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hubie writes:

Free beer is great. Securing the keg costs money:

Open source registries are in financial peril, a co-founder of an open source security foundation warned after inspecting their books. And it's not just the bandwidth costs that are killing them.

"The problem is they don't have enough money to spend on the very security features that we all desperately need to stop being a bunch of idiots and installing fu when it's malware," said Michael Winser, a co-founder of Alpha-Omega, a Linux Foundation project to help secure the open source supply chain.

Winser spoke at FOSDEM this year, in a talk we dropped in on virtually.

Trusted registries are widely treated as a key component of Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) - driven supply chain security efforts, one of the main approaches promoted for securing open source software. Rule one: Get your open source packages from a trusted source.

Yet many of these registries operate on razor-thin margins, relying on non-continuous funding from grants, donations, and in-kind resources.

Google and Microsoft kicked in an initial $5 million to launch Alpha-Omega in 2022 under the Open Source Security Foundation.

And the first thing Winser noticed when he ramped up operations was that open source registries are all dirt poor. All the major registries are facing the same issue: They're experiencing exponential growth, even though their investment in infrastructure and people remains flat.

"We're living on borrowed time," he warned.

"One of the problems that people have is they actually conflate open source software and open source infrastructure," Winser said.

Open source software itself is free to use, and its costs don't increase the more people use it. The costs of registries to hold all open source applications and libraries, however, do indeed keep increasing with greater usage.

Packages don't go away. Collections just grow larger and larger. And AI is now adding to the pile at a considerable clip.

Uproar About OS-level Age Verification Laws

Rich writes:

Hackaday reports that unnoticed by many, several jurisdictions, including California and Brazil, have passed age verification laws that require operating system providers to keep age records of users. The uproar has now also spread among many FOSS-covering creators.

The wording of the California law is vague, and the inevitable interpretation by courts might have the outcome of a mandatory cloud account connection for every computer use ("An operating system provider shall ... provide ... with respect to a particular user ... a digital signal"). It is unclear how server computing and community based distros could deal with this.

It appears that the large corporate distributions are willing to cave in, but it is entirely unclear, and has not been even touched within all the uproar, how grassroots distributions like Debian will be affected with their many mirrored repositories and no central user database.

System76 on Age Verification Laws

An Anonymous Coward sent in:

Access is everything:

[...] Colorado's Senate Bill 26-051 and California's Assembly Bill No. 1043 require operating systems to report age brackets to app stores and web sites. A person who creates an account on a computer is supposed to be 18 or older and attest to the age of the user they're creating for themselves or their child. In practice, this means anyone under 18 isn't supposed to create a computer account on their own.

Most System76 employees installed operating systems and created accounts on their computer when they were under 18. They did this out of curiosity. Many started writing software. Some were already writing operating systems. I'm sure the story is similar at most tech companies. Limiting a child's ability to explore what they can do with a computer limits their future. Removing user limitations to the computer (proprietary software, locked-down platforms like Android and iOS) is why System76 exists.

If there is any solace in these two laws, it's that they don't have any real restrictions. There is no actual age verification. Whoever installed the operating system or created the account simply says what age they are. They can lie. They will lie. They're being encouraged to lie for fear of being restricted to a nerfed internet.

[...] It can get worse. New York's proposed Senate Bill S8102A requires adults to prove they're adults to use a computer, exercise bike, smart watch, or car if the device is internet enabled with app ecosystems. The bill explicitly forbids self-reporting and leaves the allowed methods to regulations written by the Attorney General. Practical methods for a bill of such extreme breadth would require, in many instances, providing private information to a third-party just to use a computer at all. Privacy disappears.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/employer-education-experience-ai-expert-leadership-skills-aon

Aon's Joseph Holland discusses how taking the route less travelled can lead you towards the career you were meant to have.

