Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. How Anthropic’s Claude Helped Mozilla to Improve Firefox’s Security
  2. Military GPS Jamming is Interfering with the Navigation Systems of Commercial Ships
  3. Seagate Just Unleashed 44TB Hard Drives
  4. First Solar Car Rolls Off Validation Assembly Line At Aptera
  5. Prediction Market ‘Kalshi’ Sued for Not Paying $54 Million for Bets on Khamenei’s Death
  6. Indonesia To Ban Social Media For Children Under 16
  7. China Releases First Homegrown Quantum Computing OS
  8. Asteroid 2024 YR4 Will Not Impact the Moon
  9. Humanity Heating Planet Faster Than Ever Before, Study Finds
  10. Trump Administration Says It Can’t Process Tariff Refunds Because of Computer Problems
  11. Oura Buys Gesture-Navigation Startup DoublePoint
  12. Apple Blocks US Users From Downloading ByteDance’s Chinese Apps
  13. System76 Comments On Recent Age Verification Laws
  14. Mozilla Is Working On a Big Firefox Redesign
  15. Iran War Provides a Large-Scale Test For AI-Assisted Warfare

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.

How Anthropic’s Claude Helped Mozilla to Improve Firefox’s Security

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“It took Anthropic’s most advanced artificial-intelligence model about 20 minutes to find its first Firefox browser bug during an internal test of its hacking prowess,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The Anthropic team submitted it, and Firefox’s developers quickly wrote back: This bug was serious. Could they get on a call? “What else do you have? Send us more,” said Brian Grinstead, an engineer with Mozilla, Firefox’s parent organization.

Anthropic did. Over a two-week period in January, Claude Opus 4.6 found more high-severity bugs in Firefox than the rest of the world typically reports in two months, Mozilla said… In the two weeks it was scanning, Claude discovered more than 100 bugs in total, 14 of which were considered “high severity…” Last year, Firefox patched 73 bugs that it rated as either high severity or critical.
A Mozilla blog post calls Firefox “one of the most scrutinized and security-hardened codebases on the web. Open source means our code is visible, reviewable, and continuously stress-tested by a global community.” So they’re impressed — and also thankful Anthropic provided test cases “that allowed our security team to quickly verify and reproduce each issue.”
Within hours, our platform engineers began landing fixes, and we kicked off a tight collaboration with Anthropic to apply the same technique across the rest of the browser codebase… . A number of the lower-severity findings were assertion failures, which overlapped with issues traditionally found through fuzzing, an automated testing technique that feeds software huge numbers of unexpected inputs to trigger crashes and bugs. However, the model also identified distinct classes of logic errors that fuzzers had not previously uncovered…

We view this as clear evidence that large-scale, AI-assisted analysis is a powerful new addition in security engineers’ toolbox. Firefox has undergone some of the most extensive fuzzing, static analysis, and regular security review over decades. Despite this, the model was able to reveal many previously unknown bugs. This is analogous to the early days of fuzzing; there is likely a substantial backlog of now-discoverable bugs across widely deployed software.
“In the time it took us to validate and submit this first vulnerability to Firefox, Claude had already discovered fifty more unique crashing inputs” in 6,000 C++ files, Anthropic says in a blog post (which points out they’ve also used Claude Opus 4.6 to discover vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel).

“Anthropic “also rolled out Claude Code Security, an automated code security testing tool, last month,” reports Axios, noting the move briefly rattled cybersecurity stocks

Military GPS Jamming is Interfering with the Navigation Systems of Commercial Ships

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“Within 24 hours of the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, ships in the region’s waters found their navigation systems had gone haywire,” reports CNN, “erroneously indicating that the vessels were at airports, a nuclear power plant and on Iranian land.

“The location confusion was a result of widespread jamming and spoofing of signals from global positioning satellite systems.”
Used by all sides in conflict zones to disrupt the paths of drones and missiles, the process involves militaries and affiliated groups intentionally broadcasting high-intensity radio signals in the same frequency bands used by navigation tools. Jamming results in the disruption of a vehicle’s satellite-based positioning while spoofing leads to navigation systems reporting a false location. Though commercial vessels are not the target, the electronic interference disrupted the navigation systems of more than 1,100 commercial ships in UAE, Qatari, Omani and Iranian waters on February 28, according to a report from Windward, a shipping intelligence firm. Jamming and spoofing also slowed marine traffic moving through the Strait of Hormuz, a congested shipping lane that handles roughly 20% of the world’s oil and gas exports and where precise navigation is essential, Windward’s data showed.... Daily incidents have more than doubled, rising from 350 when the conflict began to 672 by March 2, the firm reported.

As use of this warfare tactic grows, experts worry the impacts could reach far beyond battlespaces.... In June 2025, electronic interference with navigation systems was thought to be a factor in the collision between two oil tankers, Adalynn and Front Eagle, off the coast of the UAE… The number of global positioning system signal loss events affecting aircraft increased by 220% between 2021 and 2024, according to data from the International Air Transport Association. Last year, IATA said that the aviation industry must act to stay ahead of the threat.

