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.
Pranksters Redirect Bitly’s Links in X Posts for Trump, McDonald’s and Burger King
“A massive link-hijacking scheme has turned corporate social media archives into bizarre and offensive redirects,” reports the New York Post:
Posts from high-profile accounts — including fast-food giants McDonald’s and Burger King, as well as President Donald Trump — are getting hacked, with over decades-old links suddenly redirecting users to unrelated website links including links about 9/11 and the Holocaust. An unknown party appears to be taking control of expired Bitly link shorteners — a widely used URL-shortening and link-management service — and altering their destinations....
Another Burger King tweet from July 13, 2011 — reading, “Now it’s even easier to eat right at BURGER KING® restaurants with @WeRRestaurants. All you need is a zip code!” — was warped to link straight to Adolf Hitler’s Wikipedia page… Two posts on Donald Trump’s X account were also altered: a 2013 post redirected to a “Baby Fortnite” page, while a 2012 post linked to a video of Mario and Luigi from Super Mario Bros.
The article notes that about 20 of Trump’s old X posts had “switched” links, including some now pointing to videos of the Transformers. And it adds that “outraged web users are also slamming Bitly over its flaw that allows links to ‘die’ and be recycled by pranksters and bad actors.”
“Links dating as far back as 2009 from URL-shortening service Bitly were affected,” reports CNN, “and only corporate and political X accounts appear to have been targeted, with President Donald Trump’s personal account seemingly hit the hardest.” “Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former Vice President Mike Pence… were also hit to varying degrees.”
Bitly said Sunday afternoon in a post on X that it had “identified an issue that allowed bad actors to repurpose certain old, inactive links to redirect people to content unrelated to the original posts.” The company said it suspended the accounts that altered links and were working to disable the affected URLs… It’s unclear whether hackers made custom Bitly links, which effectively allow them to copy the original URL and redirect to any website. That may have been possible if the original Bitly link to the website no longer exists or has expired.... Another 2013 post from Trump tagged former Republican nominee for president Mitt Romney, and links to the popular game “Geometry Dash”....
A post in 2011 by Trudeau contains a Bitly link that redirects to a vulgar YouTube audio clip… Government accounts have also been ironically affected. A 2012 post from the FBI about computers infected by “Ghost Clicks” now directs to a page with a photo of a seal, while the Department of Defense account had a separately redirected post.
Siri Glitches Ruin Reviewer’s Test of Apple’s New ‘HomeView’ Smart Speaker
Apple has started selling its new HomeView smart speaker, a 7-inch square-with-rounded-corners screen equipped with a built-in camera. It pairs with your iPhone or iPad to offer personalized content from your email or text messages, using facial recognition to identify each family member.
But in a video report, one Wall Street Journal reviewer discovered an issue while testing its smart home feature:
WSJ REVIEWER: I’ve spent the last few years turning my home into a smart home that I can boss around with Siri. A smart lock, a special garage door opener, motorized shades, even a Raspberry Pi in my basement hooked up to my router that lets non-HomeKit devices from Ring and Nest work with Siri. It was all going well, the smart home controller of my dreams even. But then…
Reviewer: Open the garage door.
Siri: Sorry, I can’t help with that on this device. Please use the Home app.
Reviewer: Siri, you have the Home app, and you’re called the HomeView. Open the garage.
Siri: Sorry, I can’t help with that on this device.
Reviewer: Open the smart wifi garage.
Siri: Sorry, I can’t help with that on this device. Please use the Home app…
WSJ REVIEWER: Apple explained that for security reasons, Siri won’t unlock your doors or open the garage through the HomeView using voice commands. You can only tap the screen to unlock them. The concern is that someone could shout a command from outside and gain access to your house.
This security concern doesn’t make much sense to me. This thing can recognize my face, confirm it’s me, and pull up all sorts of information from my phone. But it can’t recognize me enough to open my garage? Finally I got Siri itself to explain this top-security measure.
Siri: For security reasons, I can’t unlock your door or open your garage from this device. Because anyone nearby can speak to a shared speaker.
Reviewer: But I’m looking at you! You see my face, and you hear my voice!
Siri: I understand. But I don’t have a camera to see you. And voice recognition alone isn’t secure enough for unlocking your home.
Reviewer: You don’t have a camera?
Siri: That’s right. This device doesn’t have a camera, so I can’t see you. I can only hear your voice, which is why I need you to use your iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock the door.
