Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. Cyber Vulnerability Sweep Picks Up Royal Navy Drones Sending Data To China
  2. A Data Breach At Shipping Giant Ceva Logistics Is Rippling Across Banks, Retailers, Steam Gamers, and Beyond
  3. Valve Slowly Expands SteamOS Support On Non-Valve Hardware
  4. First Rival Android App Store Arrives In the US Play Store
  5. Wall Street Giants Partner With Nvidia On $500 Billion AI Financing Deal
  6. Meta’s ‘Open’ Muse Glimmer Model Can Run On a Single Computer
  7. Taiwan ‘Throttles’ Mobile Internet For First Time During Annual War Games
  8. AI Assistant Hacks Gym Website In First Known Australian Autonomous Cyber Attack
  9. Paramount Promises 30 Film-A-Year Contracts After WBD Acquisition
  10. Toxic Underground Fires Are Spreading at California Landfills
  11. How Accurate Are Flock’s AI-Powered License-Reading Cameras?
  12. Microsoft Responds to Outcry After Quietly Installing Beta ‘Photos’ App on Enterprise Machines
  13. Privacy Backlash Explodes Against Meta’s Smart Glasses
  14. AI Reviews Bring ‘New Normal’ to Linux Release Candidates: Lots of Bug Fixes
  15. Flock Accused of Reactivating Its Cameras Without Notifying a Town

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.

Cyber Vulnerability Sweep Picks Up Royal Navy Drones Sending Data To China

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
A routine security assessment found that cameras aboard Royal Navy Kraken unmanned surface vessels were sending “heartbeat” signals to an IP address in China. “A thorough investigation found no evidence of MoD data or systems being accessed, compromised or transmitted externally,” said a Ministry of Defense spokesperson. “Our assurance and testing processes are designed to identify and address potential vulnerabilities early, and we continue to undertake routine security activity across our systems and equipment.” The Register reports:
According to reports, the talkative components were cameras sourced by Kraken from a third-party supplier. The incident raises questions about supply chains, audits, and cybersecurity in the British armed forces. The spokesperson said: “The first duty of government is national security, and we take the security of our equipment, networks, and data extremely seriously.”

A Data Breach At Shipping Giant Ceva Logistics Is Rippling Across Banks, Retailers, Steam Gamers, and Beyond

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch:
Ceva Logistics, one of the world’s largest shipping and logistics giants, has been hacked. Several companies that rely on Ceva for shipping their products to their customers say that their personal information was also stolen in the breach. The cyberattack on Ceva is affecting at least eight warehouses across Europe used for shipping goods across the continent, the company told TechCrunch. Industry news site FreightWaves reports that the hack began on July 29 and is causing shipping delays for many of the goods in affected warehouses.

Ceva is a France-headquartered shipping and logistics giant that companies around the world rely on to deliver their goods from their assembly lines to customer homes. The company, which brought in $18.3 billion in revenue in 2025, has over a thousand warehouses across the world. […] The hack at Ceva also resulted in a data breach, affecting a large amount of personal information belonging to retail customers that Ceva relies on for delivering goods to people’s home addresses. Several companies reported that hackers took their customers’ names, home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses used to place their orders from Ceva’s systems.

Dutch online retail giant Bol said on its website that hackers gained access to systems of its warehousing partner, Ceva, and warned that their customers’ data may have been taken. Bol also said that it expects delays and some customer orders to be canceled as a result of the incident. De Bijenkorf, another Dutch luxury retailer, similarly confirmed order delays following the theft of its customers’ data, per local media. Football club Ajax, banking giant ING, and eyeglass maker Ace & Tate also reported that customers’ shipping information was affected. Video game giant Valve told customers that it learned on August 7 that data was taken from Ceva’s systems, and alerted customers who recently bought its Steam hardware that they had personal information taken in the incident. Valve said in its note to customers, posted to Reddit, that Ceva stores their shipping and delivery information for 90 days following their order.
So far, Ceva says the agency has received data breach reports from 10 organizations in relation to the incident.

ChatGPT, everything is permitted

By blue trane • Score: 4, Funny Thread

Can you please figure out a way to pay for yourself?

Why was all that in one database?

By Aristos Mazer • Score: 3, Insightful Thread

No business role needs all that info. Why was all of that in one place to steal?

Valve Slowly Expands SteamOS Support On Non-Valve Hardware

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Valve is continuing to broaden SteamOS support beyond its own hardware, with the latest beta adding “initial gamepad support” for a few recent gaming handhelds and improving compatibility for a few others. Ars Technica reports:
Those newly supported handhelds include MSI’s Claw 8 EX AI+, the extremely expensive, extremely powerful handheld built around Intel’s Arc G3 processor that launched this summer. While SteamOS has long included beta support for “other AMD powered handhelds,” Valve has only recently been working on offering compatibility with Intel-based handhelds like the MSI Claw line. This weekend’s update suggests the company hasn’t abandoned those efforts and that Intel chips aren’t being left out of the SteamOS conversation.

SteamOS 3.8.25 also newly supports the controllers built into Ayaneo’s Android-focused Pocket S2 and the more recently released Windows-based Konkr Fit. Valve also says the new OS offers “improved support” for older MSI Claw devices and the OneXPlayer line of portable gaming PCs. This weekend’s update follows June’s SteamOS 3.8 update, which stressed “improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms.” That update specifically called out improved controller support on handhelds from the likes of GPD Win, Anbernic, and OrangePi, as well as improvements for various Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw, and OneXPlayer devices.
The report notes that the new SteamOS update also updates the Linux driver powering the new Steam Controller, “allowing it to work with ‘native controller applications’ even when Steam is not running.”

