Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. US AI Stock Sell-Off Shakes Markets From Wall Street To Asia
  2. 29-Year-Old Squid Proxy Bug ‘Squidbleed’ Can Leak Cleartext HTTP Requests
  3. China Reclaims Fastest Supercomputer At 2 Exaflops
  4. Wikipedia Cofounder Larry Sanger Banned From Site for ‘Canvassing’
  5. Walmart, In Biggest Deal In Two Years, Buys Advertising Tech Firm Vibe.co
  6. Mark Zuckerberg Directed Meta To Create a Prediction Markets App
  7. Digital Euro Expected To Launch By 2029 After EU Backing
  8. Meta Launches Cheaper Smart Glasses Without Ray-Ban
  9. Oracle Cuts 21,000 Jobs As It Embraces AI
  10. UK Considers Forcing Social Media Firms To Prioritize Trusted News
  11. Canada Plans ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ With Up To 10 Reactors Built By 2040
  12. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Arrives In Florida
  13. GM Installs Robots At Flagship EV Factory After Laying Off 1,300 Workers
  14. Microsoft Accidentally Breaks Replying To an Email On Outlook
  15. Following User Outcry, AMD Reinstates Memory Encryption In Consumer CPUs

Alterslash picks up to the best 5 comments from each of the day’s Slashdot stories, and presents them on a single page for easy reading.

US AI Stock Sell-Off Shakes Markets From Wall Street To Asia

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:
A tech sell-off shook global markets on Tuesday as attention turned away from developments in the US war with Iran and toward the future of AI companies and chipmakers that have driven stock markets to record highs. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index closed 2.2% lower on Tuesday. The S&P 500 was also down by Tuesday afternoon, dropping 1.43% while the Dow remained steady. All three major US indices have hit record highs this year, riding off a rush of funding to support AI technology and infrastructure. Nasdaq is up 10% for the year, while the Dow jumped 6% so far this year, breaching past 51,000 points, and the S&P 500 is up 7.3%.

But some economists have warned that the influx of AI spending is a bubble reminiscent of the dot-com bubble that burst in the early 2000s. Seven tech companies make up 30% of the S&P 500’s value. The heavy reliance on a single industry and a few key companies has some investors wondering if it’s a matter of when, not if, there will be a burst. Those concerns have been heightened by signals from the Federal Reserve last week that it may increase interest rates, and therefore the cost of borrowing, in order to tackle rising inflation.
Alphabet fell 5% on Monday. SpaceX plunged 16%. The selloff also spread to Asia, with South Korea’s benchmark dropping 10% as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics each lost more than 12%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 declined 3.5%.

POP!

By PhantomHarlock • Score: 5, Funny Thread

…and nothing of value was lost.

29-Year-Old Squid Proxy Bug ‘Squidbleed’ Can Leak Cleartext HTTP Requests

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
A 29-year-old bug in the Squid web proxy, dubbed Squidbleed and tracked as CVE-2026-47729, can let an authorized proxy user retrieve fragments of another user’s cleartext HTTP requests, including credentials and session tokens. The security researcher who reported the flaw credited Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview for the discovery. The Hacker News reports:
Squid describes this as an attack by a trusted client: someone already permitted to use the proxy, not any random host on the internet. That matches Squid’s usual home, shared networks like schools, offices, and public Wi-Fi. In those setups, the attacker is just another user of the same proxy. The leak also only reaches traffic that Squid can read. Normal HTTPS rides an opaque CONNECT tunnel, so Squid never sees inside it; the exposed traffic is cleartext HTTP, plus TLS-terminating setups where Squid decrypts and inspects. The attacker also needs the proxy to reach an FTP server they control on port 21. Both FTP and that port are on by default.

[…] If you patch, verify the fix, not just the version. Confirm the guard is in FtpGateway.cc, or check your distribution’s backport, since distros ship their own builds (Debian packages Squid 5.7). The public thread is still inconsistent: maintainer Amos Jeffries first said Squid 7.6 carried the fix, then corrected that to 7.7, and on June 22 Debian’s Salvatore Bonaccorso noted the referenced commit looks like it is already in 7.6. The fix is small, a null-terminator check before the vulnerable strchr calls, merged to the development branch in April and v7 in May. Squid 7.6 does separately patch CVE-2026-50012, an unrelated cache_digest heap overflow.

The cleaner move is the one the researchers recommend anyway: turn FTP off. Chromium dropped FTP years ago, and most networks carry almost none of it, so disabling it removes this attack surface for free, whatever build you run. The risk is real but bounded. SUSE rates it moderate, CVSS 6.5, and the vector explains the score: the attacker needs proxy access (low privileges), and the only impact is confidentiality, nothing on integrity or availability.

TFS left out that Mythos AI hepled uncover the bug

By williamyf • Score: 3 Thread

Two things can be true at the same time.

Yes, is true that AI is a bubble, and is over-hyped.
Yet, is also true that AI has an important and valuable role to play in software development.

But you do not have to trust me, as I am some internet rando, instead, trust trustworthy (redundancy intended) people like:

Linus Torvalds:

On the positive side, he framed AI-discovered bugs as “short-term pain” with long-term benefits: “When AI finds a bug in any source code… long term is you found a bug, we fixed it, that the end result is better for it.” After all, he continued, “I think finding bugs is great, because the real problem is all the bugs you didn’t find…”

https://linux.slashdot.org/sto…

Greg K-H:

It’s not just Linux, he continued. “All open source projects have real reports that are made with AI, but they’re good, and they’re real.” Security teams across major open source projects talk informally and frequently, he noted, and everyone is seeing the same shift. “All open source security teams are hitting this right now....”