Reviewer: I see, Siri. You’re gaslighting me.
An Apple spokesperson said they’d send out a software update next month that would let HomeView unlock garage doors and other door locks by voice once it’s recognized a user. (And Apple said the update would also fix Siri’s hallucination that it didn’t already have a built-in camera.)
In the end, the speakers sounded good, and the reviewer appreciated how Apple’s HomeView didn’t have ads on its screeh like the Amazon Echo Show. But the device’s built-in Siri voice assistant was “about as reliable as a Magic 8 Ball… And the frustration is so real. Sometimes Siri just doesn’t get the voice recognition right… Oftentimes, other devices in the room think I’m talking to their Siri… And sometimes Siris just talk to each.”
iPhone: Siri is built into your device, so you don’t need to download…
HomeView: Downloading support for Siri.
iPhone: To download the Apple Support app, open the App Store on your device, search for Apple Support, and tap get or the download icon. I’ve installed support.
Reviewer (muttering): I honestly could cry. This might be a first — crying.
iphone: I’m software, so I don’t have feelings. But it sounds like you’re going through a difficult moment. It can really help to talk to someone you trust, like a friend, family member, or a professional who can support you”.
They complained that sometimes Siri “is just slow, or it gets stuck thinking and thinking and thinking.” (It took three minutes to answer their young son’s question “What’s 10 times 40?”)
They concluded HomeView’s facial recognition feature works well, and so does its smart home functionality (especially when they fix its door-unlocking next month). But its built-in Siri AI is “not great.” It’s gotten better this year, and the reviewer found it “genuinely useful for some things on their iPhone. “But Apple still has a Siri problem. And on a device that’s supposed to be the intelligent center of your home, that’s a big problem.”
It reminded the reviewer of another new first-generation Apple product, the iPhone Duo: “good hardware waiting for the software to catch up.”
GTA 6’s Upcoming Launch Celebrated by Wendy’s, YouTube, the City of Miami, and 20% of America’s Workforce
Fast food restaurant Wendy’s drew an image of their redheaded mascot in the style of GTA, posting it on social media with the message “Our ride-or-dies are gonna love what we have in the works,” and the date 11/19/26.
That’s how widespread the hype has become for Thursday’s release of Grand Theft Auto VI. The BBC reports that fictional brands from the game are now actually appearing on billboards across Miami, the city that inspired the game’s “Vice City” setting. And GamingBible.com reports Rockstar Games has announced Grand Theft Auto VI: The Festival, “a real-life music festival to be held in Miami, Florida… on November 21, 2026. Featuring two stages, the festival will be headlined by some incredible artists that, to state the obvious, feature on the game’s soundtrack....”
YouTube said pre-launch videos about the game have already racked up a whopping 40 billion views (with 900 billion views for videos about all GTA games). And now YouTube is partnering with Rockstar Games to offer several special features on launch day:
Fans can drop themselves directly into Vice City using the GTAVI: Visit Vice City Shorts Effect. The feature includes multiple iconic backgrounds, making it easy for creators and fans to build their own launch-week videos…
Listeners can find the official GTAVI soundtrack (featuring Morgan Wallen’s “Last Thing You Need”) and the complete GTA series anthology playlist directly on the YouTube Music homepage throughout launch week…
Starting November 19 at 12 AM ET, fans worldwide can tune in to youtube.com/youtube for a 24 hour stream packed with live gameplay, creator podcasts, and original content featuring top creators… [On launch day] fans can jump straight into the global broadcast by clicking the custom GTAVI-themed YouTube logo (Yoodle) on the YouTube homepage
At one one study suggests nearly one in a five U.S. workers plan to skip work on Thursday, writes the New York Post:
Roughly 18% of workers plan to take Thursday off to park themselves on the couch and wreak havoc across the revamped Vice City, according to data from BambooHR, which analyzed information from 3.4 million US-based employees… Half of the joystick jockeys planning to take off will simply call in sick instead of requesting time off, BambooHR reported. The hordes of workers playing hooky could cost the US economy $1 billion in lost productivity, International Business News reported.
Forbes reports the game has $1.18 billion in pre-orders from 12 million buyers, according to market research firm Sensor Tower, puting it ahead of Grand Theft Auto V, which had 7 million pre-orders.
The BBC points out that “Already, both PlayStation and Xbox, the two platforms the game is initially releasing on, have said the game has become the most pre-ordered title in their digital stores’ history. This may be partly down to its huge size (212GB), meaning many are pre-ordering to “pre-load” the game, ready to play it immediately at launch rather than waiting to download it.