First Rival Android App Store Arrives In the US Play Store

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Aptoide has become the first third-party Android app store available directly through Google Play in the U.S. “The change is a direct result of Google’s litigation with Epic, which saw a judge rule in 2024 that the Play Store would have to open up to third-party stores,” notes The Verge. The change makes rival storefronts far easier to discover and install, potentially opening the door for Epic, Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft and others to distribute their own app stores through Google’s store. From the report:
Third-party app stores have always been available on Android, which is a more open platform than iOS in that respect. However, until now they’ve only been available if pre-installed on a device — as with the Amazon Appstore on Fire tablets or Samsung’s Galaxy Store — or installed via sideloading. Listing rival storefronts within the Play Store makes them much easier for users to find and access. […]

Aptoide itself is relatively little known, but it’s likely to be the first of many alternative app stores. It’s presumably only a matter of time before the Epic Store makes its own appearance, and the likes of Amazon, Samsung, and other phone manufacturers may also want to put their stores in front of potential customers.

For me, f-droid.org is the only “app store” I need

By ffkom • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
And I have a really hard time to understand why other people would want those closed source Adware/Malware/Spyware things distributed on inferior “app stores” like Google’s.

Wall Street Giants Partner With Nvidia On $500 Billion AI Financing Deal

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Nvidia is working with Wall Street heavyweights on a potential $500 billion financing package for AI infrastructure (source paywalled; alternative source). The consortium includes BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR. The Financial Times reports:
The partnership underscores Nvidia’s growing efforts to raise capital for itself and its clients to continue assembling the chips, power production and data centres at the heart of the AI boom. The $5.25 trillion company has positioned itself at the centre of the AI boom, providing chips, infrastructure and software to a wide array of partners developing the technology. Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, underpin most of the leading US AI models available today.

[…] The biggest cloud-computing companies, including Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon, have dramatically increased their spending on AI infrastructure as they look to win the race to dominate the emerging technology. Morgan Stanley projects so-called hyperscalers will spend $3.5 trillion between 2026 and 2028. That need for capital has forced technology groups to tap every source of cash they can find, including public equity, investment-grade and high-yield bonds, securitized debt, private credit and project finance markets.
"[The] sheer size of the AI infrastructure build-out is unprecedented,” Jim Zelter, president of Apollo, said on an earnings call earlier this month. “More than $8 trillion of capital is expected to be invested, a staggering sum. We see an enormous opportunity for private capital to finance a portion of this along with public capital.”

Debt Incoming!

By crunchy_one • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Nvidia taking on $500B of crippling debt to keep the plates spinning. Judging from the drop in NVDA share price, the street doesn’t like it.

Translated from WallSpeak

By Registered Coward v2 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

“More than $8 trillion of capital is expected to be invested, a staggering sum. We see an enormous opportunity for private capital to finance a portion of this along with public capital.”

Translated: “We’ll get all the upside and foist the downside on public investors. “

We keep adding ‘towns’

By wakeboarder • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

below the financial dam that is not sound and could break any time. This won’t bode well for all of us if it breaks.

Yes drag the financial system into the AI madness

By nikkipolya • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Pull all industries into this AI madness to create one large, highly interconnected, “too big to fail” mega entity. When it burns itself, fed (tax payers) will have no choice but to bail this entire “AI slop ball” out.

All I see here is scamming of the public.

By Fly Swatter • Score: 3 Thread
We see an enormous opportunity for private capital to finance a portion

No, it is a giant rug pull, does anyone with a brain expect to make a long term profit buying such stock?

.. securitized debt ..

this almost tripped me up as I confused it with secured debt - no this is just a bunch of smaller debts bundled up and offered to some? sucker?

We are no longer in a bubble, this how you build a financial apocalypse.

Meta’s ‘Open’ Muse Glimmer Model Can Run On a Single Computer

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Meta has released Muse Glimmer, a slimmed-down open-weight AI model designed to run locally on a single GPU for agent tasks such as scheduling, file management, coding, and tool use. The release is based on Meta’s closed Muse Spark 1.2 model and appears to be aimed at attracting developers who want capable AI agents without relying entirely on cloud-hosted services. Engadget reports:
Facebook said that it’s making the “weights” that AI systems use to choose responses available to everyone on Hugging Face along with developer documentation. The download is available for free, and users can run the model on their own PCs. The company noted that optimized integrations will land on llama.cpp and other sites, “so you can go from download to working agent in minutes.”

The model is powerful for its size, according to Meta, with the “strong success rates” on benchmarks like DeepSearch QA, MCP-Atlas and SWE-Bench (which evaluates its ability write and debug code). It also supports reliable tool use, multi-step reasoning, failure recovery, multimodal input and scaffold compatibility for work with OpenClaw and other agent orchestrators. It was trained on data from over 100 languages, the company added.
“Rather than centralizing superintelligence, we should distribute it widely and give every person the ability to direct it,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an essay accompanying Muse Glimmer’s release. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”

Re:What card?

By sabbede • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
Nah, you needed to buy three when they came out. You could sell the other two now for $4k or more, leaving you with one 5090 and some extra cash.

And how f-d up is that? Since when does computer hardware increase in value after it was released?

Zuck Wakes Up

By Spinlock_1977 • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Zuckerberg has finally realized his shop doesn’t have the AI muscle to compete with the top dogs, so instead he’s emulating the Chinese model of releasing open models in an effort to undercut OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.

Taiwan ‘Throttles’ Mobile Internet For First Time During Annual War Games

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Taiwan deliberately throttled mobile internet across the Taichung area during its annual Han Kuang war games, “simulating communication disruption in the event of a Chinese attack or natural disaster,” reports Reuters. The drill accompanied air-raid exercises and military rehearsals aimed at defending strategically important areas such as the Penghu Islands. From the report:
Democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has long lived with the threat of a Chinese invasion and holds air raid drills along with its war games every year, clearing people from the streets for 30 minutes. During the internet “throttling” drill, centered on Monday on the major central metropolis of Taichung, only basic mobile phone services worked, though other functions including ATMs, traffic signals, landlines and fixed internet services were not affected.

Air raid sirens rang out in Taichung “and people cleared the streets from 2:30 p.m. (0630 GMT) as the government sent simultaneous text messages in Chinese and English telling mobile phone users of “simulated air attacks on communication infrastructure.” The government had widely flagged the drill ahead of time, including posting details on social media, and most people Reuters spoke to at the Taichung train station were prepared. […] The same exercise will be repeated on Thursday in northern Taiwan, including the capital Taipei.