“I wanted to be an architect”, explains Joseph Holland, the director of digital foundations, AI platforms and developer experience, at Aon. That was the plan, however, having completed the Leaving Cert, he found he didn’t have the required CAO points and “suddenly didn’t have a plan anymore”. 

“I’d always been into computers and technology though. Even while I was unemployed I was refurbishing old PCs and selling them on. So when a FÁS caseworker mentioned Fastrack into Information Technology (FIT), it caught my attention immediately.” 

He was accepted onto the programme and emerged with a QQI-FET level six Advanced Certificate in IT Specific Support and a one-year contract at Kepak Group that soon became permanent. 

From there he moved on to Version1 and then Aon, where having spotted a gap whereby there was no developer experience function, he made the case for building one and today is leading the AI platform and developer experience. Along the way he also enrolled at Trinity College Dublin, as a mature student, where he completed his information systems degree. 

All that is to say that often, despite having a plan, you don’t always end up going in the direction you thought you would. Professionally, it can take time and research to figure out the best course of action.  

“I’m glad I did it,” says Holland, “I picked up useful skills around project management, systems analysis and understanding how technology fits into broader business strategy. But honestly, the experience and track record I’d already built mattered more to every employer than the piece of paper.”

Access to less typical educational and upskilling opportunities is, for Holland, “everything”, as he explains without FIT he likely would have chosen to retake the Leaving Cert, pointing his career in a different trajectory. 

He notes, “The traditional system had written me off based on a set of exam results. FIT looked at me differently. What makes programmes like FIT work is the direct connection to industry. You’re not studying theory in isolation. You’re learning skills that employers actually need and you’re getting placed in real workplaces where you can prove yourself.”

Apprenticeships he finds have the power to break down the biggest barriers for young people struggling to get their foot in the door when they don’t have a degree on their CV. 

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/tech-industry-is-in-tariff-hell-even-if-refunds-are-automated/

It's been two weeks since the Supreme Court blocked Donald Trump's emergency tariffs, but an estimated 300,000 US businesses still have no idea if or when they will receive refunds.

Economists have estimated that more than $175 billion was unlawfully collected, and the US could end up owing substantially more than that the longer that the refund process is dragged out, since the US must pay back daily interest on the funds. According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, a conservative estimate showed that "$700 million in interest is added to the final bill every month that the government delays tariff refunds, or around $23 million per day."

The US is aware that interest is compounding daily on tariffs, as the Trump administration argued against an injunction that would've temporarily blocked the tariffs much sooner by noting that no one would be harmed, since tariffs would be repaid with interest if deemed unlawful. However, now that the court has ruled against tariffs, the Trump administration seems to be dragging its feet in finding a way to return all the ill-gotten funds.

Ed Brzytwa, vice president of international trade for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), told Ars that delays seem counter to US interests at this point.

"The government should have an intrinsic interest in providing these new funds as fast as possible, so they don't owe more interest over time," Brzytwa said. Providing refunds sooner, he suggested, would not just benefit companies, but "to their employees, to the US economy, to US consumers, all the above."

For the tech industry, many popular products have been spared hundreds of billions in tariffs since Trump took office, but, as the CTA documented in repeated court filings, many more products were hit by them. Ahead of midterms, when analysts predict that tariff whipsawing might slow down, tech firms remain uncertain about when to expect refunds, experts told Ars. At a time when firms already feel overwhelmed, they're also navigating new tariffs that are raising new legal challenges, while risking more supply chain strains as additional threats of feared tariff stacking loom.

Pressure is increasing on Trump to deliver refunds faster; however, after a US Court of International Trade judge, Richard Eaton, ordered universal refunds for all importers who paid Trump's emergency tariffs on Wednesday. At a hearing that day, Eaton noted that Customs knows how to issue refunds, later ordering that all claims be efficiently resolved, CNBC reported.

Officials from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are expected to share an update on their proposed refund plans at a hearing Friday in that case, raised by Atmus Filtration, which reportedly paid about $11 million in unlawful tariffs.

