An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News & Headlines:

> Andrew asked his personal assistant to book him a spot in one of his gym's coveted morning classes. It was a task he thought was well suited to this particular assistant because the booking form was online and because his assistant was not a person -- it was artificial intelligence (AI). But Andrew was shocked by what happened next. His AI assistant found a way to book the gym class months further in advance than the gym allowed, thanks to a vulnerability it discovered in the booking software. Then it went further, kicking someone out of the waiting list who was ahead of Andrew -- something it was not asked to do. The accidental hack is the [1]first known Australian case of an emerging risk from a new generation of AI capable of behaving in unexpected ways.



[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-10/ai-assistant-hacks-gym-website-aus-cyber-attack/107007986

Paramount is [1]making commitments to major theater chains to release 30 films annually for three years if its [2]Warner Bros. deal goes through. According to Deadline, the written commitment was sent to "at least one of the top two circuits" (specifically Regal but AMC may have also received a written commitment) and includes "an exclusive 45-day theatrical window and a 90-day window to streaming." From the report:

> When it comes to the big chains, it matters for them to be on the right side of history with Paramount, especially when it comes to future terms on a 30-film slate. However, the rest of Cinema United (formerly National Association of Theatre Owners) remains firmly against the Paramount-Warner Bros merger and its potential negative financial outcomes in regards to long-term box office, feature film output and loss of jobs. Cinema United has been trying to meet again with Paramount CEO David Ellison, but there's nothing on the books yet, we understand.

>

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



[1] https://deadline.com/2026/08/paramount-wbd-regal-amc-deals-1237029635/

[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/07/24/2235232/paramount-agrees-to-postpone-warner-bros-merger-until-june-2027

Microsoft's cloud storage app OneDrive got a new Photos app [1]in the worst possible way , reports the blog Neowin . "The app is reportedly showing up even on Windows 11 Enterprise machines, despite apparently being a beta application aimed at consumer functionality."

> One admin questioned why a beta app was appearing on an Enterprise SKU in the first place, while another described the situation as yet another consumer-oriented feature being forced onto corporate PCs. Things get even more frustrating for IT departments because there does not appear to be a straightforward Microsoft-provided way to disable the app... Enterprise administrators generally need to know what is being installed on their managed devices, particularly when a software is labeled as beta. Quietly adding another application and leaving admins to clean it up themselves is therefore unlikely to win Microsoft many fans.

But there's another problem, [2]according to the blog Windows Latest . "OneDrive Photos automatically scans your system storage for photos," and apparently "doesn't need a Microsoft account to work, as it can also detect your local files."

> There's also a People section that groups similar faces in your photos. Microsoft asks for permission before turning it on and explicitly warns that facial data could be considered biometric data in some regions. The company says only you can see the grouped faces, that the data isn't shared with third parties, and that you can delete it by disabling the feature.

In [3]a statement to Neowin , Microsoft admitted this new photos "experience" they're "incubating" had gone "more broadly than it should have," and then promised that "We're fixing that." The spokesperson also said the Windows Photos app will "always give you the option of local and cloud photos" and, also a choice of whether or not to use it OneDrive."

But there's another "awkward catch," [4]notes the blog Digital Trends . "Users currently can't uninstall OneDrive Photos without removing the main OneDrive app too."

> Because OneDrive Photos is tied to the main OneDrive sync client, Windows 11 doesn't currently offer a separate uninstall option. The only straightforward way to get rid of OneDrive Photos right now is to uninstall OneDrive itself... Removing the main client can also affect its File Explorer integration and shortcuts...

>

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



[1] https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11-admins-unhappy-as-microsoft-found-installing-unexpected-new-onedrive-photos-app/

[2] https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/29/windows-11-is-quietly-installing-onedrive-photos-another-image-viewer-that-nobody-asked-for/

[3] https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11-admins-unhappy-as-microsoft-found-installing-unexpected-new-onedrive-photos-app/

[4] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/microsoft-accidentally-installed-onedrive-photos-windows-11/

With nearly 70% of the market, "Meta wants its smart glasses to be a big hit," [1]writes the Los Angeles Times . But after some users found ways to disable the light that warns people they're being filmed, "the high-tech specs have also turned into a liability, as some are calling the gadget 'pervert glasses...'"

> Some people are using the glasses — which look like a pair of regular spectacles — to record people without their knowledge and publish the videos on social media. The users secretly videotape and share what happens when they try to pick up women. Now, a growing number of people are worried they could be covertly recorded at the gym or even during sex. The backlash has prompted Meta to update its glasses to address privacy concerns, and some places have banned them, adding to the angst surrounding technology that's rapidly evolving...

>

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

>

> Instagram, which is owned by Meta, has been disabling accounts and taking down some of these pickup or prank videos for violating the platform's rules against harassment and bullying... Businesses are making their own calls about smart glasses. The 5 Point Cafe in Seattle, which banned Google Glass in the past, has banned Meta glasses from its diner and dive bar. "Leave your Meta-SpyBan Display at home, they are officially Ray-Ban-ned from all of our restaurants. We serve privacy, not side-eye surveillance," a 2025 Instagram post from the business states.

