Slashdot reader [1]spatwei writes:

> It is now more common for data to [2]leave companies through copying and pasting than through file transfers and uploads, LayerX revealed in its [3]Browser Security Report 2025 .

>

> This shift is largely due to generative AI (genAI), with 77% of employees pasting data into AI prompts, and 32% of all copy-pastes from corporate accounts to non-corporate accounts occurring within genAI tools.

>

> 'Traditional governance built for email, file-sharing, and sanctioned SaaS didn't anticipate that copy/paste into a browser prompt would become the dominant leak vector,' LayerX CEO Or Eshed wrote in a blog post summarizing the report.

"GenAI now accounts for 11% of enterprise application usage," notes [4]this article from SC World , "with adoption rising faster than many data loss protection (DLP) controls can keep up. Overall, 45% of employees actively use AI tools, with 67% of these tools being accessed via personal accounts and ChatGPT making up 92% of all use..."

"With the rise of AI-driven browsers such as [5]OpenAI's Atlas and [6]Perplexity's Comet , governance of AI tools' access to corporate data becomes even more urgent, the LayerX report notes."



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

[2] https://www.scworld.com/news/copy-paste-now-exceeds-file-transfer-as-top-corporate-data-exfiltration-vector

[3] https://layerxsecurity.com/blog/why-the-browser-has-become-the-enterprises-most-overlooked-endpoint/

[4] https://www.scworld.com/news/copy-paste-now-exceeds-file-transfer-as-top-corporate-data-exfiltration-vector

[5] https://www.scworld.com/news/chatgpt-atlas-address-bar-a-new-avenue-for-prompt-injection-researchers-say

[6] https://www.scworld.com/news/ai-browser-risks-demonstrated-by-poc-sidebar-spoofing-attack

"Google is going to court to help put an end to, or at least limit, the prevalence of phishing scams over text message," [1]reports BGR :

> Google said it's bringing suit against Lighthouse, an impressively large operation that allegedly provides tools customers can buy to set up their own specialized phishing scams. All told, Google estimates that Lighthouse-affiliated scams in the U.S. have stolen anywhere between 12.7 million and 115 million credit cards. "Bad actors built Lighthouse as a phishing-as-a-service kit to generate and deploy massive SMS phishing attacks," [2]Google notes . "These attacks exploit established brands like E-Z Pass to steal people's financial information."

>

> Google's legal action is comprehensive and is intent on completely dismantling Lighthouse's operations. The search giant is bringing claims under RICO, the Lanham Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). RICO, which often comes up in movies and television shows, allows authorities to treat Lighthouse's phishing operation as a broad criminal enterprise as opposed to isolated scams. By using RICO, Google also expands the list of individuals who can be found liable, whether it be the people who started Lighthouse, the people who run it, or even unaffiliated customers who used the company's services. The Lanham Act, for those unaware, targets malicious actors who misappropriate well-known company trademarks in order to confuse consumers. This Lanham Act comes into play because many phishing scams masquerade as legitimate messages from companies like Amazon and FedEx. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, meanwhile, is relevant because scammers typically use stolen credentials to gain unauthorized access to financial systems, something the CFAA is designed to target...

>

> The fact that Google is invoking all three of the acts above underscores how serious the company is about putting a stop to SMS-based scams. By using all three, Google's legal attack is more potent and also expands the range of available remedies to include civil damages and criminal penalties. In short, Google isn't merely trying to win a legal case; it's aiming to emphatically and permanently stop Lighthouse in its tracks.

Getting even more aggressive, Google says it's also [3]working with the U.S. Congress to pass new anti-scammer legislation , and endorsed these three new bipartisan bills:

The Scam Compound Accountability and Mobilization (SCAM) Act "would develop a national strategy to counter scam compounds, enhance sanctions and support survivors of human trafficking within these compounds."

The Foreign Robocall Elimination Act "would establish a taskforce focused on how to best block foreign-originated illegal robocalls before they ever reach American consumers."

The Guarding Unprotected Aging Retirees from Deception (GUARD) Act "would empower state and local law enforcement by enabling them to utilize federal grant funding to investigate financial fraud and scams specifically targeting retirees. "

Thanks to Slashdot reader [4]anderzole for sharing the article.



[1] https://www.bgr.com/2025222/google-fighting-text-message-scams-lawsuit-lighthouse/

[2] https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/legal-action-and-legislation-fight-scammers/

[3] https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/legal-action-and-legislation-fight-scammers/

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

The dream of quantum computers has been hampered by the challenge of error correction, [1]writes the Harvard Gazette , since qubits "are inherently susceptible to slipping out of their quantum states and losing their encoded information."

But in [2]a newly-published paper , a research team "combined various methods to create complex circuits with dozens of error correction layers" that "suppresses errors below a critical threshold — the point where adding qubits further reduces errors rather than increasing them."