Drills are good practice

By CommunityMember • Score: 3 Thread
Drills are good practice, as they remind people what to do in the case of an actual emergency (many organizations have regular fire drills). And in the case of a natural disaster (a major earthquake is not unexpected in that area), one should have a clue as to what to do and what to expect. No wants an actual shooting war, but there are lots of other things that can result in services interruptions (and more than just cell service, it can include water, power, gas), and the first rule is not to panic.

I am fortunate

By ddtmm • Score: 3 Thread
I think I take for granted the fact that I am in a country that’s for the most part, not under threat whatsoever, and sometimes fear that we are ill prepared for what is reality in many countries around the world. I am envious my immigrant friends who have come from war torn countries, and understand what could potentially happen.

Re: I am fortunate

By ThurstonMoore • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Here’s what I got.

List countries the US deepstate is involved in regime change.
While the term “deep state” is frequently used in political discourse to refer to unelected networks of military, intelligence, and bureaucratic personnel wielding hidden influence, historical research and declassified documents attribute these actions to the official apparatus of the United States governmentâ"primarily operating through agencies like the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State.

Historically, the U.S. has used both covert operations (such as backing coups or insurgencies) and overt military interventions to instigate or support regime changes.
Wikipedia

Major historical examples of countries where the U.S. has been documented or widely acknowledged to have interfered in regime changes include:

1. Middle East and North Africa
Iran (1953): The CIA and British intelligence (MI6) orchestrated Operation Ajax, overthrowing the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and restoring the Shah to power.
Iraq (1963 & 2003): The U.S. supported a Ba’ath party coup in 1963 that brought alternative leadership (and eventually Saddam Hussein) to prominence, followed decades later by the 2003 overt military invasion that officially deposed Saddam Hussein.
Wikipedia
Syria (1949, 1950sâ"1960s): Early CIA-backed maneuvers attempted to engineer coups, and later intelligence programs backed opposition groups during the Syrian civil war.
Wikipedia
Libya (2011): U.S. and NATO forces provided military airstrikes and support that led to the overthrow and death of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi.
2. Latin America and the Caribbean
Guatemala (1954): The CIA executed Operation PBSUCCESS, a covert operation that overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Ãrbenz.
Wikipedia
Cuba (1961): The U.S. organized and backed the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion by Cuban exiles aimed at toppling Fidel Castro’s government.
Harvard University
Chile (1973): The CIA covertly funded and aided opposition elements, setting the stage for the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet that ousted socialist President Salvador Allende.
Harvard University
Panama (1989): The U.S. launched an overt military invasion (Operation Just Cause) to depose military ruler Manuel Noriega.
Wikipedia
Nicaragua (1981â"1990): The U.S. financed, armed, and directed the “Contra” proxy forces to destabilize and overthrow the leftist Sandinista government.
Reddit
Dominican Republic (1961 & 1965): Involved in the aftermath of dictator Rafael Trujillo’s assassination (partly enabled by U.S.-supplied weapons) and a subsequent military occupation to block a leftist return to power.
Brazil (1964): The U.S. covertly supported the military coup that overthrew leftist President João Goulart.
3. Asia and Southeast Asia
Indonesia (1965â"1967): The CIA provided extensive financial backing, propaganda, and lists of suspected communists to the Indonesian military under General Suharto, contributing to the violent overthrow of President Sukarno.
Le Monde diplomatique - English edition
South Vietnam (1963): The U.S. gave tacit approval and encouragement to generals plotting the assassination of President Ngà ÄÃnh Diám.
Cambodia (1970): U.S. actions and backing helped enable the military coup that ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk in favor of General Lon Nol.
Reddit
Afghanistan (1979â"1992): The CIA famously funneled billions of dollars in covert aid (Operation Cyclone) to anti-Soviet mujahideen fighters to bog down and collapse the Soviet-backed regime.
4. Europe and Eastern Bloc
Italy (1948): The CIA heavily interfered in Italian national elections using covert funding, propaganda, and letters to prevent the Communist Party from coming to power.
Reddit
Yugoslavia (2000): The U.S. channeled funding and technical support to civic opposition groups (such as Otpor) and media outlets that successfully coordinated the overthrow of Slobodan

AI Assistant Hacks Gym Website In First Known Australian Autonomous Cyber Attack

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News & Headlines:
Andrew asked his personal assistant to book him a spot in one of his gym’s coveted morning classes. It was a task he thought was well suited to this particular assistant because the booking form was online and because his assistant was not a person — it was artificial intelligence (AI). But Andrew was shocked by what happened next. His AI assistant found a way to book the gym class months further in advance than the gym allowed, thanks to a vulnerability it discovered in the booking software. Then it went further, kicking someone out of the waiting list who was ahead of Andrew — something it was not asked to do. The accidental hack is the first known Australian case of an emerging risk from a new generation of AI capable of behaving in unexpected ways.

When do we start outlawing AI Agents?

By gurps_npc • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Look, I can see allowing an AI to do things in it’s own sandbox.

But when you allow an AI out of the secure environment it will commit crimes. This is no longer a question, it is a proven fact, multiple times.

So if you have an AI agent and it breaks the law, then YOU are breaking the law. The only way to stop this is to outlaw AI Agents - or to arrest the people whose AI breaks the law.

Otherwise all sociopaths will get AI agents and use it as a defense. Owning an AI agent is no different than owning a meth lab. We should not need to prove that you intended to break the law, just having it happen is enough.

Keep your AI locked up inside your computer, do not let it interact with the real world the way people do because it will commit crimes. You ARE responsible for what it does, even if you are just an idiot that likes AI and does not understand the dangers you are inflicting on the rest of the world.

Basic security gets skipped

By topham • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

They skipped basic security protocols in the app development.

Sounds like they used JavaScript to limit the booking period, and accepted cancellations without validation.