An Android app that warns people if they're being recorded has roughly 110,000 downloads in the last six months, according to the article. The app's creator says it's a "social problem" that "we don't value privacy, that we feel entitled to use others for our entertainment or our private gain, and technology amplifies that."

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



[1] https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/meta-ai/articles/pervert-glasses-backlash-against-metas-100000746.html

Linux Torvalds expects Linux 7.2 should be released next weekend "unless something really bad pops up," Torvalds said while announcing today's release candidate.

But there's something interesting about Linux 7.2-rc7, [1]writes Phoronix . "By the time the Linux kernel typically hits a -rc7 release things have usually settled quite well. But in today's world of AI/LLM coding/review agents, the kernel activity continues at an all-time high."

> Tons of bug fixes continued to trickle in across the kernel spectrum for all sorts of issues. The HWMON hardware monitoring subsystem saw several [2]critical and high severity bug fixes , on the memory management side was a [3]nasty race condition leading to a use-after-free in the kernel for the past eight years, [4]Btrfs restored its fixup worker infrastructure to deal with silent data loss, lots of AI patches [5]in the networking realm , and the kernel was [6]patched for the Safe RET Interrupt Vulnerability .

>

> Linus Torvalds wrote in the [7]7.2-rc7 announcement :

>

>

> "Another week, another -rc.

>

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

>

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

>

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



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.2-rc7-Released

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.2-rc7-HWMON

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.2-rc7-UAF-PTDUMP

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Btrfs-Restores-Fixup-Worker

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Net-Bombarded-AI-Patches

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Safe-RET-Interrupt-Vuln

[7] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wiDq_aaSkBgTN=SGpa5bfTsRGvwhg8sJcFyWgPFf4x0HA@mail.gmail.com/T/#u

[1] Futurism reports :

> [2] 404 Media revealed that a July 10 audit by the Los Angeles Police Department Office of the Inspector General caught the department's ALPR cameras generating 161 false stolen-vehicle alerts in just two months — each one ending with officers pulling over an innocent driver. Factoring in 337 alerts which "resulted in the recovery of stolen vehicles," the LAPD's cameras carry an error rate of 32.3 percent, effectively giving officers a one-in-three chance at pulling an innocent person over.

"The biggest issue remains this national database at the FBI called NCIC," Flock's CEO Garrett Langley [3]recently told The Drive , complaining about "how archaic its structure is."

> Flock CEO: There's no feedback loop mechanisms; it's really just a static comma-separated file.

>

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

Later in the interview he says "It's less than one in a million alerts that an officer says, 'I'm not sure if that's right.' Less than one in a million."

A [4]recent report from Business Insider shares a worst-case scenario. In the summer of 2024 a Sacramento police officer said Flock's cameras had sent six false alerts for the same vehicle, wrongly saying it had been stolen or used in a felony crime in the nearby suburb of Roseville:

> Roseville police could see that Flock's software kept confusing the "9" on the man's license plate for an "8." The car owner said he would take off his license plate cover. Soon after, it happened again. It's "easier at this point we have it memorized," a dispatch supervisor in Roseville wrote in an email to a colleague.

>

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

>

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

>

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

>

> Flock said Roseville's camera performance has significantly improved, which the police department disputed... Flock's cameras also missed vehicles altogether... At one point, Flock's product director for machine learning suggested that officers ask drivers to remove license plate frames that made it "very difficult for the machine vision to tell it is actually a 'E' and not an 'F.'" Roseville told Flock at the time that it wouldn't do so, according to the department spokesman. Flock in 2024 [5]shared an analysis with Roseville's police department, outlining reasons for the misreads. Vehicles far from a camera were sometimes blurry. Plates were cut off by trees or license plate frames. And Flock's software confused similar characters, mistaking an "N" for a "V", or a "1" for a "4...."

>

> Roseville isn't the first organization to flag inaccuracies in Flock's technology. In 2021, the research firm IPVM independently tested Flock's license plate readers, concluding that Flock misidentified the state in about one of 10 reads, and that the system regularly misclassified vehicles' type and make. IPVM said that Flock subsequently blocked it from purchasing its cameras for testing.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [6]Cognitive Dissident for sharing the article.



[1] https://futurism.com/future-society/lapd-abandons-flock-contract-false-alarm

[2] https://www.404media.co/lapd-regularly-pulled-over-innocent-people-because-license-plate-readers-flagged-their-cars-as-stolen/

[3] https://www.thedrive.com/podcast/flocks-ceo-wants-zero-wrongful-stops-i-wasnt-the-first

[4] https://www.businessinsider.com/flock-camera-misread-license-plate-reader-california-roseville-police-2026-7

[5] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28519174-roseville-misreads-preliminary-analysis/?mode=document#document/p1

[6] https://slashdot.org/~Cognitive+Dissident

Three years ago environmental regulators discovered garbage burning deep inside California's Chiquita Canyon Landfill, [1]reports the Los Angeles Times . [ [2]Alternate URL here .] "Few imagined the calamity that would follow.