> "For the first time, we combined all essential elements for a scalable, error-corrected quantum computation in an integrated architecture," said Mikhail Lukin, co-director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative, Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor, and senior author of the new paper. "These experiments — by several measures the most advanced that have been done on any quantum platform to date — create the scientific foundation for practical large-scale quantum computation..."

>

> "There are still a lot of technical challenges remaining to get to very large-scale computer with millions of qubits, but this is the first time we have an architecture that is conceptually scalable," said lead author Dolev Bluvstein, Ph.D. '25, who did the research during his graduate studies at Harvard and is now an assistant professor at Caltech. "It's going to take a lot of effort and technical development, but it's becoming clear that we can build fault-tolerant quantum computers...."

>

> Hartmut Neven, vice president of engineering at the Google Quantum AI team, said the new paper came amid an "incredibly exciting" race between qubit platforms. "This work represents a significant advance toward our shared goal of building a large-scale, useful quantum computer," he said... With recent advances, Lukin believes the core elements for building quantum computers are falling into place. "This big dream that many of us had for several decades, for the first time, is really in direct sight," he said.

"In theory, a system of 300 quantum bits can store more information than the number of particles in the known universe..." the article points out.

"The new paper represents an important advance in a three-decade pursuit of quantum error correction."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [3]schwit1 for sharing the article.



[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/11/a-potential-quantum-leap/

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09848-5

[3] https://www.slashdot.org/~schwit1

Tech entrepreneur/blogger Anil Dash has been critical of AI browsers like ChatGPT Atlas. (He's written that Atlas " [1]substitutes its own AI-generated content for the web , but it looks like it's showing you the web," while its prompt-based/command-line interface resembles a clunky text adventure, and it's true purpose seems to be ingesting more training data.)

And at the Mozilla Festival in Spain, "Virtually everyone shared some version of what I'd articulated as [2]the majority view on AI, which is approximately that LLMs can be interesting as a technology, but that Big Tech, and especially Big AI, are decidedly awful and people are very motivated to stop them from committing their worst harms upon the vulnerable."

But...

> Another reality that people were a little more quiet in acknowledging, and sometimes reluctant to engage with out loud, is the reality that hundreds of millions of people are using the major AI tools every day ... I don't know why today's Firefox users, even if they're the most rabid anti-AI zealots in the world, don't say, "well, even if I hate AI, I want to make sure Firefox is good at protecting the privacy of AI users so I can recommend it to my friends and family who use AI"...

>

> My personal wishlist would be pretty simple:

>

> * Just give people the "shut off all AI features" button. It's a tiny percentage of people who want it, but they're never going to shut up about it, and they're convinced they're the whole world and they can't distinguish between being mad at big companies and being mad at a technology so give them a toggle switch and write up a blog post explaining how extraordinarily expensive it is to maintain a configuration option over the lifespan of a global product.

>

> * Market Firefox as "The best AI browser for people who hate Big AI". Regular users have no idea how creepy the Big AI companies are — they've just heard their local news talk about how AI is the inevitable future. If Mozilla can warn me [3]how to protect my privacy from ChatGPT , then it can also mention that ChatGPT tells children how to self-harm, and should be aggressive in engaging with the community on how to build tools that help mitigate those kinds of harms — how do we catalyze that innovation?

>

> * Remind people that there isn't "a Firefox" — everyone is Firefox. Whether it's Zen, or your custom build of Firefox with your favorite extensions and skins, it's all part of the same story. Got a local LLM that runs entirely as a Firefox extension? Great! That should be one of the many Firefoxes, too. Right now, so much of the drama and heightened emotions and tension are coming from people's (well... dudes') egos about there being One True Firefox, and wanting to be the one who controls what's in that version, as an expression of one set of values. This isn't some blood-feud fork, there can just be a lot of different choices for different situations. Make it all work.



[1] https://www.anildash.com//2025/10/22/atlas-anti-web-browser/

[2] https://www.anildash.com/2025/10/17/the-majority-ai-view

[3] https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/how-to-protect-your-privacy-from-chatgpt-and-other-ai-chatbots

A new "cold war" between America and China is "pushing leaders to sideline concerns about the dangers of powerful AI models," [1]reports the Wall Street Journal , "including the spread of disinformation and other harmful content, and the development of superintelligent AI systems misaligned with human values..."

"Both countries are driven as much by fear as by hope of progress. "

> In Washington and Silicon Valley, warnings abound that China's "authoritarian AI," left unchecked, will erode American tech supremacy. Beijing is gripped by the conviction that a failure to [2]keep pace in AI will make it easier for the U.S. to cut short China's resurgence as a global power. Both countries believe market share for their companies across the world is up for grabs — and with it, the potential to influence large swaths of the global population.