Cockpits are seeing their navigation displays “literally drift away from reality,” said a commercial pilot, who didn’t want to be identified because he was not permitted to speak publicly. He said that he and his colleagues have experienced map shifts, where the aircraft location appears to move up to 1 mile away from the actual flight path, false altitude information that leads to phantom “pull up” commands, and systems suggesting an aircraft was on a taxiway, a path that connects runways with various airport facilities, when taking off. These incidents force pilots to rely on manual actions that increase workload, often during the most exhausting points of long-haul flights, he said.
“Alternative navigational tools that don’t rely on GPS, but instead harness quantum technology, are also in development,” the article points out, “but remain a long way off operational use.”

Alternative nav tools that don’t rely on GPS?

By schwit1 • Score: 3 Thread

Like the ones used for hundreds of years prior to GPS?
Maybe a critical need shouldn’t rely on a system that’s a single point of failure. Especially in a region prone to combat.

When I was in the Navy

By Valgrus Thunderaxe • Score: 4, Funny Thread
All we needed was a hold full of grog and a sextant.

There are solutions

By Samare • Score: 3 Thread

There are solutions to both detect spoofing - like the free Galileo OSNMA - and work around it - like using Starlink and/or OneWeb signals.

Seagate Just Unleashed 44TB Hard Drives

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“Seagate says it is now shipping its Mozaic 4+ HAMR-based hard drives at up to 44TB per drive,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, “with production deployments already underway at two hyperscale cloud providers.

“The company claims the platform is the only heat-assisted magnetic recording [HAMR] implementation currently operating at scale, and it is targeting a path from today’s 4+TB per disk toward 10TB per disk, eventually enabling 100TB-class drives.”
In a one-exabyte deployment, Seagate estimates Mozaic could improve infrastructure efficiency by roughly 47% compared to standard 30TB drives, cutting both footprint and energy consumption… HAMR uses a tiny laser to heat the disk surface during writes, allowing higher recording density without sacrificing stability. With most major cloud storage providers reportedly qualified on the Mozaic platform, Seagate is positioning spinning disks, not flash, as the long-term answer for cost-effective AI-scale data growth.

Re: Does Seagate still suck?

By wgoodman • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Seagate is still pretty crap

Quality

By JBMcB • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
At this point I think it depends on the individual drive mechanism, even from the same manufacturer. The best data source for this stuff is Backblaze, whom unfortunately only covers enterprise class drives. There is even quite a bit of variation across different manufacturing runs of the same drive.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog…

One run of Seagate 12TB drives has a 2.7% failure rate, which is mediocre, while a different run of the same drive is at 0.9%, which is pretty good. HGST used to be great, but now their numbers are mostly well north of 1%. WDC looks pretty good, except for one drive at 2.6%,

First Solar Car Rolls Off Validation Assembly Line At Aptera

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“Reservation holders, it’s finally time to get ready,” writes long-time Slashdot reader AirHog. The EV news site Electrek reports:
Aptera Motors, “the little startup that could,” announced another important milestone… completing the first example of its flagship solar EV on its validation assembly line in Southern California…

While the validation line at its headquarters remains a low-volume assembly process, its successful operation represents the startup’s transition from hand-built validation SEVs to a more structured assembly line process that will be fine-tuned for mass production… With low-volume assembly now being validated, Aptera is starting to publicly utter encouraging terms like “EPA certification” and, better yet, that holy grail of “initial customer deliveries.” Before then, however, the Aptera Solar EVs built on this low-volume validation line will be used for testing programs such as thermal validation, brake performance, and “some destructive testing.” Aptera shared that its assembly and integration team has grown to become the largest at the startup, “reflecting the beginning of its transition from engineering development to testing and production execution”…

As of March 2026, Aptera says it has over 50,000 reservations totaling over $2 billion in sales if all were to solidify following the launch of a deliverable vehicle.
Clean Technica notes the vehicles’ “generous cargo space that comes out to 60% more storage than a Honda Accord and 20% more storage than a Prius, according to the company.”
“Built with recyclable materials, this eco-friendly vehicle features a lightweight carbon fiber structure and no-welding assembly for maximum cost and production efficiency,” Aptera adds. The emphasis on lightweighting supports the goal of engineering a car that can travel on the electricity provided by its onboard solar panels.

The company currently advertises that the vehicle can travel 40 miles on solar power alone, with the battery providing extra juice as needed. Ideally, the car can keep recharging itself with sunlight, further elongating the time between charging sessions… [Its range is up to 1,000 miles with plug-in charging.] The new autocycle could also appeal to drivers who enjoy the challenge of hypermiling, which involves deploying a suite of driving techniques to minimize fuel consumption. Hypermiling can apply to gas-powered cars, but the magic really kicks in with the regenerative braking capability of EVs. Aptera’s onboard solar panels add another dimension to the fun.

Looked at the site

By MpVpRb • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

No technical information about the actual car
Lots of attractive people and nice scenery
Lots of information on investing
Flag = red

Really?

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

We’ve had solar cars before. But forget about who’s first. The issue with solar cars is that the surface area of the panels is not enough to produce any meaningful amount of energy. Unless you only drive a mile or two with days of parking in between, solar cars are a gimmick.

Better to focus on real (electric) cars and have an a solar array to connect it to.