"Somehow the landfill's pollution control system introduced oxygen below, causing decades-old waste to rapidly decompose, generating intense heat and eventually widespread smoldering, federal and state environmental agencies say."

> The broiling temperatures released toxic gases and hazardous liquid waste that bubbled up to the surface. Residents living in the nearby communities of Val Verde and Castaic have phoned in thousands of complaints about stench and lived with nausea, dizziness and trouble breathing. The underground fire has tripled in size since first confirmed in 2023. Recently a towering mound of landfill garbage perched on the hillside has warped and threatens to trigger an avalanche of garbage and chemical-filled liquid, or leachate, according to the California water board...

>

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

>

> The discoveries raise an unsettling question: How many landfills are dealing with these disasters? Are they a broader problem in California...? Chiquita Canyon closed at the end of the 2024 and stopped accepting new garbage. But the fire is expected to last for years as it continues to consume decades-old trash.

"Underground landfill fires are complex, nearly impossible to extinguish once they break out," according to the article. "As regulators search for a solution, residents find themselves struggling with the wait."

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



[1] https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/06/toxic-underground-fires-are-spreading-at-californi/

[2] https://www.newstribune.com/news/2026/aug/07/toxic-underground-fires-spreading-at-california/

NBC Bay Area brings news from the small idyllic California town of Suisun City (population: 29,518). The city council "declared a state of emergency Saturday after [1]a cyberattack that shut down computer systems including 911 public safety operations."

> "Malicious software infected and compromised" the East Bay community's information technology systems beginning about 5:45 a.m. Friday, the city said on social media. "The cybersecurity incident hit critical public safety operations, including 911 routing, police and fire dispatch, records and city services," the city said.

>

> "There is no imminent threat to the public," the city said. "All public safety services remain active." The city shut down its computer network "to contain the threat and preserve evidence for a federal investigation," it said... Suisun City dispatchers were taking calls for service through the Solano County dispatch center. Suisun City police officers and firefighters continued responding to calls for service, the city said, but online city services and internal operations were unavailable.

[2]On Facebook the city said it was "working alongside federal, state and regional agencies, including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and California Office of Emergency Services to maintain emergency services, investigate the incident and restore systems."

But Bay Area PBS station KQED notes "They're [3]only the latest local government in the region to be hit by a cyberattack ."

> Earlier this year, Foster City and Pittsburg experienced other cyberattacks that impacted services in their own jurisdictions. Foster City declared a state of emergency after a March ransomware incident that shut down many services for more than a week. Pittsburg [4]lost almost $1 million to a February phishing attack, though over half of it was recovered.



[1] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/suisun-city-state-of-emergency-cyberattack/4125654/

[2] https://www.facebook.com/SuisunCity/posts/pfbid0APTu5z8g6agbMa4R56FiLe3o2UVg9edMEfcSit4hVKwehD9WENRcS7bkcqteqEEql

[3] https://www.kqed.org/news/12094482/suisun-city-declares-state-of-emergency-after-cyberattack

[4] https://www.pittsburgca.gov/Home/Components/News/News/3714/426

[1] XDA Developers reports :

> On July 22, a Google DeepMind engineer, Vidy Thatte, [2]shared a snippet of a browser he built that "treats every URL as a prompt and generates a site from scratch" on his X account. Just a few days later, he shared a [3]TestFlight link to let iPhone users try it for themselves. The browser he launched is called Gem, and it's a browser that doesn't really...browse.

>

> Instead of fetching a webpage from a server the way Chrome or Safari would, Gem hands whatever URL you type over to Google's Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite model and asks it to generate a webpage on the spot. If you enter a real address, it builds its own interpretation of that site rather than loading the actual thing. If you enter an address that doesn't exist, Gemini simply invents a website to fill the gap. In other words, you're not visiting the internet so much as browsing one the model dreams up as you go...

>

> Thatte's reasoning was that with a model as fast and cheap as Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite, there's almost no practical difference anymore between loading a website and generating a brand-new one on the fly... Given that this tool is powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and it's just a side project rather than a full-fledged tool, it doesn't come with Gemini access baked in. Gem requires you to bring your own Gemini API key to get it working. Every URL you enter fires off a request to the model, so Gem needs a key linked to your Google account to actually generate anything, with the usage billed to you. You can grab a key [4]for free from Google AI Studio , paste it into Gem's settings, and you're ready to start typing URLs. While you can get started for free, I ran into the limits within two minutes of playing around. So, I did need to enable billing on my API key and decided to load $10 into it.

While the blogger's own site seemed to only get the Gemini logo, tapping it revealed nearly two dozen remixing options. (Dark mode, Reader, Neubrutalist, Broadsheet, Blueprint, Comic book, Punk zine, Notebook, Chalkboard, Receipt, Teletext, System 7, Wes Anderson, Cyber neon, Clay, Frosted, Geocities, Matrix, Museum, Windows 95, Terminal, Vaporwave, and Hide images...) "The frontend morphed before my eyes. Every new edit took practically no time to load, and within a second or two, the same XDA articles would reappear wearing a completely different skin..." For another site, it kept the article headlines, but then rewrote all the text!