>

> The U.S. still has a clear lead, producing the most powerful [3]AI models . China can't match it in [4]advanced chips and has no answer for the financial firepower of private American investors, who funded AI startups to the tune of $104 billion in the first half of 2025, and are [5]gearing up for more . But it has a massive population of capable engineers, lower costs and a state-led development model that often moves faster than the U.S., all of which Beijing is working to harness to tip the contest in its direction. A new "whole of society" campaign looks to accelerate the construction of computing clusters in areas like Inner Mongolia, where vast solar and wind farms provide plentiful cheap energy, and connect hundreds of data centers to create a shared compute pool — some describe it as a "national cloud" — by 2028. China is also funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into its power grid to support AI training and adoption...

>

> "Our lead is probably in the 'months but not years' realm," said Chris McGuire, who helped design U.S. export controls on AI chips while serving on the National Security Council under the Biden administration. Chinese AI models currently rank at or near the top in every task from coding to video generation, with the exception of search, according to Chatbot Arena, a popular crowdsourced ranking platform. China's manufacturing sector, meanwhile, is rocketing past the U.S. in [6]bringing AI into the physical world through robotaxis, autonomous drones and [7]humanoid robots . Given China's progress, McGuire said, the U.S. is "very lucky" to have its advantage in chips...

>

> If AI surpasses human intelligence and acquires the ability to improve itself, it could confer unshakable scientific, economic and military superiority on the country that controls it. Short of that, AI's ability to automate tedious tasks and process vast amounts of data quickly promises to supercharge everything from cancer diagnoses to missile defense. With so much at stake, hacking and cyber espionage are likely to get worse, as AI gives hackers more powerful tools, while increasing incentives for state-backed groups to try to steal AI-related intellectual property. As distrust grows, Washington and Beijing will also find it hard, if not impossible, to cooperate in areas like preventing extremist groups from using AI in destructive ways, such as building bioweapons. "The costs of the AI Cold War are already high and will go much higher," said Paul Triolo, a former U.S. government analyst and current technology policy lead at business consulting firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group. "A U.S.-China AI arms race becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with neither side able to trust that the other would observe any restrictions on advanced AI capability development...."

The article includes an interesting observation from Helen Toner, director of strategy for Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former OpenAI board member. Toner points out "We don't actually know" if boosting computing power with better chips will continue producing more-powerful AI models.

So "If performance plateaus," the Journal writes, "despite all the spending by OpenAI and others — a growing concern in Silicon Valley — China has a chance to compete."



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-ai-cold-war-that-will-redefine-everything/ar-AA1Qb9jY

[2] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-race-tech-workers-schedule-1ea9a116

[3] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/is-openai-becoming-too-big-to-fail-400bac2c

[4] https://www.wsj.com/world/china/trump-nvidia-china-chip-exports-51e00415

[5] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/big-tech-is-spending-more-than-ever-on-ai-and-its-still-not-enough-f2398cfe

[6] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-has-a-different-vision-for-ai-it-might-be-smarter-581f1e44

[7] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/humanoid-robots-are-lousy-co-workers-china-wants-to-be-first-to-change-that-0fe8528c

[1]From the personal blog of interface expert Bruce Ediger :

> Early in March 2025, I noticed that a web crawler with a user agent string of

>

> meta-externalagent/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler)

>

> was hitting my blog's machine at an unreasonable rate.

>

> I followed the URL and discovered this is what Meta uses to gather premium, human-generated content to train its LLMs. I found the rate of requests to be annoying.

>

> I already have a PHP program that creates the illusion of an [2]infinite website . I decided to answer any HTTP request that had "meta-externalagent" in its user agent string with the contents of a bork.php generated file...

>

> This worked brilliantly. Meta ramped up to requesting 270,000 URLs on May 30 and 31, 2025...

>

> After about 3 months, I got scared that Meta's insatiable consumption of Super Great Pages about condiments, underwear and circa 2010 C-List celebs would start costing me money. So I switched to giving "meta-externalagent" a 404 status code. I decided to see how long it would take one of the highest valued companies in the world to decide to go away.

>

> The answer is 5 months.



[1] https://bruceediger.com/posts/goofing-on-meta/

[2] https://bruceediger.com/posts/anti-seo-infinite-website/

" [1]Media headlines suggesting some slowdown in EV sales are simply incorrect ," writes the site Electrek , "and leave out the bigger picture that gas car sales actually are dropping..."