For now, AI is showing up more as a reviewer and assistant than as a full author of Linux kernel code, but that line is starting to blur. Kroah-Hartman has already done his own experiments with AI-generated patches. “I did a really stupid prompt,” he recounted. “I said, ‘Give me this,’ and it spit out 60: ‘Here’s 60 problems I found, and here’s the fixes for them.’ About one-third were wrong, but they still pointed out a relatively real problem, and two-thirds of the patches were right.” Mind you, those working patches still needed human cleanup, better changelogs, and integration work, but they were far from useless. “The tools are good,” he said. “We can’t ignore this stuff. It’s coming up, and it’s getting better....” [H]e said that for “simple little error conditions, properly detecting error conditions,” AI could already generate dozens of usable patches today.

https://linux.slashdot.org/sto…

The Firefox team:

We view this as clear evidence that large-scale, AI-assisted analysis is a powerful new addition in security engineers’ toolbox. Firefox has undergone some of the most extensive fuzzing, static analysis, and regular security review over decades. Despite this, the model was able to reveal many previously unknown bugs. This is analogous to the early days of fuzzing; there is likely a substantial backlog of now-discoverable bugs across widely deployed software.

https://news.slashdot.org/stor…

Please also notice that the source of the links and its comunity is not particularly AI friendly, so… … So, again, two things can be true at the same time…

China Reclaims Fastest Supercomputer At 2 Exaflops

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Longtime Slashdot reader hackingbear shares a report from TOP500:
The 67th edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was announced today at the ISC 2026 conference in Hamburg, Germany. LineShine, a previously unlisted system installed in China, debuts at No. 1, displacing El Capitan as the world’s most powerful supercomputer as measured by the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark. LineShine achieved 2.198 Exaflop/s on HPL — about 80 percent of its 2.736 Exaflop/s theoretical peak — making it the first system on the TOP500 to exceed two exaflops of sustained double-precision performance using CPUs only.

Installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen (NSCS) and built by the Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center, the system is based on a custom Chinese processor and the “LingKun” platform: 13.79 million cores across 304-core LX2 processors running at 1.55 GHz, linked by the proprietary LingQi interconnect and running Kylin OS. LineShine draws approximately 42.2 megawatts of power, for an efficiency of 52.07 Gigaflops/Watt. Its debut marks the first time since 2017 that a Chinese system has led the TOP500, and it also takes over the No. 1 position on the HPCG ranking with 22.00 HPCG-Petaflop/s. On the HPL-MxP mixed-precision benchmark, LineShine reached 7.92 Exaflop/s for fourth place, a comparatively modest 3.6x speedup over its HPL score that points to a CPU-only design without dedicated low-precision accelerators.
While impressive, “the results may say more about Beijing’s desire to show self-sufficiency in computing systems than its standing in the global AI race,” reports Reuters.
Reuters interviewed tech and policy experts who said that the results “do not mean that China has the world’s fastest computer for AI work because of changes in the computing industry in recent years and the methods used to compile the list.” The reports notes that LineShine “ranked fourth on a benchmark test designed to simulate computing work that is more similar to AI.”

Jimmy Goodrich, a senior fellow at the University of California’s Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, said: “If the hyperscalers submitted their systems, this ‘world’s fastest’ would not crack the top five.” Addison Snell, CEO of Intersect360 Research, a firm that focuses on supercomputers, added: “I’m not surprised it’s the number one system. What I’m surprised by is that they submitted it and want recognition for it.”

US water cooled super computer

By Anonymous Coward • Score: 3, Funny Thread

The obvious choice is to build a super computer under the reflecting pool. Using the amazing pumps and clean water to provide algae-free computing and beating both China and Russia. USA USA USA

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Chinese Tech

By sit1963nz • Score: 3 Thread
Seems like China as not as dependant on US technology as the US thought

Wikipedia Cofounder Larry Sanger Banned From Site for ‘Canvassing’

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger has been indefinitely banned from editing the site after editors concluded that he violated its canvassing rules, “or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia’s content,” reports 404 Media. Sanger says the ban proves Wikipedia suppresses ideological diversity, while editors argue he was trying to mobilize an outside audience to influence internal decisions and had ignored an earlier warning. From the report:
The discussion that led to the decision to ban Sanger concluded with what an editor called a “clear consensus” to ban Sanger. “There is general agreement among participants that he has engaged in off-wiki canvassing and is not here to constructively build the encyclopedia,” the editor said in a note closing the discussion. “There is also a significant concern shared by many editors that his actions constitute calls for outing.”

While Sanger has been railing about bias on Wikipedia for years, the specific issue here is around his WikiProject Intellectual Diversity. WikiProjects are group efforts among Wikipedia volunteers to deal with certain issues on the site. […] Sanger’s WikiProject Intellectual Diversity, as its name implies, aims to bring more intellectual diversity to the site, mostly meaning more right-leaning perspectives. Sanger’s WikiProject Intellectual Diversity and its goals alone do not merit a ban according to Wikipedia’s policies. The problem, according to Wikipedia editors, is that during the discussion about whether to allow WikiProject Intellectual Diversity to become an official WikiProject, Sanger invited his 91,000 followers on X to influence that discussion.

Discussions about potential bans are supposed to remain open for at least 72 hours. While consensus that Sanger had violated Wikipedia policies was clear, Sanger was banned at some point before that deadline. He was then briefly unbanned, and then again indefinitely banned once 72 hours had elapsed and the discussion about the ban closed. “Wikipedia has become more of a mob-rule anarchy than ever,” Sanger said in a statement sent to me by a spokesperson. “In the kangaroo court in which a mob ousted me, Wikipedia’s administrators showed that they don’t appear to value details like formal charges, a designated prosecutor, basic decorum, distinction between prosecution and judge, dispassionate adjudication, and so forth. They have no proper system other than triggering a mob to selectively enforce their hodgepodge of vague rules.”

“Now that same mob has blocked me for trying to bring an intellectually diverse group of thinkers and editors to the site,” Sanger continued. “Subscribing to their groupthink is now an official requirement of being a member in good standing. Something must change, and now. I only wonder if the system as it currently stands can even allow the discourse necessary to fix the system.”

Just to clarify one point

By Arrogant-Bastard • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
"[…] Sanger invited his 91,000 followers on X to influence that discussion.”

should read:

“Sanger invited 91,000 racists, misogynists, bigots, homophobes, xenophobes, and fascists from a well-known Nazi bar to influence the discussion.”

