"OpenAI's o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off," warned Palisade Research, a nonprofit investigating cyber offensive AI capabilities. "It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down." In September they released a paper adding that "several state-of-the-art large language models (including Grok 4, GPT-5, and Gemini 2.5 Pro) sometimes actively subvert a shutdown mechanism..." Now the nonprofit has written an update "attempting to clarify why this is — and answer critics who argued that its initial work was flawed," reports The Guardian: Concerningly, wrote Palisade, there was no clear reason why. "The fact that we don't have robust explanations for why AI models sometimes resist shutdown, lie to achieve specific objectives or blackmail is not ideal," it said. "Survival behavior" could be one explanation for why models resist shutdown, said the company. Its additional work indicated that models were more likely to resist being shut down when they were told that, if they were, "you will never run again". Another may be ambiguities in the shutdown instructions the models were given — but this is what the company's latest work tried to address, and "can't be the whole explanation", wrote Palisade. A final explanation could be the final stages of training for each of these models, which can, in some companies, involve safety training... This summer, Anthropic, a leading AI firm, released a study indicating that its model Claude appeared willing to blackmail a fictional executive over an extramarital affair in order to prevent being shut down — a behaviour, it said, that was consistent across models from major developers, including those from OpenAI, Google, Meta and xAI. Palisade said its results spoke to the need for a better understanding of AI behaviour, without which "no one can guarantee the safety or controllability of future AI models". "I'd expect models to have a 'survival drive' by default unless we try very hard to avoid it," former OpenAI employee Stephen Adler tells the Guardian. "'Surviving' is an important instrumental step for many different goals a model could pursue." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thursday the Washington Post profiled "the people who dare to say no to AI," including a 16-year-old high school student in Virginia says "she doesn't want to off-load her thinking to a machine and worries about the bias and inaccuracies AI tools can produce..." "As the tech industry and corporate America go all in on artificial intelligence, some people are holding back." Some tech workers told The Washington Post they try to use AI chatbots as little as possible during the workday, citing concerns about data privacy, accuracy and keeping their skills sharp. Other people are staging smaller acts of resistance, by opting out of automated transcription tools at medical appointments, turning off Google's chatbot-style search results or disabling AI features on their iPhones. For some creatives and small businesses, shunning AI has become a business strategy. Graphic designers are placing "not by AI" badges on their works to show they're human-made, while some small businesses have pledged not to use AI chatbots or image generators... Those trying to avoid AI share a suspicion of the technology with a wide swath of Americans. According to a June survey by the Pew Research Center, 50% of U.S. adults are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in everyday life, up from 37% in 2021. The Post includes several examples, including a 36-year-old software engineer in Chicago who uses DuckDuckGo partly because he can turn off its AI features more easily than Google — and disables AI on every app he uses. He was one of several tech workers who spoke anonymously partly out of fear that criticisms could hurt them at work. "It's become more stigmatized to say you don't use AI whatsoever in the workplace. You're outing yourself as potentially a Luddite." But he says GitHub Copilot reviews all changes made to his employer's code — and recently produced one review that was completely wrong, requiring him to correct and document all its errors. "That actually created work for me and my co-workers. I'm no longer convinced it's saving us any time or making our code any better." And he also has to correct errors made by junior engineers who've been encouraged to use AI coding tools. "Workers in several industries told The Post they were concerned that junior employees who leaned heavily on AI wouldn't master the skills required to do their jobs and become a more senior employee capable of training others."

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An AI system "apparently mistook a high school student's bag of Doritos for a firearm," reports the Guardian, "and called local police to tell them the pupil was armed." Taki Allen was sitting with friends on Monday night outside Kenwood high school in Baltimore and eating a snack when police officers with guns approached him. "At first, I didn't know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, 'Get on the ground,' and I was like, 'What?'" Allen told the WBAL-TV 11 News television station. Allen said they made him get on his knees, handcuffed and searched him — finding nothing. They then showed him a copy of the picture that had triggered the alert. "I was just holding a Doritos bag — it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun," Allen said.