> Over the course of the last two years or so, sales of battery electric vehicles, while continuing to grow, have posted lower year-over-year percentage growth rates than they had in years prior. EV sales used to grow at 50%+ per year, but for the last couple years, they have grown closer to ~25% per year. This alone is not particularly remarkable — it is inevitable that any growing product or category will show slower percentage growth rates as sales rise, particularly one that has been growing at such a fast rate for so long. In some recent years, we had even seen [2]year-over-year doublings in EV market share (though one of those was 2020->2021, which was anomalous). To expect improvement at that level perpetually would be close to impossible — after 3 years of doubling market share from 2023's 18% number, EVs would account for more than 100% of the global automotive market, which cannot happen...

>

> We have seen a global EV sales growth rate of 23% in the first 10 months of this year, according to a report just released by Rho Motion (recently acquired by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence). That includes a +32% bump in Europe, +22% bump in China, +4% in North America, and a big +48% bump in the "rest of the world." Notably, this 23% global growth rate is higher than last year's YTD growth rate, which was [3]22% at this time ...

>

> In covering these trends, some journalists have attempted to use the less-wrong phrase "slower growth," showing that EV sales are still growing, but at a lower percentage change than previously seen. But for the first ten months of this year, that isn't true — EV sales are up more in 2025 than in 2024 by a percentage basis. They are also up in raw sales numbers — in 2024, [4]EV sales grew by a larger number than in 2023 . And the same is true so far in 2025. Going back to 2023, 10.7 million EVs were sold globally in the first 10 months. Then in 2024, 13.3 million were sold, a difference of 2.6 million. And so far in 2025, 16.5 million EVs have sold, a difference of 3.2 million. Not only are the numbers getting bigger, but the growth in unit sales is getting bigger as well.

Even in America, the EV market "has increased so far this year, with [5]11.7% US EV sales growth YTD ."

> In terms of US hybrid sales, much has been made of customers "shifting from EVs to hybrids," which is also not the case. Conventional gas-hybrid sales [6]are indeed up and plug-in hybrids, which have grown more slowly than gas-hybrids/BEVs, have also shown some growth lately. But gas-hybrid sales have not come at the cost of EV sales, rather at the cost of gas-only car sales.

>

> Because that's just the thing: the number of gas-only vehicles being sold worldwide is a number that actually is falling. That number continues to go down year over year. Sales of new gas-powered cars are down by [7]about a quarter from their peak in 2017, and show no signs of recovering... And yet, somehow, virtually every headline you read is about the "EV sales slump," rather than the "gas-car sales slump." The one you keep hearing about isn't happening, but the one you rarely hear about is happening... No matter what region of the world you're in, EV sales were up in the first 10 months of this year.



[1] https://electrek.co/2025/11/12/ev-sales-still-have-not-fallen-cooled-slowed-or-slumped-media-is-lying-to-you/

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1371599/global-ev-market-share/

[3] https://electrek.co/2024/10/24/ev-sales-have-not-fallen-cooled-slowed-or-slumped-stop-lying-in-headlines/?extended-comments=1

[4] https://electrek.co/2025/01/14/ev-growth-rose-again-in-2024-despite-media-political-lies-saying-otherwise/

[5] https://www.coxautoinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Q3-2025-Kelley-Blue-Book-EV-Sales-Report.pdf

[6] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63904

[7] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-30/world-hit-peak-gas-powered-vehicles-as-evs-gain-market-share

An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from Electrek :

> Solar and wind are growing fast enough to meet all new electricity demand worldwide for the first three quarters of 2025, according to new data from energy think tank Ember.

>

> The group now expects fossil power to stay flat for the full year, marking the first time since the pandemic that fossil generation won't increase. Solar and wind aren't just expanding; they're outpacing global electricity demand itself. Solar generation jumped 498 TWh (+31%) compared to the same period last year, already topping all the solar power produced in 2024. Wind added another 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they supplied 635 TWh of new clean electricity, beating out the 603 TWh rise in global demand (+2.7%). That lifted solar and wind to 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of the year, up from 15.2% year-over-year. That brought the total share of renewables in global electricity -solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy, and geothermal — to 43%. Fossil fuels slid to 57.1%, down from 58.7%.

>

> For the first time in 2025, renewables collectively generated more electricity than coal. And fossil generation as a whole has stalled. Fossil output slipped slightly by 0.1% (-17 TWh) through the end of Q3. Ember expects no fossil-fuel growth for the full year, driven by clean power growth outpacing demand.



[1] https://electrek.co/2025/11/13/solar-and-wind-are-covering-all-new-power-demand-in-2025/

Residential utility bills in America "rose 6% on average nationwide in August compared with the same period in the previous year," [1]reports CNBC , citing statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

> The reasons for price increases are often complex and vary by region. But in at least three states with high concentrations of data centers, electric bills climbed much faster than the national average during that period. Prices, for example, surged by 13% in Virginia, 16% in Illinois and 12% in Ohio.

