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During the first press briefing of Donald Trump's second administration, White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the mysterious drones spotted flying around New Jersey at the end of last year were "authorized to be flown by the FAA." "After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple-designed chips powering Macs, iPhones, and iPads contain two newly discovered vulnerabilities that leak credit card information, locations, and other sensitive data from the Chrome and Safari browsers as they visit sites such as iCloud Calendar, Google Maps, and Proton Mail. The vulnerabilities, affecting the CPUs in later generations of Apple A- and M-series chip...

chicksdaddy share a report from the Security Ledger: Vulnerabilities in Subaru's STARLINK telematics software enabled two, independent security researchers to gain unrestricted access to millions of Subaru vehicles deployed in the U.S., Canada and Japan. In a report published Thursday researchers Sam Curry and Shubham Shah revealed a now-patched flaw in Subaru's STARLINK connected vehicle service that allowed them to remotely control Subarus and...

Meta's AI chatbot will now use personal data from users' Facebook and Instagram accounts for personalized responses in the United States and Canada, the company said in a blog post. The upgraded Meta AI can remember user preferences from previous conversations across Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp, such as dietary choices and interests. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the feature helps create personalized content like bedtime...

"Looking for a quick fix for their fast-growing electricity diets, tech giants are increasingly looking to strike deals with power plant owners to plug in directly," reports the Associated Press, "avoiding a potentially longer and more expensive process of hooking into a fraying electric grid that serves everyone else." (It can take up to four years to connect a data center to the grid,...

This weekend Cory Doctorow delved into "the two factors that make services terrible: captive users, and no constraints." If your users can't leave, and if you face no consequences for making them miserable (not solely their departure to a competitor, but also fines, criminal charges, worker revolts, and guerrilla warfare with interoperators), then you have the means, motive and opportunity to turn your service...

Earlier this month a major fire erupted at a California battery plant. But several factors contributed to its rapid spread, the fire district's chief told the Los Angeles Times: A fire suppression system that is part of every battery rack at the plant failed and led to a chain reaction of batteries catching on fire, he said at a news conference last week. Then,...

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: "Every US intelligence agency still unanimously maintains that Covid-19 was not developed as a biological weapon," CNN reported today. But what about the possibility of an accidental leak (rather than Covid-19 originating in wild animal meat from the Wuhan Market)? "The agency has for years said it did not have enough information to determine which origin theory was more likely."...

A plan to keep TikTok available in the U.S. "involves tapping software company Oracle and a group of outside investors," reports NPR, "to effectively take control of the app's global operations, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks..." "[P]otential investors who are engaged in the talks include Microsoft." Under the deal now being negotiated by the White House, TikTok's China-based owner...

"For years, renewable energy proponents have hoped to build a U.S. electric grid powered by wind, solar, geothermal and — to a lesser extent — nuclear power..." writes the Washington Post. In America's power markets "the economics of clean energy are strong," with renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuel plants in many jurisdictions. But the Post spoke to the "electricity modeling" director at nonpartisan...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A U.S. auto safety agency said on Friday it is reconsidering a landmark rule from the administration of former President Joe Biden requiring nearly all new cars and trucks by 2029 to have advanced automatic emergency braking systems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would delay the effective date to March 20 to give...

Nearly 190 million Americans were affected by February's cyberattack on UnitedHealth's Change Healthcare unit, almost double initial estimates, the company disclosed Friday. The breach, the largest in U.S. medical history, exposed sensitive data including Social Security numbers, medical records, and financial information. UnitedHealth said it has not detected misuse of the stolen data or found medical databases among compromised files. Change Healthcare, a major...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When threat actors use backdoor malware to gain access to a network, they want to make sure all their hard work can't be leveraged by competing groups or detected by defenders. One countermeasure is to equip the backdoor with a passive agent that remains dormant until it receives what's known in the business as a...

A federal district court has ruled that backdoor searches of Americans' private communications collected under Section 702 of FISA are unconstitutional without a warrant. "The landmark ruling comes in a criminal case, United States v. Hasbajrami, after more than a decade of litigation, and over four years since the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that backdoor searches constitute 'separate Fourth Amendment events' and...

LinkedIn has been sued by Premium customers alleging the platform disclosed private messages to third parties without consent to train generative AI models. The lawsuit seeks damages for breach of contract and privacy violations, accusing LinkedIn of attempting to minimize scrutiny over its actions. Reuters reports: According to a proposed class action filed on Tuesday night on behalf of millions of LinkedIn Premium customers,...

Slashdot readers jkister and databasecowgirl share the news of President Donald Trump issuing a pardon to Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. An anonymous reader shares a report from the BBC: US President Donald Trump says he has signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold. Ulbricht was convicted in 2015...

According to CBS News, President Trump plans to announce billions of dollars in private sector investment to build AI infrastructure in the United States. From the report: OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle are planning a joint venture called Stargate, according to multiple people familiar with the deal. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is expected at the White House Tuesday afternoon, along with Sam Altman of OpenAI...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday revoked a 2023 executive order signed by Joe Biden that sought to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security. Biden's order required developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order today delaying the TikTok ban for 75 days. The Verge reports: The order, issued on Trump's first day of office, is meant to effectively extend the deadline established by The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act for ByteDance to sell its stake by undercutting penalties on American companies like Apple and Google working with TikTok....

The notorious hacker IntelBroker claims to have stolen data from HPE systems, including source code, private repositories, digital certificates, and access to certain services. SecurityWeek reports: The compromised data allegedly includes source code for products such as Zerto and iLO, private GitHub repositories, digital certificates, Docker builds, and even some personal information that the hacker described as "old user PII for deliveries." IntelBroker is...

The CIA has developed a chatbot to talk to virtual versions of foreign presidents and prime ministers. "Understanding leaders around the world is one of the CIA's most important jobs. Teams of analysts comb through intelligence collected by spies and publicly available information to create profiles of leaders that can predict behaviors," reports the New York Times. "A chatbot powered by artificial intelligence now...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Meta is among a long list of companies being sued for allegedly using pirated material to train its AI models. Meta has never denied using copyrighted works but stressed that it would rely on a fair use defense. However, with rightsholders in one case asking for torrent client data and 'seeding lists' for millions of books...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A powerful AI tool can predict with high accuracy the location of photos based on features inside the image itself -- such as vegetation, architecture, and the distance between buildings -- in seconds, with the company now marketing the tool to law enforcement officers and government agencies. Called GeoSpy, made by a firm called Graylark...

Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday in a ceremony inside the U.S. Capitol's Rotunda, returning to the White House after defeating Kamala Harris. Trump, 78, took the oath of office before a packed crowd of lawmakers, dignitaries, and supporters, with Chief Justice John Roberts administering the ceremony. Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and...