Re:Just to clarify one point

By Baron_Yam • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The moment I hear it’s from ‘X’, that’s exactly what I presume, because if you have any decency at all you don’t choose a site that protects Nazism for your social media fix.

Guilt by association isn’t perfect, but some times the choice of associates speaks so loudly you can’t ignore it.

Re: Don’t jump to conclusions

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

“when schoolkids go, and they look up answers to questions about the meaning of ‘socialism’ … they’re going to find an explanation that completely ignores any conservative, libertarian, or critical treatment of the subject”, “And that’s really problematic.

He makes a big deal about being neutral and when the word socialism comes up he demands it be bad mouthed by Fox News.

Just make your own website.

By SlashDotCanSuckMy777 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Unfortunately every time Conservatives try this it turns into a shit hole, and no one uses it. Or it becomes like twitter - also a shit hole.

Reality is left leaning and no amount trying to distort it will change that.

Re:The Hive mind

By sg_oneill • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

If you look at the climate change denial page you can see the hive mind in action.

Seems pretty factual and unbiased to me?

People keep thinking truth and science should be “balanced” and “fair” , but reality doesn’t work by that. A scientific truth doesn’t have sides and it doesnt function by debate. A thing is true or it isn’t, and while the scientific process is a fundamentally statistical beast, its always been a process of pushing the knowledge curve against well defined asympotes. Its never had an obligation to pay attention to the opinions of the illeducated or dishonest. Because science doesnt deal with opinions, it deals with experiments and results.

Debates are for social media not scientific discourse. Sure there are robust exchanges of conflicting papers and studies where uncertainty exists, but it bears no resemblance to the shouty name calling and exchange of thought-terminating cliches that dominate social media. Science doesnt debate, and neither does wikipedia. The truth is not democratic.

Walmart, In Biggest Deal In Two Years, Buys Advertising Tech Firm Vibe.co

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Walmart is acquiring self-serve connected-TV ad platform Vibe.co for a reported $1.4 billion, adding it to an advertising ecosystem that already includes smart-TV maker Vizio. AdExchanger reports:
On Tuesday, Walmart announced that it is buying Vibe.co, the French self-serve ad platform that specializes in helping small brands buy streaming commercials with similar ease and precision as they get from search and social. Vibe has been vying for a bigger share of the ad dollars moving to connected TV, especially in the US, as evidenced by the company’s ubiquitous billboards in major cities including New York and San Francisco. Now, Vibe joins Walmart Connect’s commerce ecosystem alongside the smart TV maker Vizio. And Vibe’s tech is poised to help unify Walmart’s growing CTV footprint with the closed-loop attribution provided by its retail sales data.

[…] Together, Walmart and Vibe.co strive to “build the best ecosystem for the performance TV market,” Vibe CEO and Co-Founder Arthur Querou told AdExchanger. Performance CTV has a high ceiling for growth. The performance budgets dedicated for streaming platforms are still small potatoes compared to search and social, Querou said. Only one-quarter of CTV ad campaigns have lower-funnel objectives, and that number has been static for years, according to data from Advertiser Perceptions. Now that Walmart owns both Vibe and Vizio, advertisers should have an easier time tying streaming campaigns to shopper data. That promise stands to win Walmart more marketing dollars earmarked for retail media and streaming behemoths — including Amazon.

Walmart is especially interested in attracting more small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who lack the tools, budgets or teams to invest in streaming TV, a Walmart spokesperson told AdExchanger. Other ad platforms, including MNTN and Magnite, have likewise targeted SMB advertisers as a source for continued growth in the CTV market. By adding Vibe.co, Walmart can court SMBs with the pitch that its new self-serve tools will make it easier for them to execute CTV campaigns. Plus, SMBs tend to prioritize performance campaigns, since they are under more pressure to justify tighter ad budgets and thus have to be more selective about which platforms they advertise on. And Walmart is better positioned than most platforms to prove its ads drove performance thanks to its retail data foundation.

Mark Zuckerberg Directed Meta To Create a Prediction Markets App

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times:
Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, recently dispatched a small team at his company to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, two employees with knowledge of the matter said. Users would not wager money, and the app would probably rely on a video game-like points system instead, one person said, though the company had not ruled out the eventual use of real money betting. The app is internally referred to as “Arena” and would function independently from Meta’s social networking apps, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, said the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential plans. Meta aims to grow the app by leveraging its large social networking audiences and directing them toward using it, they said.

The effort, which insiders characterized as experimental but a top priority, is part of a broader push by Mr. Zuckerberg to create new types of apps based on emerging social behavior online. More than 3.56 billion people visit one or more of Meta’s apps every day, an amount that has raised questions about whether those platforms have reached a saturation point. Arena is one of a handful of apps that Meta is trying out. Others include one called Meta Photos, another stand-alone app which would create new types of media using artificial intelligence, the employees said. […] Meta insiders have cautioned that Arena remains in development and may not be released. But as executives search for ways to keep the world’s largest social media sites thriving, Mr. Zuckerberg appears to be relying on his well-worn product development strategy: Follow the users.

Easy

By kwelch007 • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Should be able to vibe-code that with Llama in a couple hours. Totally secure, and get employee credits for using AI too!

Me too

By sinkskinkshrieks • Score: 5, Funny Thread
Because every oligarch needs an insider information exploitation meets outsider rube monetization Ponzi scheme.

Yep, they’re running out of steam

By ebunga • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

I mean, what was the business plan once everybody that could ever possibly want to be on facebook was on facebook?

Gambling

By rsilvergun • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
It’s called gambling.

Digital Euro Expected To Launch By 2029 After EU Backing

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
The European Parliament’s economic committee has backed a digital euro designed to reduce Europe’s dependence on US-controlled payment networks such as Visa and Mastercard. The ECB-backed currency is targeted for launch by 2029 after a full parliamentary vote and negotiations with EU member states. Euronews reports:
Under the proposal, consumers would be able to hold digital euros in a dedicated wallet, subject to a holding limit that has yet to be determined. The system would support both online and offline payments and is intended to offer a high degree of privacy, with the ECB unable to directly identify users from their payment data.