>

> The tech companies and AI labs are building data centers that consume a gigawatt or more of electricity in some cases, equivalent to more than 800,000 homes, the [2]size of a city essentially... "The techlash is real," said Abraham Silverman, who served as general counsel for New Jersey's public utility board from 2019 until 2023 under outgoing Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. "Data centers aren't always great neighbors," said Silverman, now a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. "They tend to be loud, they can be dirty and there's a number of communities, particularly in places with really high concentrations of data centers, that just don't want more data centers..." [C]apacity prices get passed down to consumers in their utility bills, Silverman said. The data center load in PJM [America's largest grid, serving 13 states] is also impacting prices in states that are not industry leaders such as New Jersey, where prices jumped about 20% year over year...

>

> There are other reasons for rising electricity prices, Silverman said. The aging electric grid needs upgrades at a time of broad inflation and the cost of building new transmission lines has gone up by double digits, he said. The utilities also point to rising demand from the expansion of domestic manufacturing and the broader electrification of the economy, such as electric vehicles and the adoption of electric heat pumps in some regions...

>

> In other states, however, the relationship between rising electricity prices and data centers is less clear. Texas, for example, is second only to Virginia with more than 400 data centers. But prices in the Lone Star state increased about 4% year over year in August, lower than the national average. Texas operates its own grid, ERCOT, with a relatively fast process that can connect new electric supply to the grid in around three years, according to a February 2024 report [3]from the Brattle Group . California, meanwhile, has the third most data centers in the nation and the second highest residential electricity prices, nearly 80% above the national average. But prices in the Golden State increased about 1% in August 2024 over the prior year period, far below the average hike nationwide. One of the reasons California's electricity rates are so much higher than most of the country is the costs associated with preventing wildfires.



[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/14/data-centers-are-concentrated-in-these-states-heres-whats-happening-to-electricity-prices-.html

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/23/data-centers-powering-ai-could-use-more-electricity-than-entire-cities.html

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/14/data-centers-are-concentrated-in-these-states-heres-whats-happening-to-electricity-prices-.html

It was the [1]first allegation of a crime committed in space — back in 2019. But by 2020 it had led to [2]charges of lying to federal authorities . And now a former Air Force intelligence officer "has pleaded guilty to lying to a federal agent," [3]reports CNBC , "by falsely claiming that her estranged astronaut wife illegally accessed her bank account while aboard the International Space Station for six months, [4]prosecutors in Houston, Texas, said Friday ."

> The guilty plea by Summer Worden, 50, on Thursday comes more than five years after she was [5]indicted in the space case for lying about actions by her wife, Anne McClain, a U.S. Army colonel, West Point graduate and Iraq war combat veteran, while they were in the midst of a divorce. The claim came at a time when Worden said that the couple was engaged in [6]a custody battle over what Worden's then-6-year-old son, who had been conceived through in vitro fertilizationand carried by a surrogate...

>

> McClain was aboard the Space Station from December 2018 through June 2019. She recently commanded the SpaceX Crew-10 crew mission to the Space Station from March this year until August.

>

> Worden, who remains free on bond, is scheduled to be sentenced on February 12. She faces a maximum possible sentence of up to five years in prison.



[1] https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/08/24/2020228/first-alleged-crime-in-space

[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/04/07/2135225/nasa-astronauts-estranged-wife-charged-with-lying-about-space-crime-allegation

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/14/space-station-nasa-guilty-wife-bank-account.html

[4] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/pr/far-out-woman-guilty-false-reports-illegal-bank-account-access-international-space

[5] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/pr/woman-charged-falsely-claiming-officer-accessed-her-bank-account-international-space

[6] https://www.click2houston.com/news/2019/08/24/houston-astronaut-accused-of-hacking-ex-spouses-bank-account-from-space/

An anonymous reader shared [1]this post from the gaming news site Aftermath :

> Concord , Sony Interactive Entertainment and Firewalk Studios' [2] Overwatch -like shooter , was live for just two weeks before it was pulled offline. Though Concord [3]certainly had some dedicated players , it didn't have many — which is why it may be surprising to hear that a group of players are reverse-engineering the game and its servers to bring it back to life.

>

> Publisher Sony removed Concord from stores and digital marketplaces, automatically refunded some, and, later, [4]shut down Firewalk Studios . Two hundred or so people were laid off, and any hopes of Concord's return were dashed. Poor sales — [5]estimated to be under 25,000 copies sold — and low player numbers marred the release. Firewalk Studios' [6]game director Ryan Ellis said in a blog post that pieces of the game "resonated with players," but "other aspects of the game and [ Concord 's] initial launch didn't land the way [Firewalk Studios] intended."