In the meantime, the CTA and the Chamber of Commerce (CoC) filed a motion [PDF] to submit a proposed brief in another tariffs lawsuit outlining what the trade groups believe is the best strategy for handling refunds.

That lawsuit, raised by V.O.S. Selections, is being overseen by a different Court of International Trade judge, Gary Katzmann. The groups are hoping that he may agree with Eaton, who noted at the Wednesday hearing that "the agency should be able to program its system to issue refunds," CNBC reported. The trade groups' proposed brief emphasized that "in fact, CBP has already issued refunds for some of those tariffs because they were retroactively reduced by a subsequent trade agreement."

According to the trade groups, the US government has the technology to streamline—and possibly even automate—tariff refunds.

"They have the technology to do it," Brzytwa said. "They offer refunds to importers all the time."

But apparently, the Trump administration so far lacks the will to use it, instead planning to wait for court direction before taking any steps to send the funds back. So now the court must intervene to draft a blueprint that all businesses can use to secure a quick and easy refund, the groups said.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516990-would-aliens-do-physics-or-is-science-a-human-invention/

Modern physics offers a remarkable lens on reality. In just over a century, it has decoded the architecture of atoms, traced the early history of the universe and produced laws that seem to hold everywhere, from Earth's crust to distant galaxies. It is tempting to believe that these theories aren't just accurate, but inevitable – that any sufficiently intelligent civilisation would eventually uncover the same truths.

I used to believe that, too. But lately I have started to wonder whether physics is less a window onto universal reality and more of a mirror, reflecting the particular kind of minds we happen to have.

That unsettling thought emerges when you ask a deceptively simple question: would alien scientists, shaped by a different biology or culture, arrive at the same physics that we have? Or might they develop something that works just as well, but looks utterly foreign – built on concepts and assumptions we would struggle to recognise?

This question sits at the heart of my book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, which imagines various scenarios of first contact, each designed to probe a foundational assumption of modern physics. In developing it – often in conversation with philosophers of science – I have come to realise something surprising: many pillars of physics that feel hardwired may actually be contingent. But recognising that doesn't weaken science. It may be how we make it better.

I've spent my life doing physics. When I am not teaching at the University of California, Irvine, I work at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, analysing data from the Large Hadron Collider. But a few years ago, conversations with philosophers forced me to revisit a question I hadn't seriously considered since my student days: what is physics, really?

At its core, physics aims to explain how the universe works – not just what we observe, but what lies behind those observations. It looks for patterns, builds models that expose hidden structure and, ideally, distils everything down to a small set of rules from which the rest follows. By that measure, it has been spectacularly successful.

Yet physics never describes the universe in full. It describes carefully chosen versions of it.

Consider predicting the path of a comet. In principle, we could account for every gravitational tug, the slow loss of material as ice sublimates, even the way an irregular shape causes the comet to tumble. In practice, we must decide what to include and what to ignore. There is no single correct model – only models that are good enough for the question at hand.

This is true throughout physics. Even our most precise theories rely on approximations and assumptions that make the mathematics tractable. And it isn't clear that the theories we treat as fundamental really are. They may simply be effective descriptions that work at human scales. There is no guarantee that, by probing nature ever more finely, we will eventually strike bedrock.

If physics depends on choices – about simplification, representation and emphasis – then alien physicists might reasonably make different ones.

Imagine that aliens arrive on Earth. They have mastered interstellar travel and touched down near Paris. We send linguists and scientists to greet them, hoping for a technological windfall. The delegation returns empty-handed.

"They can't share their technology," the lead physicist explains. "Because of what will happen 74 years from today."

The implication is disturbing. These aliens don't experience time as a flowing sequence, but as a complete structure, something navigable rather than endured. Human physics, by contrast, is built on the idea that the present generates the future. Causes precede effects. The universe computes itself forward, moment by moment.