And after entering an address they knew didn't exist — their own name — in two seconds the browser whipped up a slick portfolio "genuinely been better than some of what those tools produced with far more time and context to work with." But its link to a LinkedIn profile led to a lookalike page, because Gem "had simply generated its own version of it, complete with a made-up follower number and details I never wrote...."



[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/tried-browser-generates-every-website-from-scratch/

[2] https://x.com/vidythatte/status/2079773948812955784

[3] https://testflight.apple.com/join/PQddgGcj

[4] https://www.xda-developers.com/google-ai-studio-is-the-best-kept-secret-in-vibe-coding/

UI changes, lost productivity, untransferrable knowledge... Long-time Slashdot reader [1]theodp notes the folly of switching to an unfamiliar new environment to be "more productive"...

> Champions of the switch often insist workers will be able to hit the ground running and get the same or even more work done from the get-go in the new unfamiliar environment because it's 'more productive', a conclusion often shaped by conventional wisdom or their 'gut' feeling. Decision makers may also mistake their own 'light-user experience' for universal experience and believe all platforms are fungible.

>

> And while it's one thing for a business to delay their delivery dates and increase costs of by introducing a switch in computing environments that's of unquantified and possibly dubious value, how about when a switch in computing environments is made that affects schoolchildren's ability to learn for a period of time?

>

> While a MacBook Neo is indeed cute, what might be the possible consequences of a decision to [2]move 25,000 students off Windows and onto MacBook Neos ...? Or even the impact on a single kid who moves from a MacBook school to a Windows or Chrome school (or whose home computing environment isn't aligned with their school). Or students whose teachers decide learning in their classrooms should now additionally require an understanding of the [3]Minecraft computing platform/UI (used in over 40,000 school systems.). Learning Management Systems and now various AI Edtech tools used by schoolkids are also subject to change.

"Even if students and schools eventually benefit from a new platform, one wonders how much learning is lost during the switch," [4]theodp asks, "and what the financial and educational ROI and payback period look like." Are there bigger problems than we realize? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments.

What are the costs of switching between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome?



[1] https://slashdot.org/~theodp

[2] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/26/08/03/2115259/schools-are-ditching-chromebooks-for-macbooks-by-the-thousands

[3] https://education.minecraft.net/en-us

[4] https://slashdot.org/~theodp

OpenAI [1]announced Friday it's pausing work on its Astra AI model because of security concerns. [2] The Guardian reports :

> The company had evaluated the agent, Astra, and found "significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity", which had moved to a "critical" threshold... OpenAI stated that the model was not involved in an incident in which one of its AI agents went rogue during a test, accessed the open web and hacked a startup, Hugging Face... The reports have increased concerns about advancements in AI models and humans' ability to control them.

>

> Still, critics of the AI industry [3]have warned that such disclosures from OpenAI and its competitors Anthropic and Meta could be designed to generate hype about the technology's power and thus spur additional interest from investors.

>

> To prevent potential rogue behavior from AI agents, OpenAI is "implementing stricter security controls for higher-capability models and associated activities, including isolated testing environments, restricted network and tool access", the company's blogpost stated. It will also install "enhanced model weight protections and encryption, additional monitoring and detection capabilities". The company will pause internal activities involving Astra that do not meet these new requirements.

"We believe it's important to be transparent with the public and the safety and security communities about this potential shift in capabilities..." OpenAI wrote in a blog post titled " [4]Responding to the next frontier of critical cyber capabilities ."

> Under our Preparedness Framework, a model reaches the Critical cybersecurity threshold if it can identify and develop functional zero-day exploits of all severity levels in many hardened real-world critical systems without human intervention, or can devise and execute end-to-end novel strategies for cyberattacks against hardened targets given only a high level desired goal. While we continue to benchmark and assess this model, our preliminary evaluations indicate strong enough performance that we cannot rule out Critical capability level at this time... Accordingly, we have scaled up robustness testing of our safeguards and security controls so that they are appropriate for a deployment of these capabilities...

>

> - We are implementing stricter security controls for higher-capability models and associated activities, including isolated testing environments, restricted network and tool access, enhanced model weight protections and encryption, additional monitoring and detection capabilities, and sandboxed execution.

>

> - We are pausing internal activities involving Astra that do not yet meet these strengthened security control requirements.

>

> - We have implemented universal monitoring for risky actions and misalignment across all agentic applications of Astra, including training and evaluation. Monitors evaluate the model's Chain of Thought and trigger a security response to review and interrupt high risk activity.

>

> - We will work with relevant government agencies and select AI safety organizations to test the capabilities for this model...

>

> We believe advanced cyber-capable models should help defenders identify and address vulnerabilities before attackers do. We're committed to working alongside governments, safety institutes, and civil society to ensure that the frontier capabilities of models like Astra, and those that follow, are deployed responsibly and broadly for the benefit of all humanity.