But that’s a problem for other games, reports GamingBible.com:
With most current-gen consoles having somewhere between 512 GB and 1 TB of free storage before expansion upgrades, it means if you’re a gamer with lots of games installed, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices and delete any older games you’re not currently playing. As reported by Push Square, it seems that Electronic Arts is also getting the message, as it allegedly is showing messages inside games asking players not to uninstall in anticipation of the GTA VI launch.
GamingBible.com notes one final concern for hardcore gamers. “Rockstar Games recently confirmed the game targets 30fps, even on high-end consoles like the PlayStation Pro. While it probably won’t affect the game’s total sales, many gamers are appalled.”
Huawei Set To Challenge Tesla Powerwall with New, 20 kW Home Battery
“Huawei believes its new Luterra S2 is more than just a home backup battery,” reports Electrek:
This high-tech Huawei home battery pack hopes to hold back Tesla’s latest Powerwall with silicon carbide technology, AI-powered energy management baked in, and enough modular storage to keep even large homes bright and warm when the rest of the block goes dark… The Chinese tech firm is calling it an “all-in-one residential energy system” that combines a hybrid inverter, modular battery storage, and AI-powered energy management in a single, simple, and stackable package that’s available in single-phase versions that put out between 3 and 10 kW and three-phase versions that can push up to 20 kW. The Luterra S2 is the first system of its kind to use Huawei’s proprietary full-silicon carbide (SiC) architecture, which promises improved efficiency, power density, and ease of use. It’s so easy, in fact, that Huawei claims it can be installed and commissioned in just minutes.
Huawei’s basic Luterra S2 configuration starts with “just” 5 kWh of battery energy storage and 3 kW of output. That’s enough to keep essential household appliances, lighting, and electronics running during a power outage, but you’ll want to keep going if you’re preparing for more than a day or two without power. If that sounds like you, Luterra’s got you covered. The modular system can be expanded with modular 7 kWh LFP battery packs and can keep scaling up to a massive 336 kWh of total storage across interconnected systems, with inverter output peaking at an impressive 60 kW using three 20 kW units in parallel. Keeping all that power cool and quiet is a Huawei-developed passive cooling system that does without external fans, keeping operating noise levels below a claimed 29 dB (about the same as my Mac mini).
Bill Gates Has Earned Billions Investing in Climate-Polluting Landfills, Reports ProPublica
Environmental activist Bill Gates has “quietly accumulated a $29 billion stake in America’s No. 2 landfill operator, Republic Services,” reports ProPublica, in a new 5,000-word investigation. But inspectors from America’s Environmental Protection Agency “have repeatedly found methane — a highly potent greenhouse gas — escaping from Republic landfills at levels above federal limits. Republic has lobbied against regulations that could make the waste industry cleaner, including by keeping organic garbage out of landfills in the first place.”
While Gates has invested at least $2 billion in green companies, he’s “put more than double that amount into a very dirty, old-school industry,” their article argues. And Gates has increased his stake in Republic “to 38% of the company, a position worth $29 billion.”
While fossil fuels get most of the attention, scientists increasingly see landfills as a crucial climate issue. They’re responsible for as much as a fifth of the country’s emissions of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, studies show. Republic alone generates as much climate pollution as 3 million gasoline-burning cars each year, according to its own reports....
[Gates] has failed to make Republic live up to his own climate principles, a ProPublica investigation has found. Federal inspectors have repeatedly found methane escaping from Republic landfills at levels above federal limits. The company has refrained from adopting the ambitious emissions-reduction goal embraced by its main competitor… “It seems very likely that Bill Gates has the power to influence Republic’s behavior to make it more climate-friendly, even if that costs the company profits,” said Ann Lipton, a legal scholar who studies corporate governance at the University of Colorado, Boulder… Gates didn’t respond to repeated requests to discuss his landfill investments, and ProPublica couldn’t find any public comments he’s made about them.