Re:Looked at the site

By backslashdot • Score: 4, Informative Thread

It does have all the technical info in a Q&A format at https://aptera.us/discovery-ce… though they really should have made it into a table format. It does have all the info you’d find on any car website. The car itself is real (there’s also videos on YouTube), I’ve seen it some years ago. Obviously I don’t know if the range/performance is as claimed, but they don’t seem to be saying anything that defies physics or even current engineering/battery tech.

Prediction Market ‘Kalshi’ Sued for Not Paying $54 Million for Bets on Khamenei’s Death

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Independent:
A popular predictions market app will not pay out the $54 million some of its users believed they were owed after correctly forecasting the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a report.

Kalshi, which allows players to gamble on real-world events, offered customers favorable odds on Khamenei, 86, being “out as Supreme Leader” in response to the announcement of joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Tehran in the early hours of Saturday morning. The company promoted the trade on its homepage and app and tweeted [last] Saturday: “BREAKING: The odds Ali Khamenei is out as Supreme Leader have surged to 68 percent.” It continued: “Reminder: Kalshi does not offer markets that settle on death. If Ali Khamenei dies, the market will resolve based on the last traded price prior to confirmed reporting of death.” Khamenei was later confirmed dead in the airstrikes and the company clarified in a follow-up post: “Please note: A prior version of this clarification was grammatically ambiguous. As a customer service measure, Kalshi will reimburse lost value due to trades made between these clarifications....”

While the company has offered to reimburse any bets, fees or losses from the trade placed prior to its clarification message, it has nevertheless attracted a firestorm of complaints on social media.
A Kalshi spokesperson told Reuters they’d reimbursed “net losses” out of pocket “to the tune of millions of dollars”. But a class action lawsuit was filed Thursday saying Kalshi had failed to pay $54 million:
Kalshi did not invoke a “death carveout” provision until after the Iranian leader was killed to avoid paying customers in Kalshi’s “Khamenei Market” what they were owed, the lawsuit said… The language specifying that Khamenei’s departure could be due to any cause, including death, was “clear, unambiguous and binary,” the lawsuit said, describing Kalshi’s actions as “deceptive” and “predatory.”
“In a notice filed Monday, the company proposed standardizing the terms of all its markets that implicitly depend on a person surviving…” reports Business Insider. “The update comes after Kalshi paid $2.2 million to resolve complaints from users who were confused by the way it divided the $55 million wagered on Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s ouster after his targeted killing by Israel and the US.”

Their article cites a DePaul University law professor who says “There’s now sort of this nascent, but bipartisan movement against prediction markets. I think Kalshi’s feeling the heat.” For example, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy told the Washington Post, “People shouldn’t be rooting for people to die because they placed a bet.”

The End Cannot Come Soon Enough

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

All the prediction “markets” are senseless scams. They can only survive by arbitrarily choosing when not to pay. It’s the only possible way for the house to always win. These things should never have been allowed to exist.

I don’t understand how they bypass ani-gambling laws.

I don’t understand why anyone would put money into them.

These scam operations cannot die soon enough.

Re:The End Cannot Come Soon Enough

By know-nothing cunt • Score: 5, Funny Thread

These scam operations cannot die soon enough.

Wanna bet?

Re:The End Cannot Come Soon Enough

By OrangeTide • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

I don’t understand how they bypass anti-gambling laws.

Perhaps it is difficult to write such a law in a way that also still allows for non-voting, non-dividend-yielding public stocks. Might be easier to just let this prediction market nonsense to go on as long as there isn’t a way for people to slide their retirement accounts into it (like they now can with crypto)

it was all fun and games until

By oumuamua • Score: 3 Thread
this bet: I predict Jihadists will retaliate on prediction market headquarters

The house always wins

By hdyoung • Score: 3 Thread
This is online gambling. The house always wins.

Repeat after me 10 times:

The. House. Always. Wins.

They can and will change the rules to make sure that they always win. Their slick internet 8.0 facade doesn’t change what they are.

The. House. Always. Wins.

Indonesia To Ban Social Media For Children Under 16

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Indonesia will ban children under 16 from having accounts on major social media platforms as part of a government push to protect minors from harmful content, addiction, and online threats. The rule will roll out starting March 28 and makes Indonesia the first country in Southeast Asia to impose such a restriction. The Guardian reports:
Meutya Hafid said in a statement to media said that she signed a government regulation that will mean children under the age of 16 can no longer have accounts on high-risk digital platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Roblox and Bigo Live, a popular livestreaming site. With a population of about 285 million, the fourth-highest in the world, the south-east Asian nation represents a significant market for social networks.

The implementation will start gradually from 28 March, until all platforms fulfill their compliance obligations. “The basis is clear. Our children face increasingly real threats. From exposure to pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud, and most importantly addiction. The government is here so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giant of algorithms,” Hafid said.

She added that the government is taking this step as the best effort in the midst of a digital emergency to reclaim sovereignty over children’s futures. “We realize that the implementation of this regulation may cause some discomfort at first. Children may complain and parents may be confused about how to respond to their children’s complaints,” Hafid said.

That’s right you brats!

By GeekWithAKnife • Score: 3 Thread

If you wanna do sneaky shit you’re gonna have to go outside!