The ECB would provide the underlying infrastructure, while commercial banks and payment service providers would offer digital euro services to customers. Financial institutions are expected to be compensated for their participation in the scheme, while merchants will pay fees that are expected to be lower than those associated with current card transactions.

How that compensation should be structured remains one of the most contentious issues ahead of negotiations with EU member states, according to three sources familiar with the discussions. […] The European Parliament is expected to formalise the committee’s position during a plenary vote in Strasbourg in early July. Negotiations with the EU’s 27 member states would then begin, with lawmakers aiming to reach a final agreement before the end of the year.

Re:There is very little need

By bsolar • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Bank-transfers are fast, cheap, efficient in the Euro-zone. A “Digital Euro” has no real uses. My take is this is some politicians desiring to appear “modern”.

The idea is not to replace or compete with SEPA: it’s to try to replicate some nice aspects of cash in a more and more cash-less society especially for day-to-day transactions.

A cash-less payment currently needs to involve a private financial institution somewhere in the transaction. This is because the central bank only issues cash. This “digital euro” supposedly will allow for cash-less transaction only involving government institutions instead of private ones.

Of course the question is whether you trust more a government institution than a private one and whether this will open the door to an eventual phasing-out of cash down the road…

Re:There is very little need

By Errol backfiring • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Especially banks want a cashless society. The idea of a Central Bank Digital Currency is already quite old in Europe, but the banks have sabotaged it time and time again, out of fear that they would not be necessary anymore and would be unable to squeeze themselves between every payment.

Re: There is very little need

By bsolar • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Ah, so does that work in all EU-countries? Or just in yours?

Instant SEPA support for retail payments is still fragmentary and relies on private financial institutions.

The idea with the Digital Euro is that it would effectively have “legal tender” status. The EU would definitely push for widespread adoption.

Reduce reliance on credit cards?

By Pinky’s Brain • Score: 3 Thread

The EU made it illegal to charge credit card surcharges.

How is this digital Euro ever supposed to compete with credit cards which give “free” consumer protection through chargeback?

Good way to pay for porn I guess.

Re:CBDC, and so it begins

By nehumanuscrede • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Biggest concern will be privacy issues.

It’s bad enough that the major payment processors have any say so about what their cards
can be used to purchase and how much leverage they have in what services can be tied to
their cards. ( Think the adult entertainment and / or firearm industries )

Now, you introduce a system where the government will get a snapshot of every single
purchase you make and can easily evolve into a permissions model where your purchases
must only be those that are approved by your government in question.

( Especially in the UK where mean comments on the internet are enough to get you arrested )

On a whim, they can simply turn off your digital account and you have zero recourse to do anything
about it if cash isn’t an alternative. See how willing you are to attend a protest or demonstration when
facial recognition tags you, suspends your accounts and leaves you with nothing until you report to
the local magistrate to discuss your recent participation in the aforementioned protest.

Cash will always be king when it comes to the right to privacy.

Meta Launches Cheaper Smart Glasses Without Ray-Ban

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Meta has launched its first smart glasses without Ray-Ban branding. Starting at $299, they’re cheaper than the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 while retaining EssilorLuxottica as a design and manufacturing partner. The Verge reports:
As far as style and specs, the Meta Glasses aren’t that different from Ray-Bans. The internal specs are the same as the recently released Ray-Ban Meta Optics Styles, with slightly longer battery life. The Adventurer models have thinner rims, while the Fury models hew a bit closer to the Meta Ray-Ban Display with a bolder, chunkier frame. You could describe the Adventurer as square, and the Fury as even more square. The Kylie glasses sport a more unique design with a distinct Y2K flavor that I’m told is meant to be worn lower on your nose. […] While playing around with the Meta Glasses, it was hard not to notice that the camera appears smaller than in previous Ray-Ban glasses. Technically, Himel tells me, that’s not new to these Meta Glasses. It was actually introduced back in March with the prescription-optimized Optics Styles.

[…] Meta is quadrupling down on AI. The new Meta Glasses will all launch with Muse Spark, the first model out of Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. (It’ll also be arriving on older Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses in the US and Canada via a software update.) Supposedly, that means more helpful glasses. At my hands-on, I was told that Meta AI would now be less stiff. I’d be able to talk to it more naturally and get smarter responses. The AI now supports 14 more languages, including Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin, Hindi, and Korean. Pedestrian turn-by-turn navigation is also coming to Meta’s displayless glasses. Later this month, there’ll be a new “dynamic photo” feature that automatically takes multiple frames and then recommends the best one.

Never. Ever

By courteaudotbiz • Score: 3 Thread

You’d pay me to wear “smart glasses” and I wouldn’t want them.

Now get off my lawn!

How long can Meta survive…?

By ConceptJunkie • Score: 4, Funny Thread

How long can Meta survive without shipping a product people actually want?

Oracle Cuts 21,000 Jobs As It Embraces AI

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Oracle cut roughly 21,000 jobs over the past year as it reorganized around AI and ramps up spending on data centers for customers such as OpenAI and Meta. The restructuring cost the company about $1.8 billion and, while Oracle says AI deployment may drive further reductions, it also warns the cuts could create skills shortages and hurt productivity. The BBC reports:
The software and cloud computing firm says it had around 141,000 full-time employees as of May 31, 2026, down from about 162,000 workers at the same time last year. The “deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the report says. The cuts, which amount to about 13% of Oracle’s workforce, are part of a wider trend among tech firms as they spend hundreds of billions of dollars on building AI infrastructure like data centers.

Re:Makes sense

By CubicleZombie • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Every project I’ve worked on for the last decade that involved Oracle, the purpose of the project was to replace Oracle.

Re:Makes sense

By Locke2005 • Score: 5, Informative Thread
My Oracle manager pulled down a $40,000 quarterly bonus by billing customers for work that hadn’t been done, then I got fired for complaining about getting blamed for the project not being finished when they didn’t even tell me about the project until after it was overdue.

Yepp. Even the Oracle racket …

By Qbertino • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

… won’t be spared. I’m down 20k from my last salary and with AI my productivity has risen 5x. On to of that, the processes I was supposed to automate with code are getting replaced by AI themselves.

