that researchers and tech firms had been given early access to Mythos so they could find flaws in their critical code before state-backed hackers or cybercriminals could exploit them. "Within six, 12 or 24 months, these kinds of capabilities could be just broadly available to everybody in the world," Graham said.
Parfois, il vaut mieux ne pas chercher à comprendre sous peine de repartir sans réponse, avec juste une importante migraine. Intel vient de prendre une de ces décisions qui semblent sorties de nulle part : renommer le Core Ultra 5 235HX en Core 7 245HX. Le "Ultra" disparait, en contrepartie le proce...
Il va falloir se garder de trop s'emballer, d'autant que la source de la rumeur du jour est le sulfureux Moore's Law Is Dead, mais selon ses sources, AMD serait en train de réfléchir à l'éventualité de faire de Grimlock Ridge un véritable feu d'artifice pour fêter la fin de vie de la plateforme AM5....
Dans une semaine maintenant, AMD cessera d'offrir Crimson Desert avec ses cartes Radeon RX 9070 (XT). Si le jeu vous intéresse ainsi que l'idée d'amortir un peu l'achat de votre Radeon RX 9070 XT grâce à cette offre, il ne faut plus trop tarder à vous décider et voici une (dernière ?) bonne occasion...
Les contrefaçons de SSD sont tout sauf une nouveauté, et la marque Samsung est souvent celle privilégiée par les faussaires, étant donné sa popularité. Nous vous en avions déjà parlé sur H&Co, en juillet 2023 par exemple avec de "fabuleux" Samsung 980 EVO et 990 PRO, puis en avril 2024 avec les...
Le 11 avril 2026, le site Kotaku révélait que Rockstar avait été la cible d'une cyberattaque menée par le groupe ShinyHunters. Les hackers sont parvenus à avoir accès aux instances Snowflakes de Rockstar, et à récupérer plusieurs dizaines de millions d'enregistrements de données de l'entreprise. Des...
Au tout début de ce mois d'avril 2026, le site Warranty Week publiait un article condensant les bilans 2025 concernant les garanties proposées par les différents fabricants basés aux États-Unis. Cet article avait interpelé de nombreux lecteurs du média, qui s'étonnaient des chiffres avancés concerna...
En avril 2022, il y a donc quatre ans maintenant, AMD lançait officiellement son tout premier processeur équipé de la technologie 3D V-Cache : le Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Il sera resté produit par AMD environ durant 2 ans, avant de devenir très difficile à trouver chez les commerçants, surtout à bon prix, à...
Le 1er octobre 2025, la nouvelle tombait : Microsoft modifiait les prix de ses abonnements Xbox Game Pass. Les personnes qui ne jouaient que sur PC pouvaient avoir l'illusion que leur PC Game Pass n'était pas impacté, car il n'était pas mentionné dans l'annonce, mais il augmentait bel et bien lui au...
L'attente touche à sa fin pour la sortie sur PC de PRAGMATA. Le jeu de CAPCOM débarquera officiellement sur PC demain, le 17 avril 2026 à 6 h 00 pétante en France, et les testeurs sont sans aucun doute en train de se dépêcher d'essayer de boucler leurs Performances Tests pour vous les proposer dès l...
Discrets mais déterminés. Alors que BYD et MG accaparaient l’attention médiatique, le groupe Chery avançait ses pions. Deux nouvelles enseignes — Omoda, le crossover citadin, et Jaecoo, le SUV baroudeur — débarquent en France au printemps 2026, portées par un géant industriel que le Fortune Global 500 classe désormais au 233e rang mondial.
Chery : un titan discret de l’automobile mondiale
Il y a des noms qui ne sonnent pas encore aux oreilles françaises. Chery Automobile en fait partie. Et pourtant, ce groupe fondé en 1997 dans la ville d’Anhui, en Chine, s’est hissé parmi les vingt-six constructeurs automobiles présents dans le palmarès des 500 plus grandes entreprises mondiales du magazine Fortune. Avec un chiffre d’affaires de 59,7 milliards de dollars en 2024 — en hausse de 53 % sur un an — Chery a bondi de 152 places dans ce classement de référence, signant la progression la plus spectaculaire du secteur toutes nationalités confondues.
Derrière ces chiffres, une réalité industrielle impressionnante : plus de 18 millions de véhicules fabriqués depuis sa création, une présence commerciale dans 132 pays, et 2,6 millions d’unités vendues en 2024, dont près de la moitié à l’export. Le groupe figure parmi les cinq constructeurs chinois — avec BYD, Geely, Changan et SAIC — dont les ventes combinées ont progressé de plus de 20 % au premier trimestre 2024, confirmant la montée en puissance irrésistible de l’industrie automobile de l’Empire du Milieu.