Sign up now to my new service DroneBook(TM) - which is *not* a social media platform due to its antisocial nature - to record outside activities, comment and send to all your friends! It’s FREE!

Halfway there.

By Gravis Zero • Score: 3 Thread

Now they just need to bad social media for people that are at least 16 and they will have fixed the problems with social media.

China Releases First Homegrown Quantum Computing OS

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
The Global Times reports:
China’s first domestically developed quantum computer operating system, Origin Pilot, has been made available for online download, the Global Times learned from the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center on Wednesday. A Chinese scientist said while several quantum computing operating system efforts are underway worldwide, this is the first developed in China where it is seen as part of China’s broad effort to achieve technology independence and to achieve technology advance in quantum computing.

The center said the release marks the world’s first open-source quantum computer operating system available for public download, which is expected to lower development barriers and support the growth of China’s quantum computing ecosystem. Developed by Hefei-based Origin Quantum Computing Technology Co, the company behind China’s third-generation superconducting quantum computer, Origin Wukong, Origin Pilot was first launched in 2021 and has gone through multiple rounds of iteration and upgrade.

The developer describes it as an integrated quantum-classical-intelligent computing operating system compatible with major hardware approaches, including superconducting qubits, trapped ions and neutral atoms. It is now deployed on the company’s Origin Wukong series and is available to external users, the company said. Guo Guoping, chief scientist of Origin Quantum and director at the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center, told the Global Times that a quantum operating system is the “soft heart” of the quantum computing ecosystem. He said the decision to make Origin Pilot available globally marks a shift in China’s quantum computing industry from closed-door tech innovation to broader open-source ecosystem development.
Dou Menghan, head of the research team, said: “Users can quickly integrate with quantum chips of multiple physical types and, using autonomous programming frameworks such as QPanda, execute quantum computing jobs across different physical quantum chips to support both research and commercialization needs.”

Will it comply with age check laws …

By Alain Williams • Score: 3 Thread

that have been introduced in California and elsewhere ?

No.

By Gravis Zero • Score: 4, Informative Thread

I looked at what is being offered and just like many other “Quantum Computing Operating Systems,” it is merely an OS that runs on a classical processor but supports the use of a quantum processing as a peripheral device using software, not even as kernel component.

At best, this is a OS tailored for interfacing with a quantum processor.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 Will Not Impact the Moon

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Ancient Slashdot reader alanw shares a report from the European Space Agency (ESA):
Last year, an approximately 60 meter near-Earth object captured global attention. For a brief period, asteroid 2024 YR4 became the most dangerous asteroid discovered in the last 20 years. While an Earth impact was soon ruled out, the asteroid faded from view with a lingering 4% chance of striking the Moon on 22 December 2032. Now, that risk has been eliminated. Astronomers have confirmed that 2024 YR4 will not impact the Moon using new observations made by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Instead, it will safely pass the Moon at a distance of more than 20 000 km.

Safely?

By quonset • Score: 3 Thread

Instead, it will safely pass the Moon at a distance of more than 20 000 km.

20,000 kilometers is 12,427 miles which just happens to be almost the same diameter of Earth. When considering the vastness of space, missing something by the diameter of Earth is hardly safe.

Humanity Heating Planet Faster Than Ever Before, Study Finds

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader The Guardian:
Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before, a study has found. Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures. It found global heating accelerated from a steady rate of less than 0.2C per decade between 1970 and 2015 to about 0.35C per decade over the past 10 years. The rate is higher than scientists have seen since they started systematically taking the Earth’s temperature in 1880.

“If the warming rate of the past 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5C (2.7F) limit of the Paris agreement before 2030,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study. […] The researchers applied a noise-reduction method to filter out the estimated effect of nonhuman factors in five major datasets that scientists have compiled to gauge the Earth’s temperature. In each of them, they found an acceleration in global heating emerged in 2013 or 2014.
The findings have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Who cares

By backslashdot • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I’m rich. I’m going to space. I’ll see you guys roast from my telescope on Moonbase Alpha. Bye bye suckers.

The 1.5C target was missed a decade ago

By hdyoung • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Yelling to keep under the 1.5C limit is like campaigning to save the dodo bird and the Yangze river dolphin. You’re trying to save something that’s already dead, buddy.

Re:We so needed ANOTHER study to confirm this…

By CommunityMember • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Such a necessity. ANOTHER study. Really, fundamental. We don’t have enough of those, right?

Science (real science) does require additional studies (using different methodologies and underlying data) to confirm the conclusions.

Re:Where’s the temperature increase?

By gtall • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Look at the glaciers in the Alps. Notice how they are retreating. Look at Arctic ice, notice how it is decreasing. Notice the American West. Notice how it is becoming desiccated. Look at average sea level. Notice how it is increasing. Look at the advance of tropical diseases. Notice how they are moving northward in the northern hemisphere and southward in the southern hemisphere (mosquitoes really like warmer climates). Look at the heat waves. Notice they are increasing in number and frequency. Look at the two fire seasons in the American West. Notice how it is becoming a years long fire season.

Look at the inflammation in climate deniers brains. Notice how it is increasing.

Nope, no global warming here.....hint, that last one is a dead giveaway.