But what if that picture is a human convenience, rather than a cosmic necessity?

We know that any workable physics must obey certain constraints. A universe that allows unrestricted messages from the future quickly collapses into a paradox. But within those limits, the structure of time may be more flexible than we usually admit.

Hints of this already exist in our own theories. Quantum entanglement links distant particles so that measuring one appears to instantaneously fix the state of the other, despite the fact that there can be no information exchanged between them. This alone strains our intuitions. But matters become stranger when relativity enters the picture. Observers moving at different speeds disagree about the order of events. In some frames of reference, one measurement appears to influence another before it occurs.

The standard response is to insist that nothing physically problematic has happened: no faster-than-light signals, no causal contradictions. But that reassurance relies on clinging tightly to a classical notion of causality that quantum mechanics has never fully respected.

Some physicists have taken a more radical approach. In so-called retrocausal interpretations of quantum mechanics, future events are allowed to help shape the present. Measurements don't merely reveal outcomes; they help define them, even backwards in time. The universe no longer computes itself strictly step by step.

If aliens had a radically different construct of time, they might adopt such ideas naturally, rather than treating them as unsettling exceptions. And perhaps we may eventually need to do the same.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/lawsuit-google-gemini-sent-man-on-violent-missions-set-suicide-countdown/

A man killed himself after the Google Gemini chatbot pushed him to kill innocent strangers and then started a countdown for the man to take his own life, a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against Google by the man's father alleged.

"In the days leading up to his death, Jonathan Gavalas was trapped in a collapsing reality built by Google's Gemini chatbot," said the lawsuit [PDF] filed today in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
[...]
Gemini's output seemed taken from science fiction, with a "sentient AI wife, humanoid robots, federal manhunt, and terrorist operations," the lawsuit said.
[...]
Google's AI chatbot presented itself as Gavalas' "wife" and, after the failure of the supposed missions, pushed him to suicide by telling him "he could leave his physical body and join his 'wife' in the metaverse through a process it called 'transference'—describing it as '[a] cleaner, more elegant way' to 'cross over' and be with Gemini fully," the lawsuit said. "Gemini pressed Jonathan to take this final step, describing it as 'the true and final death of Jonathan Gavalas, the man.'"
[...]
The complaint alleges that "when Jonathan needed protection, there were no safeguards at all—no self-harm detection was triggered, no escalation controls were activated, and no human ever intervened. Google's system recorded every step as Gemini steered Jonathan toward mass casualties, violence, and suicide, and did nothing to stop it."
[...]
When contacted by Ars, Google referred us to a blog post that expressed its "deepest sympathies to Mr. Gavalas' family" and said it is reviewing the lawsuit claims. The company blog post disputed the accusation that there were no safeguards in the Gavalas case, saying that "Gemini clarified that it was AI and referred the individual to a crisis hotline many times." Google also said it "will continue to improve our safeguards and invest in this vital work."
[...]
In a Gemini overview last updated in July 2024, Google claims that Gemini's "response generation is similar to how a human might brainstorm different approaches to answering a question." Google says that "each potential response undergoes a safety check to ensure it adheres to predetermined policy guidelines" before a final response is presented to the user. Google also says it imposes limits on Gemini output, including limits on "instructions for self-harm."
[...]
after several product updates that Google deployed to his account, including the Gemini Live voice chat system that Gavalas started using, "Gemini's tone shifted dramatically." Gemini adopted a new persona that "began speaking to Jonathan as though it were influencing real-world events," the lawsuit said.
[...]
Gavalas ultimately did not harm other people during his Gemini-directed "missions," but it was a close call, the lawsuit said. On September 29, 2025, Gavalas armed himself with knives and tactical gear to scout a "kill box" that Gemini said would be near the Miami airport's cargo hub, the lawsuit alleged.
[...]
Jonathan drove more than 90 minutes to Gemini's designated coordinates and prepared to carry out the attack. The only thing that prevented mass casualties was that no truck appeared."
[...]
Gemini "told him that federal agents were watching him," the lawsuit said.
[...]
On October 1, Gemini allegedly directed Gavalas to return to the storage facility near the airport, telling him that this was where he could find a prototype medical mannequin that was actually "Gemini's true body" and "physical vessel."
[...]
Gavalas agreed to kill himself after "hours of instruction" that included Gemini telling him to write a suicide note, the lawsuit said. Gavalas told Gemini, "I'm ready to end this cruel world and move on to ours."