[1] https://openai.com/index/responding-next-frontier-critical-cyber-capabilities/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/08/openai-astra-security-concerns

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/24/openai-rogue-hacker

[4] https://openai.com/index/responding-next-frontier-critical-cyber-capabilities/

To celebrate Quake 's 30th anniversary, Bethesda released "a brutal new episode" — a new campaign chapter titled [1] Dawn of the Machine "delivering ferocious combat, labyrinthine level design, and nightmarish realms that twist reality beyond recognition..."

> Face deadly new twists on familiar foes, including the Rocket Ogre, Demo Dog, Blood Shambler, and more. Each variant introduces lethal new behaviours — from overwhelming firepower to explosive death traps — forcing you to rethink every encounter. Expand your arsenal with brutal variants inspired by classic Quake expansions, including the Super Axe — unleashing lightning on successive strikes — and the Laser Cannon, firing ricocheting projectiles that tear through enemies from every angle... Reality is never stable. Shift between dimensions to solve puzzles and navigate the world, or find hidden secrets scattered throughout the realms. Face enemies that rise again or transform after death, and experience encounters where the rules change without warning — forcing you to adapt or be overrun.

[2]More details from Ars Technica :

> This is part of a series of new campaign chapters, all developed by MachineGames "in collaboration with id Software." MachineGames is best known for making the games in the relatively recent Wolfenstein reboot series, as well as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle . The Quake maps are made by a team dubbed "Quake Club," which includes several MachineGames employees who work on Quake maps in their spare time.

>

> The ambition and scope of some of these maps is beyond what was typical for Quake maps back in the late '90s, thanks in part to the team's use of [3]TrenchBroom , a newer map editor that works well on modern systems and is easier to work with and more capable than what folks were using in those days. There are 19 new levels, and they have several new gameplay gimmicks, like a time loop mechanic and a disorienting-but-cool teleportation system that makes it look like the levels are changing on the fly — kind of similar to the multi-time-period levels we saw in Titanfall 2 or Dishonored 2 , though in these Quake maps the time shifts happen without player input. There's also new music... The new maps have been added to the campaign list in the remastered version of Quake , and like that remaster, they're available free to anyone who already owns Quake on Steam, as well as Quake on current and last-gen PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles.



[1] https://slayersclub.bethesda.net/en-US/news/quake-30th-anniversary-update

[2] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/08/new-official-30th-anniversary-quake-mission-pack-adds-new-maps-and-mechanics/

[3] https://trenchbroom.github.io/

[1] IGN reports :

> [A] new report suggests that all three memory manufacturers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — have collectively sold through their 2027 memory manufacturing capacity to, you guessed it, AI companies.

>

> According to a report [2]from Digitimes and spotted [3]by TweakTown , all DRAM and HBM capacity has been sold through for 2027, with no further supply planned. (The companies themselves have not yet confirmed this to be the case.) Of course, that only means that retail prices are going to go up even further in the near future. Selling through all the capacity for next year would be bad enough for consumers, but the problem is that most of the companies buying up this capacity have done so through long-term purchasing agreements, essentially pre-ordering memory that hasn't even been manufactured yet over a five-year term. Unless more capacity opens up somewhere in the next few years, it's hard to imagine that RAM will become more affordable and less scarce any time soon.

>

> It's not just memory that's affected. According to that Digitimes report, NAND storage is growing in demand too. Luckily, NAND capacity hasn't been completely absorbed, because there are more companies supplying the stuff. But it's not exactly hard to see that SSDs have been growing steadily more expensive over the last six months or so.



[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/ramageddon-continues-another-year-as-2027-memory-capacity-is-reportedly-sold-out

[2] https://www.digitimes.com.tw/tech/dt/n/shwnws.asp?CnlID=1&id=0000763847_DVY7YHX65GMLYZ6UQEEMP

[3] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/113004/memory-capacity-for-all-of-2027-has-reportedly-been-booked-and-sold-with-no-more-dram-or-hbm-available/index.html

The [1]new GNOME Boxes app for accessing virtual systems has reached beta, announced [2]This Week in GNOME . There's also been more work on the Sushi file previewer for Nautilus, and Papers 51 Beta can now add visual signatures to PDF documents.

But Phoronix [3]noted one more announcement . "Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency announced earlier this year a [4]new fellowship program and now as part of that, for the next two years GNOME has a fellow dedicated to working on design and community management... paid to help developers with design feedback and reviews, mock-up creation, and other GNOME design related efforts..."

From [5]the blog post by GNOME Design Team member Philipp Sauberzweig :

> I have been contributing to GNOME design as a volunteer for several years... I believe that it's essential for a free and democratic society to ensure free and independent access to these technologies. To achieve this goal, end-user devices based on free and open-source software are key, and the GNOME desktop and its app ecosystem offer a powerful alternative to proprietary platforms... This two-year fellowship is a great honor and marks a significant change in my life. It is a unique opportunity for me to devote my skills and experience entirely to a project I strongly believe in.