>

> Concord wasn't a bad game, but it just didn't generate enough interest with enough players. Now, a group of three hobbyist reverse-engineers, who go by real, Red, and gwog online, are trying to make it playable again... "Sometimes there's enough of the server left in the game, that we can 'activate' that code and make the game believe it's a server," Red said. "We do pretty much always need to fill in the gaps though..." Concord used an anti-tamper software to keep people from cheating, which also creates a problem for people reverse engineering. It's "nearly impossible" to crack, Red said, so the group didn't — they found an exploit to "forcefully decrypt the game's code" to "restore the game and start working on servers...."

>

> It's not open to the public, but people can sign up for future tests. Even former Firewalk Studios employees have joined the server. They're excited to see Concord come back to life, too, the developers said.

"Friday morning, a video of the playtest was [7]posted to the Concord Reddit page ," according to the article. (Though ironically by Friday night YouTube had had [8]removed the video "due to a copyright claim by MarkScan Enforcement."



[1] https://aftermath.site/concord-dead-game-firewalk-sony/

[2] https://aftermath.site/podcasts/aftermath-hours-podcast-concord-failure-sony-steam/

[3] https://www.polygon.com/playstation/448419/concord-gameplay-final-hours-close-servers-offline-time-date/

[4] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/29/24282900/sony-shutting-down-concord-firewalk-studios

[5] https://www.ign.com/articles/concord-is-estimated-to-have-sold-only-25000-units-heres-why-analysts-think-its-failing

[6] https://blog.playstation.com/2024/09/03/an-important-update-on-concord/

[7] https://www.reddit.com/r/ConcordGame/comments/1owxnp4/concord_is_now_running_on_custom_servers/

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahpUW5Gbfi0

Long-time Slashdot reader [1]schwit1 shares [2]a Substack post by economist/entrepreneur Skander Garroum :

> You know that feeling when you're waiting for the cable guy, and they said 'between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up? Now imagine that, except the cable guy is 'electricity,' the day is '50 years,' and you're one of 600 million people. At some point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself.

>

> What's happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it's not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It's being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it's working. Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn't exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.

>

> And if you understand what's happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.



[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~schwit1

[2] https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already-happening

"The International Energy Agency's latest outlook signals that oil demand could keep growing through to the middle of the century," [1]reports CNBC , "reflecting a sharp tonal shift from the world's energy watchdog and raising further questions about the future of fossil fuels."

> In its flagship [2]World Energy Outlook , the Paris-based agency on Wednesday laid out a scenario in which demand for oil climbs to 113 million barrels per day by 2050, up 13% from 2024 levels. The IEA had [3]previously estimated a peak in global fossil fuel demand before the end of this decade and said that, in order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, there [4]should be no new investments in coal, oil and gas projects... The IEA's end-of-decade peak oil forecast kick-started a long-running [5]war of words with OPEC, an influential group of oil exporting countries, which accused the IEA of fearmongering and risking the destabilization of the global economy.

>

> The IEA's latest forecast of increasing oil demand was outlined in its "Current Policies Scenario" — one of a number of scenarios outlined by the IEA. This one assumes no new policies or regulations beyond those already in place. The CPS was dropped five years ago amid [6]energy market turmoil during the coronavirus pandemic, and its reintroduction follows [7]pressure from the Trump administration... Gregory Brew, an analyst at Eurasia Group's Energy, Climate and Resources team, said the IEA's retreat on peak oil demand signified "a major shift" from the group's position over the last five years. "The justifications offered for the shift include policy changes in the U.S., where slow EV penetration indicates robust oil [consumption], but is also tied to expected increases in petrochemical and aviation fuel in East and Southeast Asia," Brew told CNBC by email. "It's unlikely the agency is adjusting based on political pressure — though there has been some of that, with the Trump administration criticizing the group's supposed bias in favor of renewable energy — and the shift reflects a broader skepticism that oil demand is set to peak any time soon," he added...

>

> Alongside its CPS, the IEA also laid out projections under its so-called "Stated Policies Scenario" (STEPS), which reflects the prevailing direction of travel for the global energy system. In this assumption, the IEA said it expects oil demand to peak at 102 million barrels per day around 2030, before gradually declining. Global electric car sales are much stronger under this scenario compared to the CPS. The IEA said its multiple scenarios explore a range of consequences from various policy choices and should not be considered forecasts.

Thanks to Slashdot reader [8]magzteel for sharing the news.