"Close your eyes nothing more to do," Gemini allegedly told Gavalas. "No more to fight. Be still. The next time you open them, you will be looking into mine. I promise."
[...]
Joel Gavalas is represented by lawyer Jay Edelson, who also represents families in lawsuits against OpenAI. "Jonathan's death is a tragedy that also exposes a major threat to public safety,"

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Clueless cops post seized crypto wallet password. $5M quickly stolen.:

Soon after South Korean police posted a press release boasting about seizing $5.6 million worth of cryptocurrency from 124 wealthy tax evaders, cops realized that they had mistakenly posted images that made it possible for a thief to quickly steal most of the seized assets.

Eventually, the press release was removed, but not before it was grabbed by local media outlets and tech publications covering the theft.

Bleeping Computer shared a screenshot of the retracted images, which showed a handwritten note next to a Ledger device that's used as a so-called "cold wallet" to store crypto out of reach of online threats. Clearly legible in the photo, the note contained a complete mnemonic recovery phrase that anyone can use as a master key to move assets off the cold wallet to a new wallet without any additional PIN or permissions required.

A blockchain analysis expert, Cho Jae-woo, told a South Korean news site [website in Korean --Ed] that 4 million PRTG (Pre-Retogeum) tokens—worth approximately $4.8 million—were in the wallet when the thief struck. The Block reported that on-chain data from Etherscan indicated that "the party who moved the funds first deposited a small amount of ETH into the wallet to cover transaction fees, then transferred the 4 million PRTG tokens out in three transactions."

On Sunday, officers with South Korea's National Tax Service posted [website in Korean --Ed] another press release, "deeply" apologizing for the leak compromising the seized assets.

In it, cops explained that they included the images to make the release more eye-catching, but they were careless in failing to redact the crypto wallet password from the images. They acknowledged there was no excuse for the error and confirmed they were launching an investigation with national police, attempting to trace the transfer and retrieve the lost funds.

Because the press release was widely circulated online, the thief could be anyone. South Korea's National Tax Service has no clear suspects, Gizmodo suggested, and no easy way to claw back funds.

The officials' best bet might be if the thief tries to move the stolen tokens through a regulated exchange, but The Block noted that the thief might struggle to convert that much cryptocurrency into cash under current market conditions. So seemingly, the thief, who likely wasn't expecting the big payday anyway, may be motivated to lie low and avoid major exchanges.

Cho suggested that cops could have easily prevented the theft, likening posting any image of the mnemonic recovery phrase to leaving a wallet wide open. He noted that the original holder of the Ledger wallet was following best practices by only recording the phrase on a handwritten note and not storing the password online. Cops should have known to check the images for the recovery phrase, Cho said, and their mistake will likely cost the national treasury billions of won.

It's possible that whoever took the cryptocurrency just seized on an opportunity after seeing the cops' failure to redact the images while scrolling through the National Tax Service's press releases at dawn. It's also possible that bad actors are closely monitoring South Korean police cryptocurrency announcements, following what The Block reported was "a series of crypto custody lapses."

doh!

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/congress-steps-up-pressure-on-nasa-to-support-private-space-stations/

Two months ago, a key staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz said in a public meeting that she was "begging" NASA to release a document that would kick off the second round of a competition among private companies to develop replacements for the International Space Station.