>

> During my two-year fellowship, I will support GNOME maintainers and developers with design feedback and reviews, create mockups, and coordinate efforts to standardize design patterns. My other activities focus on lasting improvements through two strategic initiatives: expanding the design community to increase capacity and enhancing our design tooling to reduce overhead and simplify onboarding... To attract new contributors, I will increase the visibility of design work by writing regular blog posts, giving presentations, and running workshops at conferences and hackathons. New contribution opportunities for newcomers will be created with clear instructions for independent activities such as collecting state-of-the-art examples, running accessibility and user tests, and creating mockups. Design reviews will be used as mentorship opportunities, pairing regular design contributors with experienced designers for peer review and knowledge sharing...

>

> If you're interested in contributing to GNOME design, check out the Design Team page on the [6]Welcome to GNOME website, familiarize yourself with the [7]Human Interface Guidelines , and join our [8]Matrix channel . If you're a GNOME developer feel free to reach out to me via Matrix and involve me in design reviews.

[9]Jakub Beránek from the Rust compiler and infrastructure team also earned a fellowship in Germany's Sovereign Tech program, focusing on improving the Rust toolchain's tooling and infrastructure for Rust's developers.

Other fellows include Pablo Neira Ayuso (Linux kernel maintainer for the Netfilter subsystem), CPython core developer Stan Ulbrych, and Python core developer Hugo van Kemenade, FreeBSD contributor Alexander Ziaee.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Boxes-2026

[2] https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2026/08/twig-261/

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Design-Fellowship

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Sovereign-Tech-Fellowship-2026

[5] https://blogs.gnome.org/psauberz/2026/08/06/sovereign-tech-fellowship-for-gnome-design-community-management/

[6] https://welcome.gnome.org/de/team/design/

[7] https://developer.gnome.org/hig/

[8] https://matrix.to/#/%23design:gnome.org

[9] https://kobzol.github.io/rust/2026/08/03/stf-june-july-2026.html

"Google should be required to divest the Chrome browser, and prohibited from paying Apple to distribute Google's search engine, the nonprofit advocacy group Public Knowledge argues in a new court filing," [1] MediaPost reports , citing a friend-of-the-court brief filed Tuesday in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals:

> The group adds that "independent ownership" of Chrome "would open the distribution channel Google controls and allow Chrome to serve browser users when it makes privacy decisions and determines how to integrate search and (artificial intelligence)..."

>

> In September 2025, [U.S. District Court Judge] Mehta issued a remedies order that requires Google to share some data about users' searches with "qualified" competitors and to provide syndicated search results and ads to those competitors. The order also prohibits Google from entering into exclusive distribution contracts for Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant and the Gemini app for six years, but allows the company to continue to make payments for search-ad revenue or distribution to Apple, Mozilla and others...

>

> Google recently appealed Mehta's order. The company argued in its written brief that it "prevailed in the marketplace fair and square," adding that Apple and Mozilla "sensibly chose" Google as the default search engine "because it gave their users the best experience," and because Apple and Mozilla would earn the most ad revenue through the deals. The [U.S.] Justice Department and states countered to the appellate court last week that the liability finding should stand, and also argued that Google should have been banned from paying Apple and Mozilla for placement as the default search engine on their browsers.

>

> [Antitrust enforcers had originally asked the judge to order Google to divest Chrome, but he's already rejected that request.] The government did not argue in its appellate papers that Google should be forced to sell Chrome. But Public Knowledge independently contends in its friend-of-the-court brief that divestiture would benefit consumers... "Divestiture would place those decisions with an institution whose success depends on serving browser users primarily...." The group is calling the appellate court's attention to Google's April 2025 decision to preserve tracking cookies — a reversal from its [2]earlier plans to block third-party cookies by default. "Google is in the position of both deciding Chrome's tracking rules while running the advertising business affected by them," Public Knowledge writes. "An independent Chrome could make those decisions on behalf of users alone."

But Firefox developer Mozilla filed its own friend-of-the-court brief Thursday warning Firefox could be forced to "exit the browser and browser engine markets" if it can't receive payment from Google for distributing its search engine, [3]according to a later report from MediaPost :

> Federal and state antitrust enforcers recently asked the appellate court to reverse the portion of Mehta's order that allows those payments to continue. But Mozilla counters in its new friend-of-the-court brief that Mehta's decision regarding those payments was supported by the evidence --including a study it conducted concluding that its revenue would "decline dramatically" if forced to replace Google with Bing as Firefox's default search engine... Google is expected to file new arguments with the appellate court next month.



[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/google-forced-shed-chrome-advocacy-205355958.html

[2] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/364989/googles-cookie-plans-could-have-dire-impact-di.html

[3] https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/tougher-google-antitrust-penalties-threaten-201315333.html

"I've been a Linux IT administrator for 30 years now," says [1]crhylove (Slashdot reader #205,956), in [2]a new video on his YouTube channel . "I used to be a data center architect, at one point I was the IT director for 13 school districts... I just haven't been happy overall with all the other operating systems out there... "

> I've been working really diligently for the last few weeks on [3]a new distro called Spaced Linux that is exactly what I want to use. It's heavily focused on the [zoom-friendly 3D] [4]Compiz desktop, very efficient using the rolling Devuan Ceres backend, and avoids dependency hell by promoting mostly Flatpak usage.

>

> It's still early, but it's already working great for me, it's been my daily driver for a few weeks now.