But the bet has proven wildly lucrative. Since November 1999, when he emerged as the owner of 5% of Republic’s shares — "It’s ‘Garbage In’ for Gates,” the New York Post headline read — the company’s stock price has soared thirtyfold. And Gates has personally received $2.6 billion in dividends, a ProPublica analysis of securities filings shows… A rare clue to why Gates made his foray into landfills can be found in an interview he gave to Fortune [in 1999]… To fund his plan to give away virtually his entire fortune, he said he’d given his personal money manager, Michael Larson, a simple remit: Sell Microsoft shares, buy safe, boring assets… After that initial investment, Larson progressively increased Gates’ stake in Republic over the years that followed. [On behalf of the Gates Foundation] Larson would also acquire a small chunk of Republic’s main competitor, Waste Management.
Methane emissions weren’t a major focus of climate activism until years later
The gas can trap 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide in the near term, and it’s responsible for one-third of the global warming we experience today, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. But it also breaks down much more quickly, turning into CO2 and water vapor in about a decade — which means that cutting methane emissions now would reduce that warming within our lifetimes. This is especially urgent, scientists say, as the climate approaches tipping points that could doom rainforests, coral reefs and ice sheets.
Rust Leaves Top 10 in TIOBE Index, Making Room for Go
“In November’s edition of the TIOBE Index, Rust has dropped out of Top 10,” writes I-Programmer, noting that Rust ceded the #10 position to Go. “At the same time, another Google-originated language, Dart, has entered the top 20 ousting Julia after only one month.” TIOBE explains Dart’s popularity is mainly being driven by Flutter, Google’s framework for building cross-platform mobile applications.
In fact, Flutter has become one of the major technologies for cross-platform mobile app development. The Dart language itself is not particularly unique, although it incorporates many modern programming language features. Its success is largely driven by the strength of the Flutter ecosystem and the convenience of developing applications for multiple platforms using a single codebase…
[In November’s ranking] Visual Basic has also lost two places, making room for R and SQL in the Top 10. Further down the ranking, Assembly has re-entered the Top 20.
So TIOBE ranks the top 10 languages in November as Python, C, Java, C++, C#, JavaScript, R, SQL, Visual Basic, and Go. But I-Programmer points out that “At the top of the table, Java is back in the top 3, after over three years in 4th position,” pushing C++ down to #4. Are some changes more significant than others?
If you think of the ratings as shares of a pie divided into 100 pieces, there is one huge slice — Python, accounting for a over a fifth of the pie, then comes C with a slice slightly less than half of Python’s. Java and C++ then have smaller slices… and C#‘s share is around half of their average size. Over half the pie has now been shared between just five languages…
— Next 5 (#6-10): 10.17% (JavaScript, R, SQL, Visual Basic, Go)
— Next 10 (#11-20): 11.12% (Rust, PHP, Fortran, Scratch, Perl, MATLAB, Assembly, Swift, Delphi, Dart)
— Next 30 (#21-50): 12.81%
— Final 50 (#51-100): 12.93%
[So in this month’s chart…] Java has overtaken C++, but as you can see from this month’s Top 10 chart they are in lock step and the difference between them is insignificant. More obvious is that Python is way ahead of all the competition and that C has an edge over Java and C++. For more discussion of this see TIOBE — Two To Rule Them All in which Mike James argued that this:
confirms the standard model of programming - code is written in Python and C and everything else is just noise.
Back in July we reported Rust Enters TIOBE Top 10. After four months in #10 Rust is now back at #11, which is still three places above its position, 14, a year ago. Given the way these rankings operate it only takes a very small month-on-month change for a language to lose its position and even, as has happened here it can gain in terms of its percentage ranking while still moving down. So Rust with 1.63% in November is now in #11 when it had been in #10 with 1.44%.
How Will AI Affect Open Source Development?
This week the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) announced it would broaden its AI security resources, including a new guide to finding and fixing vulnerabilities using AI, “from preparing and sandboxing AI to validating, fixing, and preventing issues.” The guide “stresses that AI-generated patches should never be trusted without automated tests and human review. An online course (LFD126) is planned for the coming months.”
OpenSSF also released the State of AI Impact on Software Security and Cybersecurity 2026 report (supported by OpenSSF, ActiveState and the Linux Foundation AI & Data Foundation). And it turns out the 2026 report “found a growing gap between the pace of AI-driven software development and organizations’ ability to secure the code being produced.”
58% of surveyed teams ship code faster than security reviews can keep up, while 60% say AI coding assistants have increased the number of external packages in their codebases. This data underscores the importance of trusted, reliable guidance as AI deployment continues to grow.