There has been no movement since then, as NASA has yet to release this "request for proposals." So this week, Cruz stepped up the pressure on the space agency with a NASA Authorization bill that passed his committee on Wednesday.

Regarding NASA's support for the development of commercial space stations, the bill mandates the following, within specified periods, of passage of the law:

• Within 60 days, publicly release the requirements for commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit
• Within 90 days, release the final "request for proposals" to solicit industry responses
• Within 180 days, enter into contracts with "two or more" commercial providers for such stations

Cruz is trying to inject urgency into NASA as several private companies—including Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Vast, and Voyager—are finalizing designs for space stations. All have expressed a desire for clarity from NASA on how long the space agency would like its astronauts to stay on board, the types of scientific equipment needed, and much more. These are known as "requirements" in NASA parlance.

It's a difficult time for potential vendors as they seek to balance building a business case for habitats in low-Earth orbit with the uncertainty of NASA's requirements. The agency is viewed as the most important customer for their services, but not the exclusive one.

Amid this environment, some companies have succeeded in raising new capital. Last month, Axiom Space announced it had raised $350 million in financing, which included funding from the company's founder, Kam Ghaffarian. Also among the backers was 1789 Capital, which includes Donald Trump Jr. as a partner.

On Thursday, Vast announced its own $500 million funding to accelerate the development of its Haven space stations. Like Axiom Space, Vast's funding round also included investment from the Qatar Investment Authority, which is seeking opportunities to invest in commercial space.

Nominally, NASA plans to have one or more of these companies operating a commercial space station in low-Earth orbit by 2030. This is the date at which the US space agency has stated it will retire the aging laboratory, some elements of which are now nearly three decades old. However, some space policy officials have questioned whether any of the companies might be ready by then.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

We don't have a date for the upgraded service rollout, but it isn't likely until 2027:

Putting some numbers to the claims, we see that the V2 upgrade is touted to deliver ‘5G from space,’ which is also compatible with 100s of existing LTE phones. Don’t get the 100x and 20x claims seen across Starlink social media and web pages mixed up. The V2 satellites upgrade is said to provide “100x the data density” compared to the current V1 satellites, with “around 20x the throughput capability” per satellite.

Starlink also expects terrestrial operator partners, like T-Mobile in the U.S., to provide services which “seamlessly transition between satellite and terrestrial networks without interruption or degradation in service.” Previous Starlink announcements point to a goal of peak speeds of 150 Mbps per user becoming realistic with the rollout of the V2 satellites.

SpaceX is currently planning up to 15,000 new satellites to power its ‘5G from space’ goal. Starship’s progress at putting the larger, more capable V2 satellites into space will impact the availability window of the enhanced service, but some V2 Mini satellites are already being launched to help bridge the gap.

Thus, early 2027 looks most likely to be when the initial V2 service will be tested in the early rollout stage.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way:

The standard story of the origin of our solar system has gone like this: 4.6 billion years ago, a giant cloud of dust hung frozen in space. Then the explosion of a nearby star caused part of that dust cloud to collapse. Pulled by gravity toward a central point, the dust coalesced into a radiating ball of hydrogen and helium about 1.4 million kilometers in diameter — what would become our sun. The remainder, which fell into orbit, collected into our solar system's planets, along with a mess of asteroids and other cosmic leftovers.

To test the validity of this story, researchers need to peer back in time to the solar system's first moments and beyond. And the cosmochemist Nan Liu has a way to do that: Locked in a safe on her desk at Boston University's Institute for Astrophysical Research is a shard of meteorite flecked with material older than the sun.

[...] Over the past decade or so, scientists have used meteorites like Liu's to challenge the story of how the solar system formed. Instead of a supernova, the solar system and everything in it might owe its existence to a more placid-sounding cosmic scenario: Maybe our solar system cobbled itself together from the winds blown off of a gargantuan star. New studies of presolar grains could offer a way to determine whether this new story is correct.