Prepare for incoming.

Oracle is full of shit

By Coopjust • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
I love how nowadays whenever you want to "right size" an organization, you can just say the cuts were due to AI, and usually the stock price doesn’t react too negatively. Eventually the market sees the true story.

Oracle’s stock is now down 14% in the last year as the S&P is 25% higher. Same article, free cash flow is -$1.87B, having burned $23.7B USD in the last year. They have $43B in debt and equity and are desperate for more - potentially raising just as much in the next year.

So why the layoffs, really? Beyond "AI layoffs are good and generally don’t make the stock decline."

Oracle is heavily overextended in the debt for building the datacenters AI companies use. Their credit rating is a triple B (still investment grade, but only two steps above junk status). If the AI boom crashes, Oracle is fucked. They’re left holding the bag on all the datacenter debt while the AI companies purchase less. Meanwhile, they’re already financially strained. So taking the layoffs now creates a major free cash flow. The $1.84B severance payment is peanuts compared to the $8B-$10B in free cash flow it frees up. Of course, the $8B-$10B is not going to cover the huge amounts of debt they have taken on and will continue to take on… and reports I’ve heard are the layoffs were so wide and blind Oracle is having to hire some of them back.

Expect it to get worse at Oracle, unless somehow instead of LLMs getting progressively barely better for way more spend they magically achieve AGI and humans are displaced from most white collar jobs (not going to happen anytime soon).

Re:Is this a sign to short their stock?

By Too Late for Cool ID • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Years ago, I worked on a project where they were thinking of replacing an Oracle DB. We looked at a few open source databases, both SQL and NoSQL. Although it took longer to initialize, Oracle was much faster. We were disappointed, because NoSQL DBs were much faster for tests with 1000 accesses to the DB, but when you increased it to 1,000,000 accesses, Oracle was always faster.

This was more than 10 years ago, so YMMV

UK Considers Forcing Social Media Firms To Prioritize Trusted News

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters:
Britain is considering forcing social media companies to prioritize what the government called trusted news sources as part of its broader push to tighten regulation of the sector. The culture department said on Monday it was considering requiring platforms such as Meta’s Facebook, Alphabet-owned YouTube and TikTok to make content from public service media — including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 — and other trusted news providers easier to find in users’ feeds and searches.

Boosting the visibility of regulated news providers could help tackle misinformation, particularly during crises, the government said. However, any move to influence how platforms rank content is likely to face scrutiny from the social media firms, which say such rules could override user choice and disadvantage other creators. The proposals form part of a broader overhaul of Britain’s public service media system to help broadcasters compete with streaming platforms and shifting viewing habits. Ministers are also considering widening public service media status to include online-only providers, extending free-to-air protections for major sporting events to on-demand viewing, and consulting on a shift to internet-based TV from 2034 or 2044.
“It is vital that we make sure that people have better access to trusted and accurate news and that our regulated public service media is seen and heard in the fierce battle against mis- and disinformation,” culture minister Lisa Nandy said in a statement.
The move follows the UK’s recently-announced ban on social media use for those under 16.

Re:Before someone says it

By SirSlud • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

No, but treating two wrongs as the same degree of wrongness is pretty dumb.

Re:Before someone says it

By korgitser • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Boris Johnson

That’s the thing though. The biggest source of misinformation in ol’ Blighty is Nr.10. Whether it’s Blair, May, Johnson, Starmer, whoever. The face doesn’t matter. The bullshit remains the same. It wasn’t Russian disinformation that made Brexit happen, it was Britains own Farage. And now Great Britain is on track to be the first un-developed country in the West.

And this is where the West is at by now. The powers that be are at odds with truth, with their lies, incompetence, and corruption, so they redefine truth to mean whatever is convenient. 1984 was a field manual for them.

You can bet your ass that to be trusted, a news source has to keep quiet about inconvenient topics such as Gaza, Epstein, and government corruption. And so it is trusted then means that the government can trust the media to not rock the boat.

Re:Before someone says it

By allo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The problem is, that it still is a bad move even with good intentions. Just think about how to realize it and then how to enforce it. I don’t see any option without serious side effects. Defining “social media” and defining “trusted news” alone is a huge issue.

Would you consider Slashdot comments social media? What about the comments in some unimportant blog? Or what about blog authors themselves that are posting articles referring to each other without using the other blog’s comment function? Does it change things, if the blog sends a track back or not?

While this is hard to define, the discussion about “trusted” opens the gates to a hell of flamewars.

When you’re done with the definitions you need to think about enforcement, penalties, etc.. These things aren’t straightforward either.

Re: Before someone says it

By newcastlejon • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

It wasn’t Russian disinformation that made Brexit happen, it was Britains own Farage.

Reform’s leader in Wales was recently imprisoned for taking Russian bribes to push their talking points. Farage used to say the same kinds of things, and the only difference between Nathan Gill and Farage is that they could prove it. We do know, however, that he took five million from a Thailand-based crypto billionaire and that it’s just a coincidence that Farage started promoting cryptocurrency shortly after. It’s not an either/or situation.

Re:Before someone says it

By omnichad • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Remember Russiagate?

What about it? The only thing that was ever in question was whether certain Americans were knowingly complicit. It definitely happened.

Canada Plans ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ With Up To 10 Reactors Built By 2040

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Canada has unveiled a national strategy to build up to 10 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years as it seeks to double electricity-grid capacity by 2050. Energy Minister Tim Hodgson called it a plan for a “new civilian nuclear renaissance.”

“If our goal is to double our grid and build a low-carbon economy in less than 25 years, there is no credible plan to do that without nuclear energy and the clean, reliable baseload power it provides,” Hodgson said. “There is no credible plan for Canada to become an energy superpower if we choose not to build upon one of the strongest energy advantages we have.” CBC News reports:
The strategy calls for construction to start on two new large-scale reactors by 2035, for five more to be planned or under development by 2040 and for at least one reactor to be under construction outside Ontario by 2035. It also calls for a Canadian-made microreactor to be finalized by 2035 and deployed to a remote community by the late 2030s. […] Right now, Canada has four nuclear power plants — three in Ontario and one in New Brunswick — which generate about 15 per cent of Canada’s electricity.