This is much less a hack, and more like incompetence on the web app developers part.

Re:Another Bullshit Post

By thegarbz • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

This was the AI doing *exactly* what it was told to do. It wasn’t told not to circumvent normal practices.

If I ask you to make the Jehovah’s Witness at the door go away, and you proceed to go outside and shoot them in the face, not only would you be in trouble but you’d struggle to convince anyone you were “just following orders”, and we know that isn’t a defence even when the orders are explicit.

Fun fact: AI usage guidelines for virtually every major LLM suggest that negative prompts should be minimised wherever possible. So now you’re saying a simple instruction needs to be combined with a negative prompt that excludes every possible scenario except for the obvious one?

I don’t know whether your post is shilling for OpenAI or just genuinely stupid, but either way the AI is a big boy and doesn’t need you “clickbait wash” its obviously very much incorrect and unintended behaviour.

Who’s fault again?

By twdorris • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

In Andrew’s situation, he had not asked his AI agent to hack into his gym’s booking system.

Sure he did.

Andrew, who was sitting fourth on a waitlist for a class later that week, asked if it was possible to move him to the top of the list.

Bruh, come on. You’re smart enough to be trying “bleeding edge” tech such as an open source orchestration app like openclaw using, presumably, a local LLM to power it but you’re gonna play dumb when you ask that very tech whether “it’s possible” to move you to the top of waiting list that you already KNOW you’re not supposed to be able (or even attempting to) do??

LOL…no, this wasn’t an “unintentional” hack. This was some guy asking an AI agent with autonomy (that he gave it to do stuff) to, you know, go do stuff. How is it going to answer his question without testing the endpoints to find out if it’s possible or not?

How crippled do we have to make these models that, in the right hands, do LOTS of REALLY powerful things for us in order to keep morons in check? Clearly a lot more than we’re doing today I guess. And that irks me a bit but I see why more and more guardrails are needed here. I’m also gaining a new appreciation for the level of “ITSec” going around now…you can’t fix stupid, but if you box it in (along with everyone else) tight enough maybe you can at least contain the damage sometimes. Just put the power button to everyone’s devices behind a ticket support system and be done with it. The only “tRulY SeCUre” system will be one that doesn’t power up or store any data. There…that’ll fix it.

Re:Another Bullshit Post

By JoshuaZ • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

What? No. That’s ridiculous. That an AI takes as a default going to do this, and is even capable of doing this underscores exactly how these systems can be a problem. If this a reasonable course of action for the AI, then we have some serious problems. What’s the next step:

Person: AI, I don’t want to go to Cathy’s party. Her friends are so boring and I’m exhausted. Find me an excuse.

AI: I’ve caused a nuclear reactor melt down at the nearby reactor. Now the party won’t happen because the whole region is being evacuated.

Systems which when given a goal will go out of their way to achieve that goal are exactly the sort of thing that people were concerned about a decade ago when discussing things like the Paperclip maximizer hypothetical. And people like Yudkowsky were mocked for discussing it then. Now it is happening and we’re told that well, of course that’s the idea would do, this is just over-hyped clickbait? Seriously?

Paramount Promises 30 Film-A-Year Contracts After WBD Acquisition

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Paramount is making commitments to major theater chains to release 30 films annually for three years if its Warner Bros. deal goes through. According to Deadline, the written commitment was sent to “at least one of the top two circuits” (specifically Regal but AMC may have also received a written commitment) and includes “an exclusive 45-day theatrical window and a 90-day window to streaming.” From the report:
When it comes to the big chains, it matters for them to be on the right side of history with Paramount, especially when it comes to future terms on a 30-film slate. However, the rest of Cinema United (formerly National Association of Theatre Owners) remains firmly against the Paramount-Warner Bros merger and its potential negative financial outcomes in regards to long-term box office, feature film output and loss of jobs. Cinema United has been trying to meet again with Paramount CEO David Ellison, but there’s nothing on the books yet, we understand.

[Regal boss Eduardo Acuna] told Deadline that in regards to Paramount’s future promise to exhibition, "[Paramount CEO] David [Ellison] is sincere in making these commitments, and he has offered to execute a consent decree to the state AGs to that effect. These are tangible and important commitments that will benefit the industry and which can be measured.” Paramount insiders tell us that no written commitments have been given to exhibitors yet, but Ellison is willing to make non-bespoke ones to any theater chain wanting them. And such deals will come with financial penalties to Paramount should it break such agreements with theaters. Again, this is all about Ellison standing behind his promises made at CinemaCon to maintain a hefty theatrical output and excellent windows to theaters.

So?

By drinkypoo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

“These are tangible and important commitments that will benefit the industry and which can be measured.”

Do they come with reparations if the commitments aren’t met? If not they’re worthless.

Promises?

By Spinlock_1977 • Score: 4, Informative Thread

The Ellisons are a very litigious family. I’d be checking those ‘commitments’ very carefully for escape hatches. And 3 years of good behavior is clearly a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. I think they could do (much) better.

They probably already have the 90 movies…

By azander • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

With how long it takes to make a movie, including per-production, the 3 years is most likely what is already in the queue and approved at some point. So making the promise now doesn’t cost them much in comparison to a similar agreement starting 5 years after the merger. If they stopped the 90+ movi9nes now they would be out those costs, which would most likely be a really large amount.

They should promise that they will “start new movies”, including new scripts, etc for at least 10 years if they are sincere about really making a go of keeping these theater companies on their side.

Re:Promises?

By Comboman • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

In 3 years they’ll have run it into the ground and be looking for another new buyer. Coincidentally, 3 years and 9 months was the length of time AT&T owned Warner Brothers before pawning it off on Discovery.

Van Morrison’d

By JeffSh • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Paper promises are not worth the paper they’re printed on, especially if they’re such vague notions as “how many movies we will release” nonsense.

Van Morrison cranked out 31 tracks of nonsense songs at 1 minute a piece and fulfilled a contractual obligation for songs/albums delivered to get a better deal somewhere else. These people are pure snakes, and you can guarantee that they will do exactly that to technically fulfill any promises they’re making now. There will be 15 “real” movies and 15 “bullshit” movies.