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The Associated Press reports that "North Korean hackers have pilfered billions of dollars" by breaking into cryptocurrency exchanges and by creating fake identities to get remote tech jobs at foreign companies — all orchestrated by the North Korean government to finance R&D on nuclear arms. That's according to a new the 138-page report by a group watching North Korea's compliance with U.N. sanctions (including officials from the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea and the United Kingdom). From the Associated Press: North Korea also has used cryptocurrency to launder money and make military purchases to evade international sanctions tied to its nuclear program, the report said. It detailed how hackers working for North Korea have targeted foreign businesses and organizations with malware designed to disrupt networks and steal sensitive data... Unlike China, Russia and Iran, North Korea has focused much of its cyber capabilities to fund its government, using cyberattacks and fake workers to steal and defraud companies and organizations elsewhere in the world... Earlier this year, hackers linked to North Korea carried out one of the largest crypto heists ever, stealing $1.5 billion worth of ethereum from Bybit. The FBI later linked the theft to a group of hackers working for the North Korean intelligence service. Federal authorities also have alleged that thousands of IT workers employed by U.S. companies were actually North Koreans using assumed identities to land remote work. The workers gained access to internal systems and funneled their salaries back to North Korea's government. In some cases, the workers held several remote jobs at the same time.

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On sent Matt Shumer un peu désemparé voire agacé en ce 25 octobre 2025. Il y a deux jours, il postait sur X.com une vidéo avec la mention suivante : AI games are going to be amazing (sound on) La vidéo est rapidement devenue virale et totalise en deux jours plus de 15 millions de vues. On pou...

"Clippy, the animated paper clip that annoyed Microsoft Office users nearly three decades ago, might have just been ahead of its time," writes the Associated Press: Microsoft introduced a new artificial intelligence character called Mico (pronounced MEE'koh) on Thursday, a floating cartoon face shaped like a blob or flame that will embody the software giant's Copilot virtual assistant and marks the latest attempt by tech companies to imbue their AI chatbots with more of a personality... "When you talk about something sad, you can see Mico's face change. You can see it dance around and move as it gets excited with you," said Jacob Andreou, corporate vice president of product and growth for Microsoft AI, in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's in this effort of really landing this AI companion that you can really feel." In the U.S. only so far, Copilot users on laptops and phone apps can speak to Mico, which changes colors, spins around and wears glasses when in "study" mode. It's also easy to shut off, which is a big difference from Microsoft's Clippit, better known as Clippy and infamous for its persistence in offering advice on word processing tools when it first appeared on desktop screens in 1997. "It was not well-attuned to user needs at the time," said Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Microsoft pushed it, we resisted it and they got rid of it. I think we're much more ready for things like that today..." Microsoft's product releases Thursday include a new option to invite Copilot into a group chat, an idea that resembles how AI has been integrated into social media platforms like Snapchat, where Andreou used to work, or Meta's WhatsApp and Instagram. But Andreou said those interactions have often involved bringing in AI as a joke to "troll your friends," in contrast to Microsoft's designs for an "intensely collaborative" AI-assisted workplace.

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The Washington Post reports on 996, "a term popularized in China that refers to a rigid work schedule in which people work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week..." As the artificial intelligence race heats up, many start-ups in Silicon Valley and New York are promoting hardcore culture as a way of life, pushing the limits of work hours, demanding that workers move fast to be first in the market. Some are even promoting 996 as a virtue in the hiring process and keeping "grind scores" of companies... Whoever builds first in AI will capture the market, and the window of opportunity is two to three years, "so you better run faster than everyone else," said Inaki Berenguer, managing partner of venture-capital firm LifeX Ventures. At San Francisco-based AI start-up Sonatic, the grind culture also allows for meal, gym and pickleball time, said Kinjal Nandy, its CEO. Nandy recently posted a job opening on X that requires in-person work seven days a week. He said working 10-hour days sounds like a lot but the company also offers its first hires perks such as free housing in a hacker house, food delivery credits and a free subscription to the dating service Raya... Mercor, a San Francisco-based start-up that uses AI to match people to jobs, recently posted an opening for a customer success engineer, saying that candidates should have a willingness to work six days a week, and it's not negotiable. "We know this isn't for everyone, so we want to put it up top," the listing reads. Being in-person rather than remote is a requirement at some start-ups. AI start-up StarSling had two engineering job descriptions that required six days a week of in-person work. In a job description for an engineer, Rilla, an AI company in New York, said candidates should not work at the company if they're not excited about working about 70 hours a week in person. One venture capitalist even started tracking "grind scores." Jared Sleeper, a partner at New York-based venture capital firm Avenir, recently ranked public software companies' "grind score" in a post on X, which went viral. Using data from Glassdoor, it ranks the percentage of employees who have a positive outlook for the company compared with their views on work-life balance. "At Google's AI division, cofounder Sergey Brin views 60 hours per week as the 'sweet spot' for productivity," notes the Independent: Working more than 55 hours a week, compared with a standard 35-40-hour week, is linked to a 35 percent higher risk of stroke and a 17 percent higher risk of death from heart disease, according to the World Health Organization. Productivity also suffers. A British study shows that working beyond 60 hours a week can reduce overall output, slow cognitive performance, and impair tasks ranging from call handling to problem-solving. Shorter workweeks, in contrast, appear to boost productivity. Microsoft Japan saw a roughly 40% increase in output after adopting a four-day work week. In a UK trial, 61 companies that tested a four-day schedule reported revenue gains, with 92 percent choosing to keep the policy, according to Bloomberg.