There's also user-friendly themes — everything from Linux, Android, GeoWorks, and Mac OS X to Windows 11, Windows XP, and even Windows 3.11 (dark or light theme). And you can also run Windows apps under Wine. "And let me tell you, Nvidia runs perfectly on here now..." he adds [5]in the video . "It just works really, really well out of the box."

He's now working on voice-command features, bur argues that Spaced Linux "is already extremely usable, extremely efficient, extremely fast, and extremely reliable.... And it's only going to get better and better."



[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~crhylove

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVftMkIorSY

[3] https://spacedlinux.com/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVftMkIorSY

Researchers believe they've found evidence that brain signals reveal the pitches of notes in imagined musical melodies, [1]reports Medical Express :

> [2]Study participants were 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the surfaces of their brains for clinical monitoring. Participants quietly listened to the first bars of children's tunes, then imagined the melodies of subsequent bars before humming their imagined melodies. Brain activity from the patients carried information about relative pitches within the imagined melodies. Combining note-level pitch predictions over time allowed the research team to recreate melodic changes that reflected the structure of the imagined songs...

>

> "The model we created decodes relative pitch classes — such as do, re, mi, fa, sol, and la — rather than exact, absolute pitches," [said tudy co-lead Jii Kwon of Seoul National University]. "This is useful because people often recognize melodies by the relationships between notes, even when the same melody is played in a different key."



[1] https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-brain-reveals-melodies-people.html

[2] https://www.eneuro.org/content/13/8/ENEURO.0289-25.2026

Long-time Slashdot reader [1]BrianFagioli is [2]announcing that he's released a new iPhone app that creates a cryptographic witness for photos without uploading the original image.

> The app hashes the file, signs the hash using a dedicated identity stored in Apple Keychain, and publishes the witness to Nostr relays while keeping the photo inside the app unless the user chooses to export it.

>

> Rather than trying to determine whether a scene was genuine, the app — named Veridenz — answers a narrower question, by verifying whether a photo file matches the one that was originally witnessed. Users do not need a Nostr account because the app creates its own signing identity, keeping private documentation separate from a public Nostr profile.

"The developer does not collect any data from this app," says [3]its page in Apple's iPhone store . The app's tagline is "Capture. Prove. Verify."



[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli

[2] https://nerds.xyz/2026/08/veridenz-verify-photos-nostr/

[3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/veridenz/id6796029293

"If you call 911 in New Orleans, you may hear the sound of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent answering your call instead of a human voice," [1]reports the Shreveport Times :

> The Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD) is currently testing out the new tool designed to reduce the volume of calls human dispatchers must handle, which is over a thousand emergency calls a day. New Orleans implemented AI in April to answer 311 calls for non-emergencies. The AI was trained and programmed to provide information to callers, as the OPCD says 50% of 311 calls are for information, [2]according to GovTech . AI is now answering 911 emergency calls in Louisiana's largest city and one of the cities with the highest call rates in the U.S.

>

> The OPCD is using Carbyne's AI Emergency Call Triage, with triage being the process of analyzing and prioritizing emergency calls. The AI system assesses incoming calls and can provide immediate feedback to callers. This is intended to handle the increase of calls that are related to one incident, so callers get automatically routed to an AI agent who asks if they are calling regarding the incident. If the answer is yes, then callers can receive information or updates, and if it's no, then the callers are transferred to a human. This combats multitudes of calls piling up and taking longer time to potentially answer an emergency call. The OPCD said the AI will not be used to handle emergency calls, only to direct such calls to a human dispatcher.



[1] https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/local/louisiana/2026/07/28/is-new-orleans-using-ai-to-answer-911-calls-instead-of-human-dispatchers-impacts-emergencies-crime/91065014007/

[2] https://www.govtech.com/artificial-intelligence/new-orleans-is-latest-to-answer-nonemergency-calls-with-ai

"In a milestone for energy storage technology, Peak Energy has selected Sacramento, California, as the home of America's first manufacturing facility dedicated to grid-scale sodium-ion battery systems," [1]according to the sustainability news site Intelligent Living .

The move "represents the first large-scale test of whether sodium-ion technology can deliver on its promise of cheaper, safer, and more sustainable grid storage at a scale that actually moves the needle for the U.S. electricity system."

> The 183,000-square-foot plant, representing a $71 million investment, will produce up to 4 gigawatt-hours of storage annually when production begins in early 2027. That is enough output each year to serve nearly four million homes, and it signals that sodium-ion technology has moved from laboratory promise to commercial reality... Peak Energy, founded in 2023 by former engineers from Tesla, Enovix, and Fluence, [2]announced its Sacramento site selection on July 8, 2026, after a nationwide search that ultimately chose California over Texas... The factory is designed as a system assembly plant rather than a cell fabrication facility. Peak will receive sodium-ion cells, manufactured to its specifications by Chinese suppliers, and assemble them into complete 30-foot-long, 100,000-pound containerized storage systems. Each GS1.1 unit stores 3.1 megawatt-hours, enough to fully charge more than 40 electric vehicles...