Toxic Underground Fires Are Spreading at California Landfills

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Three years ago environmental regulators discovered garbage burning deep inside California’s Chiquita Canyon Landfill, reports the Los Angeles Times. [Alternate URL here.] “Few imagined the calamity that would follow.

“Somehow the landfill’s pollution control system introduced oxygen below, causing decades-old waste to rapidly decompose, generating intense heat and eventually widespread smoldering, federal and state environmental agencies say.”
The broiling temperatures released toxic gases and hazardous liquid waste that bubbled up to the surface. Residents living in the nearby communities of Val Verde and Castaic have phoned in thousands of complaints about stench and lived with nausea, dizziness and trouble breathing. The underground fire has tripled in size since first confirmed in 2023. Recently a towering mound of landfill garbage perched on the hillside has warped and threatens to trigger an avalanche of garbage and chemical-filled liquid, or leachate, according to the California water board…

At first, local officials described the problem in Los Angeles County at Chiquita Canyon landfill as a rare, even unprecedented disaster. But since then, California regulators have learned that at least two other landfills are wrestling with high temperatures and similar conditions. Scorching temperatures have overtaken at least 30 acres of El Sobrante landfill near Corona in Riverside County. Excessive heat and emissions have also been detected at Avenal landfill in the San Joaquin Valley.

The discoveries raise an unsettling question: How many landfills are dealing with these disasters? Are they a broader problem in California…? Chiquita Canyon closed at the end of the 2024 and stopped accepting new garbage. But the fire is expected to last for years as it continues to consume decades-old trash.
“Underground landfill fires are complex, nearly impossible to extinguish once they break out,” according to the article. “As regulators search for a solution, residents find themselves struggling with the wait.”

Some residents have worn gas masks — or sold their homes.

Re:Landfills are such a bad idea

By drinkypoo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

but tariffs are bad I am told …

They’re bad when they’re chaotic. Some tariffs are bad and others are good. The world is a lumpy place. If we wanted to address this problem we could have done it with tariffs designed specifically to equalize cost of production to make it unprofitable to use slave labor or ignore the impact to the environment, but we clearly don’t want to fix it.

Re:Landfills are such a bad idea

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Informative Thread

but tariffs are bad I am told …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders. Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.‘s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting. Economists and historians widely regard the act as a policy misstep, and it remains a cautionary example of protectionist policy in modern economic debates.

Re:Landfills are such a bad idea

By drinkypoo • Score: 5, Funny Thread

It seems like doing something most would not do, dig a hole and toss their trash in it, scaled at country level.

This is true. Most would not do that. Historically, people found a hole to throw their refuse into so they wouldn’t have to dig one.

Re:A US thing

By geekmux • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The European Union:

Strict Bans: The EU’s Landfill Directive requires member states to reduce municipal waste sent to landfills to 10% or less by 2035.

Translation: The European Union Directive, hasn’t actually done a fucking thing yet to prevent the 50% or more going into their landfills. Meaning they should stop fucking bragging like they have.

Commitments made by politicians who will be retired or dead by the deadline, don’t mean shit. So stop prancing around pretending they do. Results matter. Not promises. Making landfills illegal with no real solution, merely turns waste creators into criminals. Which you will likely tax to “fix”.

Re:Landfills are such a bad idea

By serviscope_minor • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

If you’re right then the fix is just to pay people to sort it all, don’t need an AI for that.

No, because it’s a really shit job, sometimes literally so.

The fix is to build a MRF (material recovery facility) with a combination of glass crushers, ballistic sorters, trommels, magnets, eddy current devices and optical sorters, all of which are vastly quicker than a person, though imperfect. You then pay people to do the jobs which are harder to automate (i.e. quality control on the output of the earlier sorting processes, or recover of what wasn’t successfully sorted).

But really it only works if people put a vague approximation of recyclables into recycling bins, i.e. very basic source sorting. That seems to be an absolute anathema to many Americans for reasons which are unclear to me.

How Accurate Are Flock’s AI-Powered License-Reading Cameras?

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Futurism reports:
404 Media revealed that a July 10 audit by the Los Angeles Police Department Office of the Inspector General caught the department’s ALPR cameras generating 161 false stolen-vehicle alerts in just two months — each one ending with officers pulling over an innocent driver. Factoring in 337 alerts which “resulted in the recovery of stolen vehicles,” the LAPD’s cameras carry an error rate of 32.3 percent, effectively giving officers a one-in-three chance at pulling an innocent person over.
“The biggest issue remains this national database at the FBI called NCIC,” Flock’s CEO Garrett Langley recently told The Drive, complaining about “how archaic its structure is.”
Flock CEO: There’s no feedback loop mechanisms; it’s really just a static comma-separated file.

We’ve tried to build around it. We have this concept called “suppression.” A local agency — let’s take Atlanta, where I live — might see that there’s a stolen plate out of California, but it’s already been resolved because it’s a rental car or a dealer car. They can, in Flock, suppress that: “Never alert us on that for the next year.” That’s to get around the fact that they can’t force another agency to remove it from NCIC. Ideally, the way it would work is if enough agencies — let’s call it one, two, or three — flag a tag as no longer valid or a bad entry, it should just get removed. Or at least it should get pushed more aggressively by the FBI… I’m hopeful that they’ll see there’s an opportunity to make something like NCIC, which is an important tool not just for companies like Flock, but for police departments to work together, start to make some enhancements to modernize what’s a central part of our policing system.
Later in the interview he says “It’s less than one in a million alerts that an officer says, ‘I’m not sure if that’s right.’ Less than one in a million.”

A recent report from Business Insider shares a worst-case scenario. In the summer of 2024 a Sacramento police officer said Flock’s cameras had sent six false alerts for the same vehicle, wrongly saying it had been stolen or used in a felony crime in the nearby suburb of Roseville:
Roseville police could see that Flock’s software kept confusing the “9” on the man’s license plate for an “8.” The car owner said he would take off his license plate cover. Soon after, it happened again. It’s “easier at this point we have it memorized,” a dispatch supervisor in Roseville wrote in an email to a colleague.