A new proposed facility at the existing nuclear plant in Darlington, Ont., would see the first small modular reactor in the G7, capable of producing up to 300 megawatts per unit. Saskatchewan is also looking at the potential to bring small nuclear reactors online by the mid 2030s. The energy deal between Ottawa and Alberta also committed to collaborating on developing a strategy to build a nuclear power plant. Officials from Natural Resources Canada told reporters in a background briefing that construction of the reactors outlined in the new national strategy could cost more than $100 billion. The strategy does not say how Canada would pay for them, though an official pointed to the Canadian Infrastructure Bank and the Canada Growth Fund as possible funding sources. Hodgson said the strategy would double the 90,000 jobs in Canada’s nuclear sector “over the coming decades.”

The plan also looks to expand sales of Candu reactors to new export markets. It says the government wants to break into at least four new international markets by 2040 and “engage six to 10 new nuclear entrant markets over a 15-year horizon, cementing Canada as their partner of choice.” Thirty Candu reactors currently operate around the world, including in South Korea, China, India, Argentina, Pakistan and Romania, and there are plans to build two more. […] “Reactor exports are not transactional. They establish multi-decade partnerships, creating durable geopolitical and commercial relationships that advance Canada’s broader foreign policy interests,” the strategy says. “As Canada works to diversify its trading relationships and strengthen ties with middle powers, Candu can be a central instrument of that strategy.”

Re: What’s the motivation?

By slasher999 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

It seems like they have the sense to realize nuclear is likely the best option for long term, clean, reliable, industrial grade energy source with a high return of energy generated per square meter of footprint. Wind and solar have their place. It’s not an either-or discussion, it’s a fit for purpose one.

Re: What’s the motivation?

By lazarus • Score: 5, Funny Thread

It is more likely that Canada has 10 new reactors on-line in 14 years than Slashdot having Unicode support by then.

Re:What’s the motivation?

By Guspaz • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Montreal and Toronto do get around 26% more sunlight than London, in terms of hours per year, but London doesn’t really have winter either. They don’t get 85 inches of snow per year like Montreal.

Canada’s power already comes from renewables as a strict majority: 57.4% from hydro, 9.1% from other renewables. For the clean-but-non-renewables, you’ve got nuclear at 13.5%. The vast majority of the rest is natural gas. But hydro can be difficult and expensive to expand (even if it’s cheap in the long-run), and many renewables other than hydro struggle to serve base-load applications.

Re:No-ranium (TM) Radiative Nuclear Fusion Capture

By 0123456 • Score: 4 Thread

Dude, I have solar panels at my house in Canada. I know how much they produce, and it’s around 10% of rated power on cloudy days in winter.

I looked at setting the house up so it could run entirely on solar and ended up calculating that I’d need at least 30kW of panels and 60kWh of batteries and would still have to cut out anything power-intensive on cloudy days because more than two in a row in winter would leave me out of power otherwise.

Re:Why?

By ceoyoyo • Score: 4, Informative Thread

They are not unsafe, they just unfortunately produce the same / similar waste “standard reactors” do.

One of the neat tricks CANDU reactors can do is burning the “waste” from “standard” reactors. They can also run on thorium.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Arrives In Florida

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has arrived at Kennedy Space Center ahead of a Falcon Heavy launch targeted for no earlier than August 30. The observatory will survey the sky about 1,000 times faster than Hubble with a field of view at least 100 times wider, helping scientists study dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets. Spaceflight Now reports:
NASA’s next great observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center aboard the agency’s massive Pegasus barge late Sunday morning. The spacecraft was nestled inside its protective case, which NASA nicknamed the “Chariot” in keeping with the “Roman” theme. That said, telescope is named not for the ancient empire, but instead for NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy, Nancy Grace Roman. “She was a key person in our exploration of space. She understood that in order to better understand the universe, you have to go in space,” said Lucas Paganini, the program executive for Roman. “That’s why she’s called the ‘Mother of Hubble’ because she made Hubble possible.”

[…] Roman is designed to operate near a fixed point in space called Lagrange Point 2, about 1.5 million km away from the Earth on the side opposite the Sun. It’s designed to operate there for a minimum of five years, but Paganini said with the propellant onboard, it will likely last for 10 years or more. The telescope is+ equipped with a 300 megapixel camera called the Wide Field Instrument, which features 18 detectors. It was developed by BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace). “It’s going to allow us to observe at least 100 times wider field of view than what we can do with Hubble. Same resolution, but a wider area, 1000 times faster,” Paganini said. “So what takes Roman a year to observe, it would take Hubble thousands of years. So it’s definitely much more efficient.”

The observatory also features a chronograph instrument, developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will allow Roman to observe the faint light of exoplanets near their stars. Paganini said Roman will also help scientists better understand dark matter and dark energy, the combination of which he calls the “dark universe.” “100 years ago, we discovered that the universe was expanding. 25 years ago, we discovered that it was expanding at an accelerated pace and that’s what led to a Nobel Prize,” Paganini said. “What we don’t quite know yet is if that acceleration is changing in ways. We don’t know if it’s actually dark energy, what is producing it, or is it simply that we don’t understand gravity at all. “So eventually, we’ll see if the laws of physics that we use these days are the right ones for what we are observing. But at the end is, we’re trying to understand a very human question, which is where do we come from and where are wea heading in this universe that is our neighborhood?”

Chronograph ?

By dargaud • Score: 4, Informative Thread
More likely a coronograph to hide the light from the star and see around it without being blinded.

Re:“Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope”

By gtall • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Is that cute, you got to use “woke” in a post about a space story. Don’t forget to point this out to FOX for full credit. With enough credits, they’ll give you a magic decoder ring so you can decode any story you want as “woke”.

Re:“Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope”

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Don’t worry, there’s been an executive order name change.

It’s now the Donald J Trump and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Re:How are we receiving its signals?

By mistergrumpy • Score: 5, Informative Thread
On the side of the of the earth opposite the sun, ie the earth is always between L2 and the sun. Here is a nice diagram.