Meanwhile the Linux Foundation announced at this week’s Web Summit that it was releasing a new study on “how commercial open source companies generate revenue, convert users into customers and build their businesses,” emphasizing the question’s new relevance in the age of AI. “AI now writes code almost for free, and that raises a hard question for the whole software industry: if code costs next to nothing, where does the value of software lie?”
Commercial open source [COSS] companies have been answering that question for more than 30 years. They have built large businesses on code they give away, which makes them a good guide to how software will make money in the age of AI… Seventy-two percent of respondents report a net positive impact from AI, against 8% negative. So far, the gains show up mostly inside companies. Internal productivity is the most cited benefit (73%), ahead of market expansion (46%) and new monetization opportunities (39%). AI roles are the only hiring category growing on net.
COSS strategy is mostly unchanged by AI. But when companies do adapt, they are nearly twice as likely to open more of their core product rather than become more closed. When asked what sets them apart, 57% of companies name brand recognition and trust, well ahead of enterprise features, integrations and community size. They turn that trust into revenue through support and services (63%), managed cloud (49%) and open core (43%). Most combine these: 65% run two or more revenue models.
Companies stack models as they grow, rather than switching between them: managed cloud rises from 35% of companies below $5 million ARR to 66% above $20 million. Venture-backed companies lean toward open core (53% vs. 38% for others).
The report draws on a survey of 225 commercial open source founders and enterprise leaders (published by Linux Foundation Research in partnership with Serena, and with sponsorship from AWS, Red Hat, Futurewei and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. And when it comes to open source, “over half of founders point to brand recognition and community trust as their greatest asset,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. So “The findings from this year’s report prove that AI isn’t a threat to commercial open source software — it’s an accelerating tailwind. With 72% of companies viewing AI as a net positive primarily driving internal productivity, the ecosystem is leaning further into collaboration.”
The Linux Foundation’s announcement includes an interesting perspective from Matthieu Lavergne, partner at the venture capital company Serena. “Open source won the developer. Next, it will win the agent. The 225 founders we surveyed mostly see AI as a productivity gain today, but that’s only the start: agents are set to become open source’s largest users, and they choose what is open, proven and trusted. The founders who build and price for these new users will define the infrastructure of the AI era.”
Italy Fines Meta €805m Over Accessing Android Users’ Photos with Facebook App
The Associated Press reports:
Italy announced an €805 million ($887 million) fine against Meta on Saturday for using photos and videos from Android users’ galleries on Facebook without specific consent or adequate disclosure… Investigators found that the feature was enabled by default and that Facebook requested gallery access through a single permission covering multiple app functions with different purposes. The authority gave Meta 60 days to disable the feature and seek separate consent for its use.
Italy has about 20 million Android users, notes the BBC, and this fine “is among the largest an Italian authority has ever imposed on a tech giant.”
The charge is related to a feature which suggests photos and videos from a user’s phone gallery as ideas for posts… According to the Italian regulator, a preceding [authorization] notice did not make clear that this would also allow Facebook to generate suggestions based on photos in their gallery. The regulator said it took into account “the high number of people affected” and the fact it is “still ongoing for those who have not updated the app and for those who have already given their consent to the system”. It also cited “Meta’s lack of co-operation”.
“A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that it planned to appeal…”
Did Alice Huang’s Megaspeed Bypass America’s Controls on Exporting Nvidia Chip to China?
In three years “Megaspeed International” went from from inactive Chinese gaming subsidiary “to one of Asia’s biggest buyers of cutting-edge semiconductors from the US,” reports CNN.
“It is incredibly hard to look at this and not see a Chinese state-sponsored network for bypassing US export control networks,” trade data investigator William George told CNN.
As Nvidia’s Jensen Huang had an affair with Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, “Megaspeed quietly instilled billions of dollars of Nvidia chips in data centers across Southeast Asia,” CNN writes, noting scrutiny of the company from the Singapore government and US officials “concerned that the company was passing those chips on to unauthorized Chinese buyers…”
In 2022, the US began restricting sales of semiconductors to China, including Nvidia’s most advanced. While the controls were meant to curb China’s tech industry, they also spawned opportunities for intermediaries willing to help circumvent them. US officials believe Megaspeed may be one of those… [T]rade records show Megaspeed has purchased more than $4 billion in chips and equipment from Nvidia… Based on indictments and investigative reports, research institute Epoch AI estimates that anywhere between 290,000 to 1.6 million advanced US semiconductors were sent to China in violation of export controls last year…
Singapore also initiated investigations into Megaspeed and its controllers, including Alice Huang, for potential false declarations relating to the company’s server purchases and their final destinations. In a statement, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said there was insufficient evidence that Huang had committed any related offenses, but she had been barred from re-entering the country after providing inaccurate information “to downplay her role” at Megaspeed. The other investigations are ongoing.