Re:470 employees and 29 million Euro budget

By tragedy • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

They could take 10% of their annual budget and build a 10 megawatt solar farm, to reduce global warming and reduce pollution, every 5 years.

Or they could do their actual job and their findings could convince the public, the government, and potentially private industry that it is worth investing far, far more than that into building GigaWatts of solar every year.

The research agency was founded 34 years ago, in 1992, and could have been building multiple solar farms to take direct action against global warming caused by pollution, but they did not.

And everyone could be baking their own bread, driving their own garbage to the dump instead of leaving it out for the collector, or doing their own surgery. Heck, some people do. Generally though specialization actually works. True, it’s a question of balance and things sometimes get over-specialized, but I don’t think this is one of those circumstances. They are a research institute that does climate research. However big they may seem to you, their budget is actually minuscule compared to the problem. They are supposed to do research that can help guide policy, which deals with resource management on a scale many orders of magnitude above their budget.

You seem to be pushing some form of individual responsibility argument where the burden of dealing with the issue falls on small actors. An example would be water conservation. Overuse of water is an issue, so we want people to conserve water in the home. I am personally all for that. There’s no reason (despite the claims of some that you need to flush the toilet ten times, fifteen times, as opposed to once) that you shouldn’t have an efficient toilet because a properly designed one just needs one flush with only a fraction of the water of an old fashioned toilet. There’s no reason that other appliances shouldn’t be water efficient either. However, residential water usage is about 8% of all water usage. While it’s good not to be wasteful, focusing too much on fussing about residential usage when a tiny increase in industrial or agricultural water efficiency surpasses what is even possible in residential savings is a poor use of time and effort. Just getting 20% more farms to use drip irrigation would probably exceed any gains that could be made in residential water usage.

So, it seems to me that’s what you’re doing here, but to an even greater degree. Putting 10% or even 100% of their budget towards building solar panels would not make a dent, but the data from their studies could.

In this case 34 years of talking talking and talking more has not built any pollution reducing green energy power generating plants.

The problem here is that you have not actually provided any evidence of your assertion that their research has not led to any improvements. Institutes like this are, in fact, the ones who figure out which are the most serious problems to tackle and which are the easiest problems to tackle that can do the largest amount of good. If we ignore the actual differences in available technology over those 34 years (and variations in their budget), you’re saying that they could have roughly built about 68 MW of solar capacity over their existence. Even if we outright ignore capacity factors, that would be around 10.43 TeraWatt-hours (I hate Watt-hours, but it’s what everyone uses). If we use the approximate 1 ton of CO2 produced per MWh from using coal for electricity, that would prevent about 10,431,000 tons of CO2. That would be about 380,000 tons of methane. Or about 2,607 tons of HFC-404A refrigerant, etc. Policies preventing methane dumping into the atmosphere and phasing out problematic refrigerants as well as many others eliminate vastly more greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere than the usage of their budget that you are proposing. Those policies are created based on the recommendations of research like the kind produced by this institute.

Trump Administration Says It Can’t Process Tariff Refunds Because of Computer Problems

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a filing on Friday that it currently cannot process billions in tariff refunds because its import-processing system is “not well suited to a task of this scale.” The Verge reports:
The CBP’s admission comes after the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs imposed by Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) last month. This week, the International Trade Court ruled that importers impacted by the tariffs are entitled to refunds with interest. The CBP estimates that it collected around $166 billion in IEEPA duties as of March 4th, 2026. […]

The CBP says it currently processes imports through its Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system. In the filing, Lord says that using the department’s existing technology, it would take more than 4.4 million hours to process refunds for the over 53.2 million entries with IEEPA duties. Despite these current limitations, the CBP says it’s “confident” it can develop and launch new capabilities to “streamline and consolidate refunds and interest payments on an importer basis” — but this could take 45 days. “The process will be simpler and more efficient than the existing functionalities, and CBP will provide guidance on how to file refund declarations in the new system,” Lord says.

You pay more, of course

By abulafia • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Consumers get to pay for the refunds, too. Taxes is taxes.

Thank your president and don’t forget to tip your waiter.

Re:Tarrif money…

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

$143 million to a company that has existed on paper for 8 days.

Guess that means he has to bomb another school for a distraction.

Assuming we are still a democracy in 2029

By rsilvergun • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
It is going to be a fucking nightmare to unwind all this corruption and all this damage.

We really are going to need 12 to 16 years of democrat presidencies and Congress but I don’t think we’re going to get it because voters just do not fucking have a clue…

Re:Assuming we are still a democracy in 2029

By thegarbz • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Corruption on this scale is never unwound, it’ll just be relegated to a cautionary tale of history while the people involved lay on the beach in on an island somewhere. That’s the best case scenario there - that the people get away with their ill gotten gains. The worst case scenario is they attempt to stick around.

Re: Let’s be realistic

By fluffernutter • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

This is exactly why bad people do bad things and expect to get away with it. Because of people who end up saying “they may as well keep it”. The money is taken by grift and can never be returned to the correct people, that is true. But the point is to punish the people who caused it by making their lives all difficult.