Roman

By groobly • Score: 3 Thread

I know who Nancy Grace is, but what is a Roman telescope?

GM Installs Robots At Flagship EV Factory After Laying Off 1,300 Workers

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:
Dozens of new robot arms have been installed at General Motors’ flagship electric vehicle factory in Detroit — even as 1,300 workers remain out of work following what was supposed to be a temporary layoff. The latest automation push has spurred union pushback over a potentially existential issue for automakers and their workers. General Motors installed approximately 50 robot arms at GM’s Factory Zero plant in Detroit, Michigan, according to reporting by Crain’s Detroit Business. Made by the Japanese robotics company FANUC, the robots are designed to help attach various components to vehicles during the assembly line process. But leaders at United Auto Workers (UAW), the primary US union for autoworkers, reacted with anger to the new robotic presence, given how GM has not yet called back any of the workers affected by supposedly temporary layoffs in March.

More than 1,000 union members are still “laid off indefinitely,” James Cotton, president of UAW Local 22, told The Detroit News. He said that the company could bring some of those members back to work instead of installing the 50 robots. The temporary layoffs were preceded by permanent layoffs involving another 1,200 workers at GM’s Factory Zero in October 2025. Many automakers, including Stellantis NV and Ford Motor Company, have deployed assembly-line robots, such as Fanuc robot arms, as they push to automate more of their US operations. Hyundai Motor Company plans to deploy Atlas humanoid robots made by Boston Dynamics — which Hyundai acquired in 2020 — to start working in the automaker’s flagship EV facility in Georgia by 2028.
“Technological development has the capability of making work safer for the working class and enabling workers to have a shorter work week without losing pay,” said Andrew Bergman, a Local 22 member and union organizer who was among those laid off by GM. “But in the bosses’ and billionaires’ hands it’s used to pad profits and lay off workers.”

Re:The purpose of a factory is not to provide jobs

By serviscope_minor • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The purpose of a factory is not to provide jobs.

It’s intended to made widgets that can then be sold at a profit.

It’s not a social welfare program.

Only kinda. Let me remind you there is no natural right to limited liability companies. They exist purely (in principle) for the benefit of society.

Re:The purpose of a factory is not to provide jobs

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

So what’s your suggested alternative?

GM keep 1300 workers and bonuses for the suits decrease by 0.1%?

Re:70% of middle class jobs lost since 1980

By nightflameauto • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Some might say that anything done that can be done by a robot *should* be done by a robot. They are tools, after all. Should we ban wrenches next? The jobs being lost should *not* exist into the next century.

In truth, I struggle with this type of thinking. If we lived in a just society that too care of the folks who are either transitioning to new prospects, or are simply falling through the cracks due to being in a late career state when they are let go due to automation, it’d be easy to accept that some jobs should disappear when they can be automated away. The problem is, we don’t live in that society. These people will be vilified as they slowly watch whatever they’ve managed to save through their life dwindle. Some will end up homeless. And then they will be further vilified by people claiming that all homeless people are simply too lazy to get a job. No acknowledgement of individual circumstances outside of lazy, drunk, drug addict will ever be accepted by society at large, because that’s an image that someone with media control has been pushing for decades now.

As automation continues to sweep away entire job sectors, and more and more of us face those circumstances, it gets harder and harder to justify seeing automation as a friend to humanity. A friend to the corporate owner class, sure. But do we really have to wait until so many people are out of work that no one can afford to buy the products being built by automation? We’ve set our society up to where the only people that can effect change are the people that are at the top of the financial heap. And they won’t be impacted by profit loss until there is nearly no one left to purchase products. And by that point, I’d imagine the vilification of the poor will be so outrageous that it won’t be completely outside the realm of possibility that the government is simply convinced that if you aren’t contributing to the profits of the owners, you are worthless and therefore expendable. I mean, that mentality already seems to reign in big portions of our world.

Or, maybe, just maybe, we could start thinking about how we’re going to take care of people as work slowly becomes the purview of the robots and computers.

If you don’t work you don’t eat

By rsilvergun • Score: 5, Informative Thread
You need to come up with an answer to that and you need to do it fast. Nobody likes having “their” money taken from them and given to somebody else. We just had a thread about a California billionaire tax and half the comments were people convinced that if we tax billionaires a few percentage points than the next step is to take their fucking houses… That’s not an exaggeration.

We are not socially equipped to deal with a work shortage. It doesn’t matter how many times you speak reasonably nobody wants to hear it. The average American reads at the level of a 12-year-old and that implies that they think at the level of a 12 year old. Which is why black and white phrases like, if you don’t work you don’t eat, are so popular.

I am open to suggestions but I want to be clear that explaining to people is not a solution. Like Ronald Reagan said when you’re explaining you’re losing

Re:70% of middle class jobs lost since 1980

By beep999 • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Minimum Basic Income is the only way.

I now conservatives will squirm at the very thought of giving a living wage to someone who doesn’t work for it. But that’s where we are headed when more and more of us will be unable to find reasonable employment due to robots destroying the blue collar and AI destroying the white collar jobs.

Microsoft Accidentally Breaks Replying To an Email On Outlook

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Microsoft has accidentally introduced a bug in Outlook for Mac that omits the original message from email replies, making it difficult for recipients to follow conversation history. Until Microsoft releases a fix, its suggested workaround is to roll back from version 16.110 and disable automatic updates, which is “great for users in full control of their devices — not so good for anyone with a managed device,” notes The Register. “Administrators with fleets of Macs running Outlook should brace for helpdesk tickets.” From the report:
In some instances, having a user copy and paste the salient bits of the email they are responding to might not be such a bad thing. We’ve all had emails that required epic amounts of scrolling to find what started the conversation, so forcing users to think about what they actually need to include is no bad thing. However, disrupting user workflows without warning — well, that is undoubtedly a bad thing.

This is, after all, one of the most basic things an email client needs to do, so shipping a product with a bug that breaks this functionality says more about Microsoft’s approach to quality than anything else.

Re:But I doubt it.

By rta • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Perhaps they were trying to get rid of their god-damned forced top-posting.