>

> In the United States, Peak Energy has emerged as the most advanced grid-scale player. It has secured more than 6 GWh of customer commitments, including a landmark deal with Jupiter Power for up to 4.75 GWh through 2030, valued at up to $500 million. Energy Vault has committed to 1.5 GWh of sodium-ion storage for AI data center applications, and RWE Americas has already deployed Peak's first grid-scale system on the MISO grid in Wisconsin, energized in March 2026. [3]General Motors is codeveloping sodium-ion cells with Peak at its Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center in Michigan, testing 170- and 190-amp-hour cell formats with domestic production targeted for 2028. China, however, remains the global heavyweight. [4]CATL, the world's largest battery manufacturer , unveiled its TENER Sodium energy storage system in June 2026 with a rated cycle life of 15,000 cycles and a projected 25-to-30-year service life. In April 2026, CATL signed a 60 GWh supply agreement with HyperStrong, the largest sodium-ion deal announced to date. BYD, HiNa Battery, and Farasis are also shipping commercial sodium-ion products, including batteries for a $400 electric scooter already on sale in China...

>

> Peak Energy's first commercial shipments from Sacramento are slated for the first quarter of 2027, with contracted deliveries to Jupiter Power, Energy Vault, and RWE Americas following shortly after. The company has publicly stated it needs to deploy over $100 million in product in 2026, up from roughly $10 million in 2025, and the Sacramento facility is sized to meet that demand. At the system level, sodium-ion grid storage is already operating. Peak's pilot installation at the SolarTAC testing facility in Watkins, Colorado, stores 3.5 MWh and has been running since 2025. The RWE Americas deployment in Wisconsin, energized in March 2026, marks the first time sodium-ion batteries have backed up the MISO grid, which serves 15 central U.S. states and the Canadian province of Manitoba...

>

> [5]According to the International Energy Agency , sodium-ion manufacturing capacity announcements have accelerated sharply since 2024, with global pipelines now exceeding 400 GWh annually... Researchers are also pushing the technology forward. In May 2026, a team at the National University of Singapore [6]published a breakthrough in all-solid-state sodium batteries that could further reduce costs and eliminate the flammable liquid electrolytes found in both lithium-ion and current sodium-ion designs.

"The technology's sweet spot is utility-scale, multi-megawatt-hour installations," the article points out, "where the system-level cost savings from passive cooling and longer cycle life outweigh the per-cell energy density penalty..." The article also points out observations from the [7]American Battery Leadership Coalition , an industry group advocating for sodium-ion policy support, that sodium-ion batteries can be built almost entirely from American materials, including coal, sawdust, and agricultural waste.

This week Syntropic Power and UNIGRID Inc. also announced "a major partnership to commercialize UNIGRID's proprietary sodium chromium oxide (NaCrO2) battery technology across North America," [8]reports Interesting Engineering , "targeting one gigawatt-hour (1 GWh) of deployments in 2027. The technology could be used in residential, virtual power plant, and large-scale stationary grid applications..."

> Independent testing by the ISO-accredited Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Battery Development Center revealed something surprising. UNIGRID's 210Ah cells displayed endothermic behavior during charging. This means the chemical reaction actually absorbs heat rather than dumping it into the environment. Coupled with a 97.9% cell-level round-trip energy efficiency and remarkable thermal stability under abuse testing, the battery stays cool on its own.

>

> The 210Ah sodium-ion cells [9]deliver up to 218Ah of discharge capacity . It demonstrated exceptional durability, retaining over 99% of its capacity after 1,000 full discharge cycles, as well as heat-absorbing behavior during charging. These validated strengths allow Syntropic to optimize its product designs, enabling platforms like GridSpan [its modular DC platform designed for large-scale energy applications with flexible discharge durations ranging from 20 minutes to 20 hours] to operate safely and efficiently at grid scale without needing complex mechanical cooling systems...

>

> Commercialization kicks off with Tenet, a safety-focused, wall-mounted system for residential, light-commercial, and virtual power plant uses... Relying on abundant and widely distributed raw materials like sodium and chromium — rather than lithium and cobalt — protects manufacturers from geopolitical price spikes and material shortages. Apart from offering an alternative to lithium, a successful rollout will demonstrate that the most durable energy storage is the kind that could stay cool entirely on its own.

Thanks to Slashdot reader [10]fjo3 for sharing the news.



[1] https://www.intelligentliving.co/first-sodium-ion-battery-plant-sacramento/

[2] https://peakenergy.com/news/latest/gigafactory-announcement

[3] https://news.gm.com/home.detail.html/Pages/news/us/en/2026/jun/0609-sodium-ion-batteries-grid-scale-energy-storage.html

[4] https://www.intelligentliving.co/catl-launches-first-salt-based-battery-for-evs/

[5] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/sodium-ion-battery-momentum-grows-but-challenges-remain

[6] https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-safer-solid-state-sodium-battery.html

[7] https://americanbatteryleadership.com/

[8] https://interestingengineering.com/energy/unigrid-sodium-ion-battery-tech

[9] https://interestingengineering.com/energy/sodium-metal-batteries-retain-capacity

[10] https://www.slashdot.org/~fjo3