Oura Buys Gesture-Navigation Startup DoublePoint

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Smart ring maker Oura has acquired Doublepoint, a Finnish startup specializing in gesture recognition technology for wearables. Engadget reports:
The Finnish startup uses smartwatches and wristbands as examples of products that benefit from its technology, but Oura will clearly be looking to incorporate it into its rings, in theory allowing you to control your connected devices with hand movements.

Oura said in a press release that the deal sees it inherit an “exceptional team of AI architects and builders from Doublepoint,” including Doublepoint’s four founders. The newly-acquired company will remain in its native Helsinki, where it will work with Oura’s international teams.

It added that Doublepoint’s expertise in helping devices register subtle hand movements will be key, as nobody wearing a smart ring is going to engage with gesture control if they have to thrash their hand around like a conductor.

Apple Blocks US Users From Downloading ByteDance’s Chinese Apps

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired:
While TikTok operates in the United States under new ownership, Apple has deployed technical restrictions to block iOS users in the United States from downloading other apps made by the video platform’s Chinese parent organization ByteDance. ByteDance owns a vast array of different apps spanning social media, entertainment, artificial intelligence, and other sectors. The leading one is Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which has over 1 billion monthly active users. While most of those users reside in China, iPhone owners around the world have traditionally been able to download these apps from anywhere without using a VPN, as long as they have a valid App Store account registered in China.

That’s not true anymore. Starting in late January, iPhone users in the U.S. with Chinese App Store accounts began reporting that they were encountering new obstacles when they tried to download apps developed by ByteDance. WIRED has confirmed that even with a valid Chinese App Store account, downloading or updating a ByteDance-owned Chinese app is blocked on Apple devices located in the United States. Instead, a pop-up window appears that says, “This app is unavailable in the country or region you’re in.” The restriction appears to apply only to ByteDance-owned apps and not those developed by other Chinese companies.

The timing and technical specifics suggest the restriction is related to the deal TikTok agreed to in January to divest Chinese ownership of its U.S. operations. The agreement was the result of the so-called TikTok ban law passed by Congress in 2024, which also barred companies like Apple and Google from distributing other apps majority-owned by ByteDance. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act states that no company can “distribute, maintain, or update” any app majority-controlled by ByteDance “within the land or maritime borders of the United States.”

The law was primarily aimed at TikTok, which has more than 100 million users in the U.S. and had been the subject of years of debate in Washington over whether its Chinese ownership posed a national security risk. But ByteDance also has dozens of other apps that at some point were also removed from Apple’s and Google’s app stores in the U.S.. Now it seems like the scope of impact has reached even more apps that are not technically designed for U.S. audiences, such as Douyin, the AI chatbot Doubao, and the fiction reading platform Fanqie Novel.

The letter of the law

By Local ID10T • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act states that no company can “distribute, maintain, or update” any app majority-controlled by ByteDance “within the land or maritime borders of the United States.”

Apple is following the law as written. So… Why is this a headline now?

TT now Oracles’ surveillance tool

By tekram • Score: 4, Informative Thread

That is the point of view on most discussion sites now:

‘2d ago I dumped the (US) app once they decided you couldnt turn off your precise location and introduced the local tab with no opt out - its pretty clear Oracle views this as a surveillance tool rather than a social media app and old TikTok is gone for good.’

System76 Comments On Recent Age Verification Laws

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
In a blog post on Thursday, System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized new state laws in California, Colorado, and New York that would require operating systems to verify users’ ages and expose that information to apps, arguing the rules are easy for kids to bypass and ultimately undermine privacy and freedom more than they protect minors.

“System76’s position is interesting given that they sell Linux-loaded desktops, workstations and laptops plus being an operating system vendor with their in-house Pop!_OS distribution and COSMIC desktop environment,” adds Phoronix’s Michael Larabel, noting that they’re also based out of Colorado. Here’s an excerpt from the post:
“A parent that creates a non-admin account on a computer, sets the age for a child account they create, and hands the computer over is in no different state. The child can install a virtual machine, create an account on the virtual machine and set the age to 18 or over. It’s a similar technique to installing a VPN to get around the Great Firewall of China (just consider that for a moment). Or the child can simply re-install the OS and not tell their parents. … In the case of Colorado’s and California’s bills, effectiveness is lost. In the case of New York’s bill, liberty is lost. In the case of centralized platforms, potential is lost. … The challenges we face are neither technical nor legal. The only solution is to educate our children about life with digital abundance. Throwing them into the deep end when they’re 16 or 18 is too late. It’s a wonderful and weird world. Yes, there are dark corners. There always will be. We have to teach our children what to do when they encounter them and we have to trust them.”
“We are accustomed to adding operating system features to comply with laws,” writes Richell, in closing. “Accessibility features for ADA, and power efficiency settings for Energy Star regulations are two examples. We are a part of this world and we believe in the rule of law. We still hope these laws will be recognized for the folly they are and removed from the books or found unconstitutional.”

Misses the point.

By DarkOx • Score: 3, Interesting Thread

“A parent that creates a non-admin account on a computer, sets the age for a child account they create, and hands the computer over is in no different state. The child can install a virtual machine, create an account on the virtual machine and set the age to 18 or over. It’s a similar technique to installing a VPN to get around the Great Firewall of China (just consider that for a moment). Or the child can simply re-install the OS and not tell their parents. …

The system does not need to be entirely unbeatable. As so many people here point out, parents still need to parent their kids. Now if you look in on your kid every once in a while you might just notice them doing things like re-installing an OS, running a bunch of VMs etc, and as a parent have an opportunity to ask them some questions about why.