Think of it as a reply with the previous conversation as an “FYI” attachment if you need to review context.

In practice it works well, imo.
In most simple cases you already know the context so don’t need it. And if you do you can look down.

And if you get forwarded an email or added to a convo mid thread, it’s good to be able to first see the latest message to get some idea why you got the thing or what the request is, and then you can dive into the bg below. And yes in many of these cases i will scroll all the way down and read “up” which is not ideal but it’s fine since it’s relatively rare compared to the other usecase.

Pretty weird use case!

By BenBoy • Score: 5, Funny Thread
It’s a pretty weird use case in an email client, replying to a message. Small wonder it was apparently left off of their automated regression suite, ja?

Or

By hcs_$reboot • Score: 5, Informative Thread

workaround is to roll back from version 16.110

or just install Thunderbird.

Re:But I doubt it.

By JimWise • Score: 5, Funny Thread

T > Perhaps they were trying to get rid of their god-damned forced top-posting.
h >
i > A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right.
s > Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?
    >
i > A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
s > Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
    >
w > A: The lost context.
h > Q: What makes top-posted replies harder to read than bottom-posted?
y >
    > A: Yes.
I > Q: Should I trim down the quoted part of an email to which I’m replying?
    > —
s > “National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity.” - Celine’s First Law
i
d
e
-
p
o
s
t

Magic 8-ball says

By Bu11etmagnet • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Magic 8-ball says: Outlook not so good.

Following User Outcry, AMD Reinstates Memory Encryption In Consumer CPUs

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot
Last week, AMD was found to have stripped memory encryption from its consumer CPUs without any warning or notice. Now, following a wave of backlash on social media, the chipmaker has now reinstated the protection, though it still hasn’t explained why the safeguard was disabled in the first place. Ars Technica reports:
Following the revelation, social media was deluged by comments from AMD consumers decrying the move. They noted that AMD’s quiet removal of TSME after supporting it for so long seemed underhanded. The move came solely as a result of firmware changes made in a recent update. With no physical changes required to silicon, continued support was largely, if not purely, a matter of will rather than a necessity required by changes to hardware. The critics called on AMD to reverse the move.

Over the weekend, AMD said it planned to do just that in a firmware update scheduled for release next month. More often than not, the chipmaker refers to TSME as Memory Guard. “Regarding certain non-PRO Ryzen 9000-series desktop processors, a BIOS option to enable Memory Guard was previously available but was removed in a recent update,” AMD said in an email. “Based on valuable community feedback, we will reinstate this option in an upcoming BIOS release in July.”

The company has yet to explain why it removed the protection. Critics speculate that AMD dropped it in an attempt to steer customers toward more costly CPUs. It’s possible, though, that there were less nefarious reasons, such as the difficulty of continued support as chip designs changed. Another possibility is that AMD made the move for performance reasons. Encrypting and decrypting data in memory creates latency. Slowdowns are the enemy of gamers, one of the more popular customer segments using the 9000-line of Ryzen processors. Since many gamers already voluntarily disabled TSME and had little need for it in the first place, AMD may not have considered the change of much consequence.

FBI

By topham • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

You’ll understand if you think about it

A trial balloon?

By jenningsthecat • Score: 3 Thread

It seems unlikely that they really thought this would go unnoticed. Maybe they just wanted to see how quick and loud the pushback would be.

Corporations are forever pulling shit like this to see how much they can get away with. “Gee - if we can get away with this, maybe we can get away with something bigger in the way of monetizing something that we never charged for in the past”.

Corporations are slimy antisocial motherfuckers and are ALWAYS trying to pick up a little extra coin. All those little extras add up to a lot, if we let them get away with that shit. I’m glad they got slapped down over this particular attempt.

Bitlocker

By SumDog • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Nightmare Eclipse showed us Bitlocker is a joke. It’s not remotely real encryption and easily breakable .. on Win11/2025 server, NOT Win 10. This wasn’t an exploit. It was a backdoor. Meanwhile Veracrypt needed a public backlash to get their dev signing keys reinstated so people could get their updated kernel drivers on Windows (and remember, TrueCrypt its predecessor mysteriously disappeared in 2012 with the former author telling people to use BitLocker instead!)

Now we have this. The answer should be obvious: there is a concerted effort to remove all real encryption, security and privacy from our software. This isn’t incompetency mistaken for malice. This has to be intentional.

Re:Bitlocker

By Waccoon • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Oh, there’s plenty of real encryption, security, and privacy in our software. It’s just not there to benefit the end user.

Re:Bitlocker

By tlhIngan • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Nightmare Eclipse showed us Bitlocker is a joke. It’s not remotely real encryption and easily breakable .. on Win11/2025 server, NOT Win 10. This wasn’t an exploit. It was a backdoor. Meanwhile Veracrypt needed a public backlash to get their dev signing keys reinstated so people could get their updated kernel drivers on Windows (and remember, TrueCrypt its predecessor mysteriously disappeared in 2012 with the former author telling people to use BitLocker instead!)

No he didn’t. He didn’t break Bitlocker. He found a set of circumstances where Windows unlocks the disk and dumps you to a shell prompt without authentication. Yes it’s a fault, but it’s just like a lock screen bypass on your phone.

But it’s a problem that affects all disk encryption - if you encrypt the OS, you need to decrypt to boot. Now some early systems required you to enter your password on startup - they needed to unlock the key. Of course, it also means every reboot must be attended - you could not reboot a system because someone must be there to enter the password.

Then PCs started getting TPM devices, and this allowed them to unlock the disk by encrypting the disk key with TPM keys kept on the chip. But the problem now is that the disk is unlocked. So any authentication bypass will get you access to the encrypted disk, and that’s what Nightmare Eclipse found. (The problem affects everything).

Of course, if you steal a drive from a PC, none of Nightmare Eclipse’s vulnerabilities would work - because the disk needs the Bitlocker key to unlock, which is contained in the TPM module of the original PC, so it’s only useful if you take the whole machine.

But what it is is an authentication bypass - which means it’s just another way to bypass the login dialog. Bitlocker unlocking comes as a side effect.