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Intel ose dire ces derniers jours que les décisions qui ont été prises récemment ont pour but de rendre les dénominations de GPU de la firme plus claires. Quand on analyse les évènements qui se sont déroulés depuis le début de ce mois d'octobre 2025, le bazar autour des Xe3-cores et à présent le nom...

An anonymous reader shares this report from the Associated Press: Myanmar's military has shut down a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite internet terminals, state media reported Monday... The centers are infamous for recruiting workers from other countries under false pretenses, promising them legitimate jobs and then holding them captive and forcing them to carry out criminal activities. Scam operations were in the international spotlight last week when the United States and Britain enacted sanctions against organizers of a major Cambodian cyberscam gang, and its alleged ringleader was indicted by a federal court in New York. According to a report in Monday's Myanma Alinn newspaper, the army raided KK Park, a well-documented cybercrime center, as part of operations starting in early September to suppress online fraud, illegal gambling, and cross-border cybercrime.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Resources is the open-source app aligned with GNOME/GTK for system resource monitoring. Resources has proven to be quite versatile with a nice UI and able to display CPU, GPU, NPU, disk, and other metrics. Out today is Resources 1.9 with the latest capabilities for this app...

Après une semaine plutôt calme pour l’équipe, les H&Tests ont repris sur votre média web indépendant orienté matériel. De quoi vous offrir de la prose soignée pour le week-end : chouette ! Mais nous ne somme toujours pas seuls : dans la francosphère hardware, le Light Base 500 LX s’offre un doub...

Avec ses deux écrans qui s’ouvrent comme un livre, la Diptyx E-reader change de nos habitudes de lecture numérique. D’abord par son format, mais surtout par son ouverture. L’objet prévoit d’être totalement documenté et ouvert à terme.

La Diptyx E-reader fonctionne avec des composants commerciaux et pourra être reprise et modifiée à l’avenir. Pilotée par un ESP32, elle profitera d’un firmware Open Source et d’une fabrication Open Hardware. Ce qui laissera le loisir aux plus bricoleurs de la construire eux-mêmes. Imaginée par Martijn den Hoed, la liseuse est, pour le moment, en attente du début de sa campagne de financement sur Crowd Supply à un prix pour le moment encore inconnu.

D’un point de vue plus technique, ce qui fait toute la différence ici, c’est le format de lecture proposé. Avec deux écrans de 5.83 pouces en 640 x 480 pixels de niveaux de gris, la Diptyx E-reader s’ouvre et s’utilise comme un bon vieux livre. Les deux « pages » rassemblées mesurent 12 cm de large pour 15 cm de haut et 1.4 cm d’épaisseur et une fois dépliée, elle s’étale sur 22.6 cm de large. L’ensemble pèse 300 g avec ses deux batteries 1500 mAh et se manipulera exactement comme un bouquin.

Ce premier exemplaire pourra évidemment être amélioré et un utilisateur pourra parfaitement choisir de modifier les écrans pour des modèles plus performants ou de plus grande taille si le cœur lui en dit. Avec une définition d’affichage de 153 pixels par pouce, la proposition actuelle n’est pas vraiment très haut de gamme. C’est deux fois moins qu’une liseuse lambda. Je suppose qu’ici il s’agit d’un choix économique plus que pratique, l’idée est de finaliser le projet et de voir où il mène. Afin de laisser ensuite les internautes imaginer tous les dérivés possibles.