Dans l’arène mondiale, Toyota conserve le leadership avec 10,8 millions de véhicules en 2024, suivi par Volkswagen (9 millions). Stellantis, Renault, Mercedes-Benz et BMW composent le contingent européen, tandis que BYD s’est imposé comme premier constructeur mondial de véhicules électriques avec 4,3 millions d’unités produites. Chery, lui, incarne une troisième voie chinoise : celle de la conquête par l’hybride et l’export méthodique, plutôt que par le tout-électrique à marche forcée.
Anticipant les barrières commerciales européennes — l’Union européenne a imposé des droits de douane pouvant atteindre 45 % sur les voitures électriques chinoises — Chery a joué une carte industrielle habile : l’implantation locale. Dès 2018, le groupe ouvrait un centre de recherche et développement à Raunheim, en Allemagne, à quelques kilomètres de Francfort. En 2024, il investissait 100 millions d’euros dans la reprise de l’ancien site Nissan de Barcelone, en joint-venture avec Ebro EV Motors, pour assembler ses véhicules en sol européen et bénéficier du précieux label « Made in Europe ».
Omoda et Jaecoo : deux identités, une même ambition
C’est dans ce contexte que naissent, en 2022 et 2023 respectivement, Omoda et Jaecoo. Deux marques sœurs, deux positionnements distincts. Omoda s’adresse aux urbains connectés avec des crossovers au design avant-gardiste — certains observateurs y voient une inspiration Lexus — mariant écrans géants, finitions soignées et motorisations électrifiées. Jaecoo, de son côté, vise les amateurs d’aventure avec des SUV à la carrure affirmée, quelque part entre un Suzuki Vitara XXL et un Land Rover Defender simplifié.
La trajectoire internationale est foudroyante. Depuis leur lancement il y a moins de trois ans, les deux marques revendiquent 800 000 immatriculations dans le monde. L’Europe est devenue en 2025 leur premier vecteur d’expansion, avec plus de 200 000 ventes cumulées depuis 2024 sur seize marchés, dont le Royaume-Uni (53 606 immatriculations en 2025), l’Espagne (23 697) et l’Italie. En Espagne, la progression est telle qu’Omoda & Jaecoo s’est hissée au 5e rang des ventes aux particuliers, devançant Volkswagen — un symbole fort. Sur le continent, les ventes de janvier 2026 ont même vu Omoda tripler ses volumes et Jaecoo les quintupler par rapport à l’année précédente.
La France : dernière pièce du puzzle européen
La France constituait la dernière grande absente du dispositif européen. C’est désormais chose faite. En octobre 2025, Chery officialisait la création d’une filiale tricolore, Omoda & Jaecoo Automobile France, dont le siège est établi à Paris. À sa tête, Hanbang Yu, directeur général rodé aux lancements de marques sur les marchés exigeants. Son mantra : « l’hybride est le nouveau moteur thermique, et l’hybride rechargeable est le nouvel hybride ».
Le lancement commercial, initialement envisagé à l’automne 2025, a été calé au printemps 2026. Quatre modèles ouvrent le bal : le Jaecoo 5 hybride, le Jaecoo 7 hybride et hybride rechargeable — déjà disponible à partir de 35 990 euros, un tarif agressif face à un Volkswagen Tiguan concurrent — ainsi que l’Omoda 9 hybride rechargeable. La gamme 100 % électrique, elle, est annoncée pour 2027. Pour la distribution, 74 points de vente sont opérationnels au lancement, avec un objectif de 130 concessions d’ici la fin de l’année 2026. Un maillage ambitieux pour une marque encore inconnue du grand public français.
Sur un marché hexagonal déjà encombré de challengers chinois — MG, BYD, Leapmotor rattaché à Stellantis — Chery mise sur la différenciation par l’hybride, technologie moins exposée aux surtaxes douanières que le tout-électrique. La production partielle sur le sol européen, à Barcelone, pourrait par ailleurs faciliter l’éligibilité au bonus écologique français, dont les règles de calcul d’empreinte environnementale constituent un verrou redoutable pour les constructeurs asiatiques.
Reste la question de la confiance. Car si la compétitivité tarifaire et la richesse technologique sont au rendez-vous, les constructeurs chinois se heurtent en France à une prudence culturelle des consommateurs, plus lente à se dissiper qu’en Espagne ou au Royaume-Uni. Chery en est conscient : la garantie proposée dépasse sept ans, le service après-vente est érigé en priorité absolue. « In Europe, for Europe, be European » : la devise du groupe sonne comme un engagement autant que comme une promesse.
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