The exact scale of Chinese chip smuggling is impossible to quantify. However, its existence has become something of an open secret in the industry, as well as an indication that US efforts to keep adversaries from securing high-stakes technology still have fundamental flaws. A May report from the short seller Culper Research claimed that despite tightening trade restrictions, Chinese end-users still account for about 20% of Nvidia chip sales via illegal diversion and intermediaries in Southeast Asia.
CNN reminds readers that Jensen Huang accompanied US President Trump to events with Chinese leader Xi Jinping twice this year, and also lobbied for the US to relax controls on Chinese chip imports. “The US government ultimately approved several buyers for less-advanced Nvidia chips, known as H200, while collecting a quarter of the revenue.”
“However, blacklisted companies have continued to obtain sensitive semiconductors as well,” they add. And the Taiwanese government is even seeking to criminalize unauthorized exports of advanced AI chips to China, “as prosecutors there charged nine people in a scheme to sneak Nvidia chips into China through Japan, Indonesia and Hong Kong.”
50th Anniversary of ‘Star Wars’ Celebrated with iMax 70mm Re-Release, Special Events, New Movie
“Lucasfilm and Disney have restored the original Star Wars (1977) and will release the film in multiple formats, including Imax 70mm [starting February 19], as part of the franchise’s 50th anniversary celebrations,” reports Deadline.
The original film will also be displayed in its original 16:9 format on the center of Cosm’s 12K+ LED Dome, in a special presentation developed with Disney, Lucasfilm, ILM, and MakeMake. They’re calling it a “Shared Reality production" where “the surrounding visual environments dynamically evolve to immerse the audience in iconic Star Wars locations and moments.”
Deadline reports more 50th anniversary celebrations
In addition to the Imax 70mm screenings, the film will also be presented in Digital Imax, Digital Cinema, 70mm, 35mm, and 4DX. On May 4th, 2027, Lucasfilm will release a new behind-the-scenes documentary, The Hero Awakens, from filmmaker R.J. Cutler on Disney+. Star Wars events already on the calendar for 2027 include Shawn Levy’s [movie] Star Wars: Starfighter, which will be released May 28.
There’s also a new poster paying homage to the original 1977 film, reports the Disney news site Mickey Visit, plus a newly orchestrated score by John Williams that they assume “will be used on all the projects that debut this year.”
On April 2-3, [Disney] will debut the new “Star Wars in Concert: The Skywalker Saga” at the Hollywood Bowl. The show will be hosted by Anthony Daniels, known for his role as C-3PO. Special performances of John Williams’ iconic film scores will feature scenes and music from all nine Skywalker Saga films. The concert is a sweeping celebration of the stories, themes, and music that have inspired audiences around the world for five decades…
They also teased that new and legacy licensees — including Hasbro, the LEGO Group, adidas, Mars, Aston Martin, Steinway, Hajime Sorayama presented by Complex, and more — will introduce 50th-anniversary collections… In the opening of the press release, Disney mentioned that as part of the announcements there will be “reimagined Disney Parks and Cruise Line offerings.”
The article adds that the April’s Star Wars Celebration at the Los Angeles Convention Center has already sold out.
There’s more Star Wars news, writes long-time Slashdot reader schwit1
A light saber used by Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” movies The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi sold Thursday for nearly $5 million in an auction. The light saber, which was used in the climactic duel in Cloud City in which Vader tells Luke Skywalker “I am your father” sold for $4.875 million at the Ultimate Star Wars Auction held by Heritage Auctions. The sale marks a world auction record for any “Star Wars” collectible, according to the auction house.
The previous record was Heritage’s $3,750,000 sale of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber and severed hand effects rig on July 15, 2026. And they’re still auctioning more Star Wars memorabilia…
Bitcoin Plummets 24% in 46 Days as Crypto Falls on Rising Inflation
October 3: $84,680
Today: $64,108
Bitcoin dropped 24.2% in 46 days. And it “fell more than 4% on Friday to $68,500,” reports Fortune, “wiping out gains built over the past three months and casting doubt on whether its bear market was ever really over.”