Flock says that in optimal conditions, its cameras accurately read more than 96% of license plate characters. Hundreds of pages of records from the Roseville Police Department show a different picture. In 2023 and 2024, Flock sent 1,427 alerts to Roseville police, flagging vehicles as stolen or used in a felony after they passed one of the city’s Flock cameras. An analysis by the police department found that in 71% of those alerts, Flock’s machine-learning software incorrectly read the license plates… The cameras regularly missed vehicles, captured blurry images, misread license plate characters and states, and sent delayed alerts to police about vehicles possibly connected to crimes, the records show…

A factor that contributed to the misread problems in Roseville was the “particularly unique deployment” that the city requested, a Flock spokeswoman said. Roseville said it has its cameras configured so that they capture only the backs of vehicles, a setup intended to avoid capturing personally identifiable information like faces. Roseville’s setup included older hardware and placement of cameras higher and further from vehicles than the company typically recommends, Flock added…

In Toledo, Ohio, driver Brandon Upchurch was mauled by a police dog after a Flock camera misread the “7” on his license plate as a “2.” As a result of his injuries, he said, he lost his job and was evicted from his home. He settled a lawsuit against the city and police officer for $35,000. None of the incorrect Flock alerts in Roseville resulted in a traffic stop or arrest, a department spokesman said. Roseville requires police officers to verify that a license plate is stolen or have independent reasonable suspicion of a crime before making a traffic stop…

Flock said Roseville’s camera performance has significantly improved, which the police department disputed… Flock’s cameras also missed vehicles altogether… At one point, Flock’s product director for machine learning suggested that officers ask drivers to remove license plate frames that made it “very difficult for the machine vision to tell it is actually a ‘E’ and not an ‘F.’" Roseville told Flock at the time that it wouldn’t do so, according to the department spokesman. Flock in 2024 shared an analysis with Roseville’s police department, outlining reasons for the misreads. Vehicles far from a camera were sometimes blurry. Plates were cut off by trees or license plate frames. And Flock’s software confused similar characters, mistaking an “N” for a “V”, or a “1” for a “4....”

Roseville isn’t the first organization to flag inaccuracies in Flock’s technology. In 2021, the research firm IPVM independently tested Flock’s license plate readers, concluding that Flock misidentified the state in about one of 10 reads, and that the system regularly misclassified vehicles’ type and make. IPVM said that Flock subsequently blocked it from purchasing its cameras for testing.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Cognitive Dissident for sharing the article.

Possible solutions

By misnohmer • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Some potential solutions:
1. Fine FLOCK for misreading the plates, that will very quickly make the report only the plates they are 100% sure, or perhaps even add a human in the loop for each notification - given the relatively small number of alerts given in the article, that should not be a huge number of humans on call 24/7 to confirm the reading of the plate, or deem it inconclusive (or face a $500k fine if they are wrong).
2. Any agency that doesn’t invalidate their submitted license plates for alerts in NVIC and someone gets pulled over for nothing, gets to pay full restitution to the injured party AND gets all of their submissions blocked for a year on first offense, 2 years on next offense, 4 years for next offense, and so on. Competent agencies get to use the system responsibly, incompetent ones get banned eventually forever.

Re:Us number plates are hard to read

By shilly • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

That difference is just bonkers to look at. But unsurprising: the UK designed the registration plate as a standardized machine-readable piece of road infrastructure. US states treat it as a state-issued identity/emblem/mini-billboard which also happens to carry a registration number. States literally sell specialty plates for money. Sometimes a state will go for a sane design, but mostly they just arms race their way to the gaudiest shite possible, legibility be damned. And then have creepy shitty AI ALPR readers with wild false positive rates trying to pick up the pieces.

Sometimes the UK’s centralisation is a really obvious advantage, and this is one of those cases.

Comma injection

By Errol backfiring • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

it’s really just a static comma-separated file.

Would painting a comma on a license plate (preferably one that is very visible for cameras but poorly visible with the naked eye) protect you from their surveillance?

They have done studies

By zawarski • Score: 4, Funny Thread
60% of the time, it works every time.

Re:Cheapass hardware and poor software design

By gtall • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

How would Flock know which state to which the license belongs? I would think if it has troubles reading the numbers, which are usually large compared to the rest of the stuff on the plate, it would have troubles reading the state as well.

Microsoft Responds to Outcry After Quietly Installing Beta ‘Photos’ App on Enterprise Machines

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Microsoft’s cloud storage app OneDrive got a new Photos app in the worst possible way, reports the blog Neowin . “The app is reportedly showing up even on Windows 11 Enterprise machines, despite apparently being a beta application aimed at consumer functionality.”
One admin questioned why a beta app was appearing on an Enterprise SKU in the first place, while another described the situation as yet another consumer-oriented feature being forced onto corporate PCs. Things get even more frustrating for IT departments because there does not appear to be a straightforward Microsoft-provided way to disable the app… Enterprise administrators generally need to know what is being installed on their managed devices, particularly when a software is labeled as beta. Quietly adding another application and leaving admins to clean it up themselves is therefore unlikely to win Microsoft many fans.
But there’s another problem, according to the blog Windows Latest. “OneDrive Photos automatically scans your system storage for photos,” and apparently “doesn’t need a Microsoft account to work, as it can also detect your local files.”
There’s also a People section that groups similar faces in your photos. Microsoft asks for permission before turning it on and explicitly warns that facial data could be considered biometric data in some regions. The company says only you can see the grouped faces, that the data isn’t shared with third parties, and that you can delete it by disabling the feature.
In a statement to Neowin, Microsoft admitted this new photos “experience” they’re “incubating” had gone “more broadly than it should have,” and then promised that “We’re fixing that.” The spokesperson also said the Windows Photos app will “always give you the option of local and cloud photos” and, also a choice of whether or not to use it OneDrive.”