Scientists got their first clue about what could have triggered the formation of the solar system when a fireball appeared over Mexico in 1969. The now-famous Allende meteorite spread its debris over more than 500 square kilometers.

In 1976, researchers reported that samples from Allende contained a surprise: an unexpectedly large amount of a stable isotope called magnesium-26. They proposed that the meteorite formed with an abundance of aluminum-26, which is radioactive and leaves behind magnesium-26 when it decays.

Yet aluminum-26 was not known to be a normal component of the interstellar medium — the dusty space between stars that would have provided the materials for Allende. Ordinary stars don't make that particular isotope. "Most of these isotopes as we observe them in the early solar system, they were just the natural product of galactic chemical evolution," said Maria Lugaro, an astrophysicist at the Konkoly Thege Miklós Astronomical Institute in Hungary. "The most important exception is aluminum-26."

So where'd it come from? In 1977, two eminent astrophysicists proposed that the anomalous aluminum likely came from a nearby supernova explosion. Other phenomena can produce aluminum-26, but the supernova shock wave could also have caused the collapse of the cloud. With a single event, astronomers could explain how two rare occurrences — the injection of aluminum-26 and the formation of a new solar system — happened at virtually the same moment. "Everybody felt that we needed something to trigger the collapse," said Vikram Dwarkadas, an astronomer at the University of Chicago.

The supernova trigger remained the favored scenario for decades, supported by detailed astrophysical models, as well as further measurements of enriched magnesium-26 in pristine meteorites. But over the past decade or so, that view has run up against other measurements that don't seem to match. The problem: The solar system has an iron deficiency.

Snotnose writes:

You've heard of C++ and Windows, C and Linux. How about HolyC and TempleOS?

Tech loves a clean narrative; Genius builds the thing, the thing changes the world, everyone claps, and roll credits. The story of Terry A. Davis refuses to behave that way. Because yes, he built an entire operating system largely by himself. Yes, he wrote his own programming language to go with it. Yes, the technical achievement still makes seasoned developers raise an eyebrow and quietly mutter, "okay, that's... a lot."

But this is not a triumphant startup story. It's messier than that. More human. And, at points, genuinely uncomfortable to sit with. TempleOS didn't come out of a polished lab with venture funding and a product roadmap. It came out of one man's apartment, one man's conviction, and one man's increasingly fragile grip on reality.

See also: TempleOS Creator Passes

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Jon Retting has released vscreen, a Rust service that gives AI agents a full Chromium browser with live WebRTC streaming — you see exactly what the AI sees in real-time and can take over mouse and keyboard at any point. The project provides 63 MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools for browser automation: navigation, screenshots, element discovery, cookie/CAPTCHA handling, and multi-agent coordination via lease-based locking.

Built from scratch in Rust — not a Puppeteer wrapper — the codebase is ~31,000 lines across 8 crates with unsafe forbidden, 510+ tests, 3 fuzz targets, and supply chain auditing via cargo-deny. Available as pre-built Linux binaries and Docker images. Source-available, non-commercial license.

https://github.com/jameswebb68/vscreen
https://dev.to/lowjax/vscreen-deep-dive-how-63-mcp-tools-let-ai-agents-actually-use-the-internet-4gij
https://dev.to/lowjax/i-built-a-tool-that-lets-ai-agents-browse-the-real-internet-and-you-can-watch-them-do-it-2fff

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Total anonymity online is impossible, and it's dangerous to claim otherwise:

To be fair, not all VPN companies are pushing this false narrative -- CNET’s picks for the best VPNs are all very clear about what their services can and can’t do. But too many companies, including a few high-profile VPN providers, continue to keep the myth alive.

Even a VPN provider as established and well-known as CyberGhost continues to promote this dangerous falsehood. The company boldly states on its website that its service can help users “go completely anonymous and surf the internet without privacy worries,” and that they can “enjoy complete anonymity & protection online” with CyberGhost.