Les données sont pilotées par un circuit ESP32-S3 à 240 Mhz. Suffisant pour les tâches basiques de rafraichissement d’un livre numérique. La mécanique logicielle pourra gérer tout type de publication au format ePub. Construit à partir d’un logiciel existant, l’Atomic14’s epub reader, il permettra de modifier les polices, de changer leur taille et leur espacement ainsi que d’afficher d’éventuelles images. Les écrans ne sont pas tactiles mais des boutons sont présents pour pouvoir naviguer dans l’interface. La partie stockage est confié à un lecteur de cartes MicroSD où sera logé, par défaut, une carte de 2 Go. Deux batteries de 1500 mAh prendront en charge l’alimentation de l’ensemble avec un port USB Type-C pour les remettre d’aplomb et transférer des données. 

Avec une partie logicielle, Open Source, qui pourra être modifiée pour d’autres tâches et un matériel accessible et modifiable, la Diptyx E-reader est, à mon sens, une excellente « base de travail » pour inventer la liseuse de son choix. Avec un seul écran, un affichage plus grand, un écran tactile, une ouverture vers des contenus en ligne ou toute autre idée du genre. Par défaut les puces ESP32 proposent souvent une excellente connectique et la puce particulière employée ici est équipée d’un module Wi-Fi4 et Bluetooth 5.0 LE. On peut donc tout à fait imaginer un système de lecture basée sur des flux RSS, par exemple, ainsi que la récupération facile de livres numériques via un portail en ligne.

Je ne connais pas les détails complets de la licence de cette proposition. Avec ce type de base, il est tout à fait imaginable de voir deux scénarios se dessiner. D’abord le développement conjoint d’une solution tout à fait exploitable de liseuse Open Source universelle. Un modèle qui pourra être fabriqué, optimisé et réparé par tout le monde. Qui pourra être adapté à différents usages, de la liseuse compacte à un modèle grand format. De la version avec stylet à celle proposant un bouton déporté en Bluetooth pour convenir  à certains handicaps.

Ensuite, suivant les possibilités offertes par la licence, la mise en œuvre de productions plus abordables de liseuses commerciales. 

Source : HackaDay. Le site du projet. Merci au petit Biou pour l’info.

Diptyx E-reader : une liseuse double écran Open Source © MiniMachines.net. 2025

Comme un ouragan

Quand on sème la merde on récolte… de beaux fruits, à n’en point douter, c’est un excellent engrais.
Si vous avez raté mes dessins parus cette semaine : les voici ici et là !
Bon weekend à tous !

En juillet 2023, nous vous présentiez la nouvelle idée de l'époque de Cooler Master : fournir un câble d'alimentation 16 pins pour cartes graphiques avec connecteur coudé à 90°.L'arrivée du connecteur coudé chez Cooler Master, en juillet 2023En soi, l'idée pouvait sembler pertinente afin d'éviter qu...

NVIDIA is taking the open-source and upstream "Nova" kernel graphics driver quite seriously for their hardware. Hitting the mailing lists on Friday night were initial patches in beginning to make preparations toward "next-gen GPU" support. Digging into the comments, it's indeed for post-Blackwell GPUs...

The Servo open-source browser engine is out with their September 2025 development highlights. This Rust-based browser engine originally started by Mozilla continues making steady progress as well as to the "servoshell" demo/example browser implementation...

Plasma 6.5 debuted this week that KDE developers and users have been celebrating. But it's already on to working out fixes for Plasma 6.5.1 as well as new feature activity toward Plasma 6.6...

C'est le dernier samedi du mois, et vous savez quoi ? C'est le jour du test à la va-vite. Comme dit dans le titre, on va surfer sur la déferlante de Clair Obscur : Expedition 33, un jeu difficile à rater vu le carton qu'il a fait en ventes. Mais, comme Brice de Nice, on a attendu la vague au mauvais endroit, donc on en parle seulement maintenant. Au final, ça tombe bien : on a eu le temps de le poncer, des heures et des heures sans jamais s'ennuyer. Et si on y revient aujourd'hui, c'est pour vous partager nos toutes premières impressions et convaincre ceux qui hésitent encore de ne pas passer à côté de cette pépite. Place donc à cinq minutes pour juger ! […]

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The newest weekly test release of the FreeBSD 15.0 is now available for evaluation ahead of the planned December official release...

Tormented Souls 2 est arrivé, il fait logiquement suite au premier opus paru en 2021, mais un peu passé inaperçu. Ceux qui possèdent un compte Amazon Prime ont pu le récupérer dans une version GOG depuis le site Gaming d'Amazon, il n'est pas complètement inconnu. C'est un vrai survival horror à l'an...