This whole idea that these measures need to be 100% effective to no be entirely useless is just wrong. I am even tempted to think given how much opponents of these rules spend thinking about they are entirely aware of that but use the argument anyway because they don’t want to be upfront about the real reasons for their opposition.

Re:Misses the point.

By Baloo Uriza • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
So we’re just ignoring the privacy and individual freedom problems with this, with zero to gain for it?

STOP PLAYING THE GAME

By PalmPreFan • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

We all know this is a pretext for digital ID. You do not have to play along. You can just refuse it all and say no. You are not a sheep. You are not a slave. You are not cattle. You have agency and free will in this world and in this life. Grow a spine and say “NO, I REFUSE”.

It’s not the same

By liqu1d • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
Shite argument, ADA helps people who potentially couldn’t use a system if not for laws. Age verification is a system for privacy invasion hanging onto the coattails of inept parents. Laws should protect children from bad parents. This primarily works by punishing said bad parents not by making the rest of society suffer for their inability. There have always been tools to protect children whilst not perfect are still orders of magnitude better than this implementation.

Re:Misses the point.

By StormReaver • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

You are not being asked for any proof or anything beyond your say so.

You are incredibly ignorant and naive if you think it will stop there. These are foot-in-the door steps. It’s typical first steps of a repressive regime.

Mozilla Is Working On a Big Firefox Redesign

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
darwinmac writes:
Mozilla is working on a huge redesign for its Firefox browser, codenamed “Nova,” which will bring pastel gradients, a refreshed new tab page, floating “island” UI elements, and more. “From the mockups, it appears Mozilla took some inspiration from Googles Material You (or at least, the dynamic color extraction part of it) because the browser color accent appears influenced by the wallpaper setting,” reports Neowin. “Choosing a mint-green desktop background automatically shifts the top navigation bars to match that exact shade.”

Mozilla has a habit of redesigning Firefox every few years. Before “Nova,” there was the "Proton” redesign in 2021, the "Photon” redesign in 2017, and the "Australis” redesign in 2014. Nova is still in early development, so it might take a year or two before it appears in an official stable Firefox release. Neowin adds: “Not every redesign project ends well for Mozilla, though. You might remember 2012’s Firefox Metro, an ambitious attempt to build a custom browser for Windows 8s touch-first interface. The team built it to operate both as a traditional desktop application and as a touch-optimized Metro app. The whole thing was scrapped in 2014 after two years in development due to a dismally low user adoption rate (a preview version of the software had been released a year earlier on the Aurora channel).”

Springtime on Open Source Island

By abulafia • Score: 5, Funny Thread
The simple utilities are chirping, the Gimp lumbers out of its cave and sniffs the spring air. The latest kernel hasn’t quite surfaced from the lake, but is expected at any time.

This year, however, special. It is Mozilla Molting season.

These can be difficult times for Mozilla. Shedding its skin and forming a new one doesn’t happen easily or painlessly. Frequently, vestigial appendages unexpectedly burst forth, like VPNs and LLM buttons. Sometimes it is more subtle, with Mozilla’s own extensions failing to recognize its new visage.

Re:As long as I can keep using the old look

By lucifuge31337 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Because these are tools not toys. My phone is also a tool not a toy that I wish thery would stop making UI changes to.

Re:Grasp

By Anaerin • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
A lot of that problem is web developers (and platforms) using vendor-locked prefixes for features they want to take advantage of, and not also checking for the generic versions.

Just make it look like Netscape Navigator again

By SoonerPet • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
I’m really tired of all these programs feeling like they need to completely change the interface and redesign things every couple years. It’s a web browser, I just want it to work and be a window to the website I’m accessing, I don’t need all the bells and whistles, and surely don’t need any AI crap tacked into it. I’d love to just go back to a simple Netscape Navigator style browser, add in some of the modern security and extension availability and we’re good. I’ve always preferred Firefox going back decades through its various name changes, mostly because I loath Google, but also Chrome just looks horrid. I still use Firefox for all the great extensions, though I’m more and more using Brave lately.

Oh goodie. Hiding more things from the user.

By quonset • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

There used to be a time when you could go into Settings and easily find what you wanted to change, check or uncheck a box, and you were done. With the current version you have to dig through nebulous sounding locations with unclear nomeclature and hope you found what you’re looking for.

For example, if you wanted to manually remove all the saved cookies and such for specific web sites, you could go to Privacy and Security then open the Manage Data area. Everything was there in one location. No muss, no fuss.

Now you have to dig through at least two other boxes to find the same thing, and it doesn’t even work the same.

Are people trying to justify their existence, because that’s what it sounds like. Instead of keeping things simple and usable we’re now forced down the path of shiny for shiny’s sake.

Here’s a question: with all this reworking and “updating”, will we once again have the ability to check a checkbox and never be harassed about updates ever again? Is that too difficult to implement, because it used to be like that for decades until someone needed to show they were being “useful” on the project.