The asset also faces weaker investor appetite, according to crypto analytics provider CryptoQuant. The firm’s demand indicator recorded its weakest reading since December 2023, while Bitcoin exchange-traded funds became net sellers again. The recent downturn has also extended to other parts of the crypto market. That includes Tether’s USDT, the largest cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar, whose total value shrank by $7.7 billion over the past two months, according to CryptoQuant, a sign that less cash is available in crypto markets.
This time around, inflation has been the main culprit. Tuesday’s Consumer Price Index report showed prices rose 0.4% in October, more than economists expected. Even stripping out food and energy, inflation ran hotter than forecast. Traders now overwhelmingly expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by a quarter percentage point in December, with some betting on an even bigger increase. “Because these are non-yielding assets, and we expect inflation to rise… people are chucking stuff like gold and Bitcoin to find… government bonds that are going up, providing you [with] income,” Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at financial technology company IG Group, told Fortune…
Heavy borrowing and spending on AI have created what 21Shares calls an “AI black hole,” drawing money toward the sector and away from assets like Bitcoin and gold. But Bitcoin remains “joined at the hip” with tech stocks, according to Beauchamp. That leaves it in an awkward position: It faces competition for investment dollars when enthusiasm for AI runs high, yet can get dragged down when that enthusiasm fades.
Fast Company points out Bitcoin "remains down more than 20% since the beginning of 2026.”
[Nvidia] has seen its shares lose more than 27% of their value over the past month. The tech sell-off seems to have dragged down the crypto markets, too, as the two sectors are, on some levels, intermingled… On top of that, outflows from Bitcoin funds may also be contributing to the slide. More than $1 billion in leveraged crypto positions were closed in recent days, which may have added to declining demand, affecting BTC prices.
America Officially Loses Its Measles-elimination Status After Continued Spread of the Disease
Reuters reports:
The Pan American Health Organization has revoked the United States’ measles-elimination status, ending a 26-year run after determining the country failed to halt continuous transmission of the highly contagious virus for more than a year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday…
The reported decision by the Americas branch of the World Health Organization comes as the US battles the highest number of measles cases it has seen in more than three decades. Some 7,500 people in the US have been infected with measles and 13 have died since 2025. That period coincides with falling immunization rates and rising vaccine hesitancy under US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has for years spread doubts, without scientific evidence, about the safety of measles vaccines… Canada, Spain and the UK recently lost measles-elimination status after review by WHO experts....
“It is a fully preventable disease. It is unconscionable that we have this amount of measles,” said Noel Brewer, a public health professor at the University of North Carolina… William Moss, an epidemiology professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said loss of measles elimination was a hit to the United States’ reputation as a public health powerhouse… For the average American, he added, it means that the United States will continue to have large outbreaks, putting people at risk of disease, hospitalization and death.
Manjaro Linux Moves Toward Independent Community Governance
Arch-based Manjaro Linux “has announced that Manjaro Project e.V. is now officially registered as a non-profit in Germany,” reports Linuxiac, “and is therefore a legally separate entity from the commercial Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG… after months of internal wrangling over who was in charge of the project, who had access to the infrastructure and who didn’t, and the relationship between the dev team and the commercial company…”
The restructuring goes back to March, when the Manjaro developers released the Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto, which was a very public critique of the way Manjaro was being run. The document claims that decision-making has effectively become the sole domain of the project founder, Philip Müller, with the other developers having very limited access to the infrastructure. There’s also a concern about the drop in participation, the persistent technical issues, and the continued prioritization of commercial interests over the actual development of the distribution…
The manifesto proposed the transfer of all project infrastructure, domains, repositories and community funds to the new organization, together with arrangements for the use of the Manjaro trademark. The contributors were warning that they might well consider forking the distro if the talks didn’t go their way. Müller then indicated that he’d be happy to talk about the proposed structure once the non-profit was in place. The association is now formally registered, and so one of the key aims of the manifesto has been realized…
Perhaps the most important point is the actual evolution of the distribution. The most recent testing and stable updates were kicked off by the Manjaro team themselves, without any oversight from Müller. This points to the developers having already started to operate on their own in an area which was previously the preserve of the project’s founder. They’re also in the process of optimizing their dev infrastructure, in part as a response to the continued automated bot attacks on the existing infrastructure.
Thanks to Slashdot reader king*jojo for sharing the news.
EFF Criticizes US Government’s Use of AI For Evaluating Senior Health Insurance Requests
“When we need medical care, we expect decisions about our treatment to be made by our doctors, not a tech company’s algorithm,” writes the EFF newsletter EFFector.