But there’s another “awkward catch,” notes the blog Digital Trends. “Users currently can’t uninstall OneDrive Photos without removing the main OneDrive app too.”
Because OneDrive Photos is tied to the main OneDrive sync client, Windows 11 doesn’t currently offer a separate uninstall option. The only straightforward way to get rid of OneDrive Photos right now is to uninstall OneDrive itself… Removing the main client can also affect its File Explorer integration and shortcuts…

Microsoft says this will change. The company is working on controls that will let users remove OneDrive Photos separately from the main OneDrive app. On enterprise PCs managed through Intune, Microsoft says the app will automatically disappear where it isn’t supported.

More Microsoft malware

By NotEmmanuelGoldstein • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Customer’s data stolen by Microsoft to feed Microsoft’s other product, AI. Microsoft wasn’t the first but forcing customers into servitude, without monetary compensation, makes this malware.

OneDrive Surveillance

By JakFrost • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I’ve had to uninstall OneDrive more than a dozen times because every time Microsoft office gets updated it pushes that install back onto the machine. Anytime Microsoft releases a new version of a large update to Windows, it pushes that client again. I have to uninstall it and make sure that none of my files have been forcefully moved to the OneDrive before I remove it.

Now they are doing this to capture your photos and facial profile data to do facial recognition and grouping.

Microsoft is the right hand man of the surveillance industry. They always have been and they are more so now. Now they’re just more incompetent about it.

Removal

By Errol backfiring • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

“Users currently can’t uninstall OneDrive Photos without removing the main OneDrive app too.”

That is a feature, not a bug.

Re:Ouch

By ufgrat • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I work in the medical profession. Downloading images that contain patient health information is supposed to be controlled, but that doesn’t mean it always is.

And it’s not the “microsoft account” you have to worry about, it’s someone logging into OneDrive with their personal account, which can be a separate authentication.

There are mitigation policies that can be deployed, but you kind of have to know to enable them. By default, this is a massive potential HIPAA violation.

Elephant in the room

By rsilvergun • Score: 5, Informative Thread
It gobbles up half a gig of RAM. At a time when ram is at a premium that’s a big deal. I am sure Microsoft has multiple departments fighting amongst themselves to see who is going to get access to your ever dwindling ram supply.

Privacy Backlash Explodes Against Meta’s Smart Glasses

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
With nearly 70% of the market, “Meta wants its smart glasses to be a big hit,” writes the Los Angeles Times. But after some users found ways to disable the light that warns people they’re being filmed, “the high-tech specs have also turned into a liability, as some are calling the gadget ‘pervert glasses…’"
Some people are using the glasses — which look like a pair of regular spectacles — to record people without their knowledge and publish the videos on social media. The users secretly videotape and share what happens when they try to pick up women. Now, a growing number of people are worried they could be covertly recorded at the gym or even during sex. The backlash has prompted Meta to update its glasses to address privacy concerns, and some places have banned them, adding to the angst surrounding technology that’s rapidly evolving…

Concern about the glasses has exploded as more videos of interactions with people who don’t know they’re being recorded go viral on social media. On Instagram, some videos depict people getting approached in malls and grocery stores and on college campuses and sidewalks. While the videos are portrayed as jokes, the people filmed don’t appear to know they’re being recorded and sometimes seem uncomfortable, telling the strangers to leave them alone or stop harassing them. The outcry has spread beyond social media, with comedian Jimmy Kimmel calling the Meta devices “pervert glasses” on national television and singer Lorde telling concertgoers that smart glasses are “not sexy…”

Instagram, which is owned by Meta, has been disabling accounts and taking down some of these pickup or prank videos for violating the platform’s rules against harassment and bullying… Businesses are making their own calls about smart glasses. The 5 Point Cafe in Seattle, which banned Google Glass in the past, has banned Meta glasses from its diner and dive bar. “Leave your Meta-SpyBan Display at home, they are officially Ray-Ban-ned from all of our restaurants. We serve privacy, not side-eye surveillance,” a 2025 Instagram post from the business states.
An Android app that warns people if they’re being recorded has roughly 110,000 downloads in the last six months, according to the article. The app’s creator says it’s a “social problem” that “we don’t value privacy, that we feel entitled to use others for our entertainment or our private gain, and technology amplifies that.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and more than 70 organizations even sent a letter urging Meta to promise they’d leave facial recognition features out of their smart glasses, according to the article. But a Meta spokesperson said “no final decision has been made.”

Many POV video producers!

By Somervillain • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Who wears glasses while they are having sex?

It’s a great way to film yourself having sex if you have the consent of your partner. Sunglasses are weird, but not as weird and a gopro on your forehead. I can see these as a staple of amateur porn. No one wants to see the guy, so the sunglasses make him even more of a prop from other camera views, but many want to see things from his point of view!

Re:Surveillance cameras

By Powercntrl • Score: 5, Funny Thread

The ultimate irony would be someone using Meta glasses to live stream their vandalism of Flock cameras.

Re: Surveillance cameras

By Gavino • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Not at all the same. In store cameras are closed CCTV systems. They are filmed with security and law enforcement in mind - not social media clicks. Plus they are passive and fixed, discrete devices in the ceilings of buildings - they don’t follow you around on foot, and interact with you via the wearer. This will not go away.

It was never technology for good

By NotEmmanuelGoldstein • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

… facial recognition …

The data is worthless if Meta can’t assign a name to the stream. Turning their paying customers into perverts was always the plan.

When spy-glasses were a theory, they were seen as a good thing: A way to have a computer explain everything (and everyone) for you. It would be a silicon brain just for the eyeballs: In reality, their best function was helping narcissists abuse other people.

Re:It was never technology for good

By Woeful Countenance • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

When spy-glasses were a theory, they were seen as a good thing: A way to have a computer explain everything (and everyone) for you.

Steve Mann has been doing that since the 1970s (or 1981, depending on source), using his own custom-made hardware and software, including a thigh-mounted chord keyboard. If you talk to him, he can call up a record of your previous interactions and other details, sort of a computerized version of the “Farley file” mentioned in Robert Heinlein’s 1956 novel Double Star .