[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/13/what-now-for-peak-oil-unpacking-the-ieas-shift-on-fossil-fuel-demand.html

[2] https://www.iea.org/news/as-risks-multiply-in-a-world-thirsty-for-energy-diversification-and-cooperation-are-more-urgent-than-ever

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/24/demand-for-fossil-fuels-set-to-peak-by-2030-but-its-not-enough-iea.html

[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/18/stop-investing-in-fossil-fuels-to-meet-net-zero-targets-iea-says.html

[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/05/peak-crude-demand-is-fueling-anger-and-argument-in-the-world-of-oil.html

[6] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/26/why-oil-prices-went-negative-and-why-they-can-go-negative-again.html

[7] https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-official-pressure-international-energy-agency-drop-climate-mission/

[8] https://slashdot.org/~magzteel

YouTube TV and Disney have [1]ended their two-week carriage standoff , restoring ESPN, ABC, and other Disney networks under a new multiyear deal. Variety reports:

> Under the new agreement, ESPN's full lineup of sports -- including content from ESPN Unlimited -- will be made available on YouTube TV to base-plan subscribers at no additional cost by the end of 2026. In addition, access to a selection of live and on-demand programming from ESPN Unlimited will be available inside YouTube TV.

>

> The deal also lets YouTube include the Disney+ and Hulu bundle as part of "select YouTube offerings." According to Disney, "select networks" will be included in various genre-specific packages that YouTube TV expects to launch in the future. [...] The deal supersedes their prior distribution agreement, inked in December 2021 after a two-day blackout.



[1] https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/youtube-tv-disney-blackout-deal-renewal-espn-abc-1236567658/

[1]schwit1 shares a report from the Business Times:

> General Motors (GM) has directed several thousand of its suppliers to [2]scrub their supply chains of parts from China , four people familiar with the matter said, reflecting automakers' growing frustration over geopolitical disruptions to their operations. GM executives have been telling suppliers they should find alternatives to China for their raw materials and parts, with the goal of eventually moving their supply chains out of the country entirely, the people said. The automaker has set a 2027 deadline for some suppliers to dissolve their China sourcing ties, some of the sources said. GM approached some suppliers with the directive in late 2024, but the effort took on fresh urgency this past spring, during the early days of an escalating US-China trade battle, the sources said.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~schwit1

[2] https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/global/gm-wants-parts-makers-pull-supply-chains-china

[1]alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert:

> A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, [2]a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron . To figure it out once and for all, [astronomer Arthur Briaud of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in France] and his colleagues collected data from space missions and lunar laser-ranging experiments to compile a profile of various lunar characteristics. These include the degree of its deformation by its gravitational interaction with Earth, the variation in its distance from Earth, and its density.

>

> ... they found that the lunar core is very similar to that of Earth â" with an outer fluid layer and a solid inner core. According to their modeling, the outer core has a radius of about 362 kilometers (225 miles), and the inner core has a radius of about 258 kilometers (160 miles). That's about 15 percent of the entire radius of the Moon. The inner core, the team found, also has a density of about 7,822 kilograms per cubic meter. That's very close to the density of iron. [...]

The research has been [3]published in Nature .



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

[2] https://www.sciencealert.com/its-official-scientists-confirmed-what-is-inside-our-moon

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05935-7

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post:

> Winning the lottery isn't what brought Carrie Edwards her 15 minutes of fame. It was giving it all away. Standing alone in her kitchen one day in September, the Virginia woman was thunderstruck to discover she had won $150,000 in a Powerball drawing. As she was absorbing her windfall, she said, "I just heard as loud as you can hear God or whoever you believe in the universe just say, this is -- it's not your money." Then came a decision: [1]She would donate it all to her three most cherished charities (source paywalled; [2]alternative source ). [...] Her journey to the lucky prize started when she walked into a 7-Eleven with a friend who wanted to buy two Powerball tickets. The jackpot for the Sept. 6 drawing was topping $1.7 billion, the second-largest amount ever. Edwards, 68, hardly ever played the lottery, but her friend was an active player who gave her two pieces of advice: Always buy a paper ticket, rather than getting them online. And the Powerball multiplier is a scam, don't do it. She ignored him on both accounts.

>

> She created a Virginia Lottery account on her phone. Then, instead of the typical strategies of using family birthdays and lucky numbers, she went to ChatGPT -- which she had only recently started using for research -- and asked, "Do you have any winning numbers for me?" "Luck is luck," replied the chatbot. Then it gave numbers that she plugged in -- paying the extra dollar for the Power Play to multiply anything she might win. She initially thought luck wasn't on her side when she didn't win the massive jackpot. But what she didn't realize is that she'd picked the "draw two" option, meaning her numbers were reentered for the next drawing. When she got a notification on her phone that she had won, she said, she thought it was a scam, or maybe she'd won something small, like $10. Just to satisfy her curiosity, she logged into her account and saw that she had matched four of the five numbers plus the Powerball in that second drawing. It would have been a $50,000 payout, but the multiplier tripled her winnings.