Iran War Provides a Large-Scale Test For AI-Assisted Warfare

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg, written by Katrina Manson:
The U.S. strikes on Iran ordered by President Donald Trump mark the arrival on a large scale of a new era of warfare assisted by artificial intelligence. Captain Timothy Hawkins, a Central Command spokesperson, told me last night that the AI tools the U.S. military is using in Iran operations don’t make targeting decisions and don’t replace humans. But they do help “make smarter decisions faster.” That’s been the driving ambition of the U.S. military, which has spent years looking at how to develop and deploy AI to the battlefield […].

Critics, such as Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of 270 human-rights groups, argue that AI-enabled decision-support systems reduce the separation between recommending and executing a strike to a “dangerously thin” line. Hawkins said the military’s use of AI assistance follows a rigorous process aligned with U.S. policy, military doctrine and the law. Artificial intelligence helps analysts whittle down what they need to focus on, generating so-called points of interest and helping personnel make “smart” decisions in the Iran operations, he told me. AI is also helping to pull data within systems and organize information to provide clarity.

Among the AI tech used in the Iran campaign is Maven Smart System, a digital mission control platform produced by Palantir […]. That emerged from Project Maven, a project started in 2017 by the Pentagon to develop AI for the battlefield. Among the large language models installed on the system is Anthropic’s Claude AI tool, according to the people, who said it has become central to U.S. operations against Iran and to accelerating Maven’s development. Claude is also at the center of a row that pits Anthropic against the Department of Defense over limits on the software.
Further reading: Hacked Tehran Traffic Cameras Fed Israeli Intelligence Before Strike On Khamenei

I’m not convinced it wasn’t deliberate

By rsilvergun • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Trump fired half of his anti-terrorist team the day before striking Iran and put a 22 year old former grocery store clerk in charge of it.

Trump is clearly hoping for a terrorist attack on US Soil. Something like 9/11. He saw what it did for Bush Jr’s poll numbers and he wants that. There are texts from Jeffery Epstein where he talks about Trump doing exactly that. Basically “If I go down I’m taking you all with me” is Trump’s mentality and always has been.

It’s probably why Trump has survived ripping off rich people several times. He’s got dirt on them all and they’re not sure they could arrange a “suicide” before he spilled the beans.

Re: I think it depends

By liqu1d • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
That sort of AI makes perfect sense and has probably been in use long before LLMs came about.

Yeah, whatever

By dskoll • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

The US clearly has overwhelming strength compared to Iran. And woo-woo high-tech! But, the USA is going to lose this war.

Why? Because the US has no clearly-defined goals. All the regime needs to do is survive, which it will: In the entire history of warfare, there has never been a regime change brought about by airstrikes alone. That will be a win for the regime and a loss for the USA. And it’s always the loser who decides when a war is over, so if the USA makes that decision… it’s the loser.

Israel is probably the only country that will benefit from this; it will have a couple of greatly weakened adversaries in Hezbollah and Iran.

Re:Not AI-“Assisted”

By gtall • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Akin to that, the undersec of the DoD, the day-to-day manager in effect, was questioned in the Senate recently about decisions within DoD. He couldn’t answer basic questions and eventually fell back into “l’ll have to check my decision matrix” when asked if la Presidenta was giving orders or was Dogbreath.

Actually we know la Presidenta isn’t really in charge, his Alzheimer’s prevents him from stringing together two coherent sentences, his jumping from “topic” to “topic” reveals he’s got little mental control left. Those bruises on his hand are probably from Leqembi, which is an Alzheimer’s drug; it is administered intravenously.

Dogbreath is living in a G.I. Joe cartoon. They were stupid enough channel Putin on war. Puiin listened to the spooks and never paid attention to logistics. Spooks do not do logistics. Russia’s invasion failed because of logistics. And Maggots do not do logistics either. Hence la Presidenta and Dogbreath are asking in some defense contractors about increasing weapons production. They shot their wad and now are having difficulty getting it up.

So la Presidenta is treating the U.S. like his “companies”. He always destroys what he touches: his “companies”, even his Maggot faithful are whinging about how he lied to them and this isn’t what they voted for (Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones among others). He is precisely what they voted for, they were just too stupid to think of where it would lead. He’s destroyed the Kennedy Center, the White House, NiH and CDC, the State Dept., the confidence our former allies had in the U.S. (no longer, and they cannot even be sure Americans won’t vote in another imbecile in the future, the trust will never return). He fucked Ukraine and is now begging them for help in fighting off the drones. He and his alleged administration, especially Dogbreath, never thought that the drones Iran supplied Russia for use in Ukraine would be used on the rest of the Middle East. ICE is setting up a surveillance system in the U.S. that can track all Americans, and they are building concentration camps and warehouses to put the “undesirables”.

The American economy is cratering. The bill for the Epstein-Iran war is giving Republican eunuchs in Congress indigestion. And if those Arab regimes’ economies get destroyed, like la Presidenta is doing to America’s, then they deserve it for supporting that moron.

Re:Yeah, whatever

By phantomfive • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Because the US has no clearly-defined goals.

The goal is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The secondary objective is to prevent them from rebuilding their rocket supply. The third objective is to remove their support for terrorist proxies around the region.

The bonus objective is regime change.