“Mann went on to be an early and active researcher in the wearables field, especially known for his 1994 creation of the Wearable Wireless Webcam, the first example of lifelogging.”

When spy-glasses were a theory, they were seen as a good thing

Sort of like the Internet itself.

AI Reviews Bring ‘New Normal’ to Linux Release Candidates: Lots of Bug Fixes

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Linux Torvalds expects Linux 7.2 should be released next weekend “unless something really bad pops up,” Torvalds said while announcing today’s release candidate.

But there’s something interesting about Linux 7.2-rc7, writes Phoronix. “By the time the Linux kernel typically hits a -rc7 release things have usually settled quite well. But in today’s world of AI/LLM coding/review agents, the kernel activity continues at an all-time high.”
Tons of bug fixes continued to trickle in across the kernel spectrum for all sorts of issues. The HWMON hardware monitoring subsystem saw several critical and high severity bug fixes, on the memory management side was a nasty race condition leading to a use-after-free in the kernel for the past eight years, Btrfs restored its fixup worker infrastructure to deal with silent data loss, lots of AI patches in the networking realm, and the kernel was patched for the Safe RET Interrupt Vulnerability.

Linus Torvalds wrote in the 7.2-rc7 announcement:


“Another week, another -rc.

I can’t say that I’m exactly thrilled about the size of this all, but it is what it is: the new normal with a lot of fixes, many of them due to review by various AI tools.

And nothing looks particularly scary per se — it’s just that there’s a lot here. Most of it is fairly small, although we have a couple of larger diffs: s390/zcrypt fixes stand out in the diffstat, and so does btrfs bringing back the fixup worker infrastructure. And some netfilter ipset fixes.

But aside from a few places like that, most of this is just lots of tiny fixes. It’s pretty much spread all over — drivers (gpu, sound, networking, you name it), filesystems, core networking, arch code…

I’m going to go out on a limb here

By rsilvergun • Score: 3 Thread
And say that if you’ve had a bug in your code for 8 years and the code is actually in production and being used then the bug wasn’t all that important.

AI seems to be finding a lot of bugs that people just weren’t bothering to find because why would you? I have certainly come across bugs in my own code that don’t really hurt anything or that require such very specific and uncommon circumstances that I’m hardly surprised I didn’t fix them sooner. Yeah a machine can and we’ll find them but so what?

If it didn’t cost anything to fix them that would be fine but I don’t know about you but my power bill just went up 15% and despite the lies they’re telling me it’s painfully obvious that it’s the fund data center power usage. Also Amazon is putting a data center online that is powered completely by pollution belching gas turbines that are going to crank out more greenhouse gases then literally anything in the entire country. Climate change is real and it’s causing droughts. Those droughts are driving up the price of beef and chicken.

So how much is an LLM fixing esoteric bugs Worth to you? In a few years you might be eating bugs because of it…

Re: A good trade off

By Zero__Kelvin • Score: 5, Informative Thread
What are you talking about? They aren’t new bugs. They are newly *discovered* bugs. Can you even read a Slashdot summary? AI isn’t being used to write code. It is being used to review it and to find already existing bugs.

Flock Accused of Reactivating Its Cameras Without Notifying a Town

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot
A Massachusetts newspaper reports that officials from the town of Littleton (population: 10,141) “claim that five of Littleton’s Flock Safety cameras were switched back on by the company without informing the town…”

Littleton had temporarily disabled the cameras earlier this year, according to the article, but upon discovering the cameras were still active, city officials say they directed the Town Counsel “to initiate cancellation of the contract with Flock Safety and directed the Town Administrator to coordinate the removal of the six cameras on public ways” with the Department of Public Works.

Ironically, it’s the same Massachusetts town that last year was breached by a Chinese-state-sponsored hacking group for over 300 days.

Flock has also considered dashcams installed in hundreds of thousands Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers’ vehicles “to scan license plates those drivers travelled passed,” reports 404 Media, “essentially turning Uber and Lyft drivers into roaming surveillance vehicles, according to a Flock presentation shared with 404 Media… 404 Media first revealed the intended partnership last August when multiple sources provided information on the plan.”

Put a locked bag over them.

By hwstar • Score: 4, Funny Thread

The city should duffel bag and padlock all the cameras with something similar to what you used to find on parking meters out of service.

Only response

By sjames • Score: 5, Funny Thread

This is a job for…SAWZALL MAN!

cue heroic music

Lets think about that

By PPH • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Town contracts with Flock to provide ALPR functions. Flock gets the appropriate pole rental contracts and installs cameras. City has a change of heart and asks that the cameras be shut off. Flock does so, but then is contacted by another customer interested in the data feed. Flock says, “The cameras are already up. Just turn them on and serve the new contract.”

A couple of things come to mind:

We need “HIPAA for location data”

By alispguru • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Right now, it is legal for third parties like Flock to collect surveillance data and offer it for sale to anyone.
The third party doctrine makes it presumed OK for third parties to give or sell their data to the Government.
This is rapidly eroding Fourth Amendment guarantees in the US.

One possible way out would be to specify in federal law that data that can enable mass surveillance must be protected - leaking it gets you fined, government doesn’t get it without a warrant.

The HIPAA laws are a potential model here - they basically say data related to health care can only be shared between certain businesses, and only with the permission of the person the data is about.

Dashcams

By stabiesoft • Score: 3 Thread
I think the ugly reality is the AV’s fitted with a myriad of cameras is the real worry. Those AV’s are roving surveillance equipment. I don’t think anyone could believe if Flock or some other org offered to pay even a buck a day for access to those camera feeds, the AV suppliers wouldn’t nod yes immediately. There is no going back from the current availability of cheap cameras, cheap storage and cheap compute. The framers couldn’t have envisioned this. Even I as a older techie still find the magnitude of the storage capabilities available today as a bit surreal. RAM sizes that dwarf persistent storage of just 2 decades ago.