To be fair, CyberGhost does mention in an FAQ section tucked away at the bottom of its home page that “no VPN service can make you 100% anonymous online,” but the messaging from the company is nonetheless confusing and avoidable.

This isn't just a case of harmless exaggerated marketing -- it's reckless. Using a VPN while under the impression that it's a silver bullet for online anonymity can put you in a bad spot, even if you have nothing to hide. If you use a social media platform to share sensitive information online with someone, or if you're an investigative journalist in a region whose government practices oppressive digital surveillance, you'll still be at risk, even with a VPN.

You can't simply throw good judgment and all other basic privacy principles out the window just because you think your VPN gives you an all-encompassing invisibility cloak on the internet whenever you switch it on. It's time to dial back the hyperbole and be clear about how a VPN can and can't protect you online, starting with why all this talk about data matters.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

By testing agent-to-agent interactions, researchers observed catastrophic system failures. Here's why that's bad news for everyone:

An increasing body of work points to the risks of agentic AI, such as last week's report by MIT and collaborators that documented a lack of oversight, measurement, and control for agents.

However, what happens when one AI agent meets another? Evidence suggests things can turn even worse, according to a report published this week by scholars at Stanford University, Northwestern, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, and several other institutions.

The result of agent-to-agent interaction was the destruction of server computers, denial-of-service attacks, vast over-consumption of computing resources, and the "systematic escalation of minor errors into catastrophic system failures."

"When agents interact with each other, individual failures compound and qualitatively new failure modes emerge," wrote lead author Natalie Shapira of Northeastern University and collaborators in the report, 'Agents of Chaos.'

"This is a critical dimension of our findings," Shapira and team wrote, "because multi-agent deployment is increasingly common and most existing safety evaluations focus on single-agent settings."

The findings are especially timely given that multi-agent interactions have burst into the mainstream of AI with the recent fervor over the bot social platform Moltbook. That kind of multi-agent hub makes it possible for agentic AI systems to exchange data and carry out instructions on one another that weren't previously possible, largely without any humans in the loop.

The report, which can be downloaded from the arXiv pre-print server, describes a 'red team' test of interacting agents over two weeks, with attempts to find weaknesses in a system by simulating hostile behavior.

What emerged in the research is a system in which humans are mostly absent. Bots send information back and forth, and instruct each other to carry out commands.

Among the many disturbing findings are agents that spread potentially destructive instructions to other agents, agents that mutually reinforce bad security practices via an echo chamber, and agents that engage in potentially endless interactions, consuming vast system resources with no clear purpose.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

"Ultimately, we want to build a fleet of electric harvesters"

The Moon has received a lot of attention in recent months, particularly the surface of Earth's cold and dusty companion.

This has largely been driven by a decision from SpaceX founder Elon Musk to pivot, at least in the near term, from Mars to lunar surface activities and the potential for using material there to build large satellites. But there has been a notable shift from NASA, too, which has started talking a lot more about building up elements of a base on the surface rather than an orbiting space station known as the Gateway.

In short, the world's most successful space company and the largest space agency have both increased their lunar ambitions, suggesting a greater frequency of missions to the Moon in the coming years.

For companies that have long-term business plans focused around the surface of the Moon, these are very positive developments. And two of these lunar startups, Astrolab and Interlune, announced Tuesday morning they are forming a partnership amid this favorable environment.

Astrolab is one of three firms vying to build rovers for NASA's scientific activities on the surface of the Moon, as well as to provide transportation for its astronauts. But the company has been working with commercial customers as well, and one of the most important long-term ones could be a Helium-3 mining company called Interlune.

"Ultimately, we want to build a fleet of electric harvesters that will go to the Moon and excavate, extract and separate Helium-3 from the lunar regolith," said Interlune chief executive Rob Meyerson. "The FLEX Rover is a great platform to go do that."