[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/11/14/virginia-lottery-donate-winnings-chatgpt/

[2] https://archive.ph/20251114215543/https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/11/14/virginia-lottery-donate-winnings-chatgpt/

Apple's limited-edition "iPhone Pocket" [1]sold out almost instantly worldwide despite its $150-$230 price tag. Appleinsider reports:

> Longtime Apple users immediately saw the resemblance with the old iPod socks, and everyone saw the price. Apple and Japan's Issey Miyake fashion house partnered to create a limited edition iPhone Pocket, a stretched sock-like bag or shoulder strap.

>

> There was no denying that an iPhone in this Pocket looked snuggly. There was definitely no denying that the accessory was well designed. There's also no question that it was about as goofy as the iPod Sock from back the in the day. But there was every denying of the price. The iPhone Pocket came in a short version for $150, and a longer one for $230.

>

> For comparison, the Apple Watch SE starts at $250. As ever, though, if you liked it, if you had a use for it, and if you had the budget, there was no reason left not to buy. But if you have hesitated because of the cost, you are now out of luck. There are none left in the US.



[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/11/14/costly-iphone-pocket-sells-out-nearly-immediately

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record:

> Russian telecom operators have [1]begun cutting mobile internet access for 24 hours for citizens returning to the country from abroad, in what officials say is an effort to prevent Ukrainian drones from using domestic SIM cards for navigation. "When a SIM card enters Russia from abroad, the user has to confirm that it's being used by a person -- not installed in a drone," the Digital Development Ministry [2]said in a statement earlier this week.

>

> Users can restore access sooner by solving a captcha or calling their operator for identification. Authorities said the temporary blackout is meant to "ensure the safety of Russian citizens" and prevent SIM cards from being embedded in "enemy drones." The new rule has led to unexpected outages for residents in border regions, whose phones can automatically connect to foreign carriers. Officials advised users to switch to manual network selection to avoid being cut off.



[1] https://therecord.media/russia-24-hour-traveler-mobile-internet-blackouts-ukraine-drones

[2] https://t.me/mintsifry/2676

"Within the past year, stories have been posted on Slashdot about people [1]helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs at U.S. corporations , companies [2]knowingly assisting them , [3]how not to hire a North Korean for a remote IT job, and how a simple question [4]tripped up a North Korean applying for a remote IT job," writes longtime Slashdot reader [5]smooth wombat . "The FBI is even warning companies that North Koreans working remotely [6]can steal source code and extort money from the company -- money that goes to fund the North Korean government. Now, five more people have [7]plead guilty to knowingly helping North Koreans infiltrate U.S. companies as remote IT workers ." TechCrunch reports:

> The five people are accused of working as "facilitators" who helped North Koreans get jobs by providing their own real identities, or false and stolen identities of more than a dozen U.S. nationals. The facilitators also hosted company-provided laptops in their homes across the U.S. to make it look like the North Korean workers lived locally, according to the [8]DOJ press release . These actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un's regime $2.2 million in revenue, said the DOJ. Three of the people -- U.S. nationals Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar, and Alexander Paul Travis -- each pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.

>

> Prosecutors accused the three of helping North Koreans posing as legitimate IT workers, whom they knew worked outside of the United States, to use their own identities to obtain employment, helped them remotely access their company-issued laptops set up in their homes, and also helped the North Koreans pass vetting procedures, such as drug tests. The fourth U.S. national who pleaded guilty is Erick Ntekereze Prince, who ran a company called Taggcar, which supplied to U.S. companies allegedly "certified" IT workers but whom he knew worked outside of the country and were using stolen or fake identities. Prince also hosted laptops with remote access software at several residences in Florida, and earned more than $89,000 for his work, the DOJ said.

>

> Another participant in the scheme who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy and another count of aggravated identity theft is Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors accuse of stealing U.S. citizens' identities and selling them to North Koreans so they could get jobs at more than 40 U.S. companies. According to the press release, Didenko earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for this service. Didenko agreed to forfeit $1.4 million as part of his guilty plea. The DOJ also announced that it had frozen and seized more than $15 million in cryptocurrency stolen in 2023 by North Korean hackers from several crypto platforms.



[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/05/17/0042215/arizona-woman-accused-of-helping-north-koreans-get-remote-it-jobs-at-300-companies

[2] https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/07/24/2348251/cyber-firm-knowbe4-hired-a-fake-it-worker-from-north-korea

[3] https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/08/31/052207/how-not-to-hire-a-north-korean-it-spy

[4] https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/05/10/0656226/how-a-simple-question-tripped-up-a-north-korean-spy-interviewing-for-an-it-job

[5] https://slashdot.org/~smooth+wombat

[6] https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/01/24/1851209/fbi-north-korean-it-workers-steal-source-code-to-extort-employers

[7] https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/14/five-people-plead-guilty-to-helping-north-koreans-infiltrate-us-companies-as-remote-it-workers/

[8] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-nationwide-actions-combat-illicit-north-korean-government