But in January America’s federal government launched a program called WISeR that uses AI to evaluate authorization requests for certain procedures from America’s federal health insurance program for seniors, Medicare. EFF sued for records and discovered “additional issues” with the program that they say “could jeopardize Medicare beneficiaries’ access to care.”
The records we received revealed that WISeR has resulted in widespread delays and denials of care, operational chaos, and reports of patient harm. Further documents obtained by EFF show a rushed and rocky rollout, highlighting the dangers that arise when governments treat AI like a silver bullet for complex problems.
EFF has now published hundreds of pages of documents obtained through our lawsuit, available here… The documents also highlight the need for more transparency about safeguards against inappropriate, AI-driven denials. EFF has long argued that AI has no place in consequential government decisions about peoples’ rights or access to benefits, such as immigration enforcement and policing decisions. That’s because using automated decision-making in these contexts risks decisions that violate people’s rights or deprive them of benefits they’re entitled to based on biased or inappropriate considerations and without proper due process or accountability if there is an error. By outsourcing decision-making to private AI companies without sufficient transparency, testing, or legal limits, WISeR jeopardizes seniors’ access to medical care. Congress should step in to place greater legal limits on the use of automated decision-making in Medicare.
The new documents “show why we need stronger legal limits around government use of automated decision-making…” according to the newsletter. And another EFF page argues that the American public "still lacks the information needed to assess whether clinician review is providing meaningful oversight of AI systems and whether appropriate data is being used to evaluate prior authorization requests.”
WISeR’s payment structure gives vendors, as the government put it, "an incentive to deny as many claims as possible....” [One company] denied more requests than it approved in the first few months of the program, and CMS inquired about "denials that appear inaccurate or inconsistent with applicable criteria.” Ultimately, the records obtained by EFF raise more questions than they answer about the safeguards used by WISeR vendors…
A growing body of scholarship points to the substantial limitations of “human in the loop” policies as guardrails for AI systems. AI-generated recommendations can unduly influence human decisions, leading reviewers to over-rely on automated judgements and rubber stamp them as correct. Even worse, at least one health insurance company actively pressured clinical reviewers to accept its AI systems’ recommendations. Another company built a system that allowed clinical reviewers to reject claims without opening patient files; clinical reviewers using this system spent an average of just 1.2 seconds on each case..
As the government expands its use of automated decision-making, the potential for consequential mistakes increases rapidly. The records we’ve obtained so far raise questions about the rushed rollout and lack of guardrails for automated decision-making by the U.S. government. EFF urges transparency, oversight, and legal limits to protect people from the harms of automated decision-making in high risk systems.
Hundreds of Fake Accounts Defended Jensen Huang On Social Media
The Washington Post reports on something peculiar about support for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang online after he’d told the world he’d been unfaithful to his wife (before reports of his second extramarital affair):
Joining the chorus online were voices of seemingly everyday people: a chef, a stock trader, a Hebrew teacher and several environmental activists. But at least 400 of them were fake, according to research from the nonprofit Midas Project, with links to a public relations firm involved in previous so-called “sockpuppet” campaigns… Many of the fake accounts, according to Midas Project executive director Tyler Johnston, replied to journalists, former U.S. officials and other prominent figures and backed not just Huang but Nvidia’s push to sell its cutting-edge chips to Chinese firms.
Like other documented influence campaigns, the posts appeared to have limited reach; the most-viewed tweet garnered about 8,000 views and 32 likes. Still, some of the posts targeted lawmakers, including accounts for the [U.S.] House Select Committee on China, Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). “That’s a place where you might not need a lot of views, but maybe the staffers who are running the lawmakers’ account are paying attention to how their messages are received,” said Johnston, whose group advocates for safe AI development…
There were other clues that helped identify accounts as being part of an apparently coordinated campaign, according to the Midas Project. Some of them were created minutes or hours apart, and had user names and profile photos refreshed at similar times. They also sometimes engaged on oddly specific issues ranging from Qatar to Nippon Steel’s bid for U.S. Steel and a waste management plant in Oregon.... Any one one of the posts — often replies to other posts — might have not looked suspicious in isolation. But the various clues taken together, Johnston said, gave evidence that they were linked. Some of the accounts then rushed to delete posts after he posted his findings online, and at least 260 of them have been deactivated or suspended by X.
The same happened to…