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• Oracle Health Breach Compromises Patient Data At US Hospitals

  28-03-2025 23:30 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  A breach of legacy Cerner servers at Oracle Health exposed patient data from multiple U.S. hospitals and healthcare organizations, with threat actors using compromised customer credentials to steal the data before it had been migrated to Oracle Cloud. Despite confirming the breach privately, Oracle Health has yet to publicly acknowledge the incident. BleepingComputer reports: Oracle Health, formerly known as Cerner, is a healthcare software-as-a-service (SaaS) company offering Electronic Health
  
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• xAI Acquires X

  28-03-2025 23:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Elon Musk says its xAI company has acquired the social media platform X in an all-stock transaction. "The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion less $12 billion debt)," said Musk. He writes on X: Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale. X is the digital town square where more than 600M active users go to find the real-time source of ground
  
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• Trump Pardons Founder of Electric Vehicle Start-Up Nikola, Trevor Milton

  28-03-2025 22:50 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle start-up Nikola who was sentenced to prison last year, was pardoned by Donald Trump late on Thursday, the White House confirmed on Friday. The pardon of Milton, who was sentenced to four years in prison for exaggerating the potential of his technology, could wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution that prosecutors were seeking for defrauded investors. Milton and his wife donated
  
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• Nearly Half of People in the US Have Toxic PFAS in Their Drinking Water

  28-03-2025 22:10 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: New data recently released by the Environmental Protection Agency indicate that more than 158 million people across the U.S. have drinking water contaminated by toxic "forever chemicals," scientifically known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
  "Drinking water is a major source of PFAS exposure. The sheer number of contaminated sites shows that these chemicals are likely present in most of the U.S. water supply," said David Andrews, deput
  
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• Smart TVs Are Employing Screen Monitoring Tech To Harvest User Data

  28-03-2025 21:30 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Smart TV platforms are increasingly monitoring what appears on users' screens through Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology, building detailed viewer profiles for targeted advertising.
  Roku, which transitioned from a hardware company to an advertising powerhouse, reported $3.5 billion in annual ad revenue for 2024 -- representing 85% of its total income. The company has aggressively acquired ACR-related firms, with Roku-owned technology winning an Emmy in 2023 for advancements in the fi
  
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• Scientists Propose 'Bodyoids' To Address Medical Research and Organ Shortage Challenges

  28-03-2025 20:50 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Stanford University researchers have proposed creating "bodyoids" -- ethically sourced human bodies grown from stem cells without neural components for consciousness or pain sensation -- to revolutionize medical research and address organ shortages. In a new opinion piece published in MIT Technology Review, scientists Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi argue that recent advances in biotechnology make this concept increasingly plausible. The approach would combine pl
  
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• Again and Again, NSO Group's Customers Keep Getting Their Spyware Operations Caught

  28-03-2025 20:15 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Amnesty International published a new report this week detailing attempted hacks against two Serbian journalists, allegedly carried out with NSO Group's spyware Pegasus. The two journalists, who work for the Serbia-based Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), received suspicious text messages including a link -- basically a phishing attack, according to the nonprofit. In one case, Amnesty said its researchers were able to click on the link in a safe e
  
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• UK Govt Data People Not Technical, Says Ex-Downing St Data Science Head

  28-03-2025 19:35 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: A former director of data science at the UK prime minister's office has told MPs that people working with data in government are not typically technical and would be unlikely to get a similar job in the private sector.
  In a hearing designed to illuminate the challenges facing the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as it strives to become the digital centre for government, MPs quizzed Laura Gilbert, head of AI for Government, at the Ellis
  
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• Inside YouTube's Weird World Of Fake Movie Trailers

  28-03-2025 18:57 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Fake movie trailers created with AI are proliferating across YouTube, with some garnering more views than official studio releases -- and Hollywood studios are quietly profiting from the phenomenon rather than shutting it down. Instead of enforcing copyright on these unauthorized videos, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony Pictures, and Paramount are claiming monetization rights, directing ad revenue from fake trailers for films like "Superman" and "Gladiator II" into studio coffers, according to a Dea
  
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• Want To Go To College? Pay the College Board

  28-03-2025 17:57 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The College Board, described as a $2 billion nonprofit, functions as the primary gatekeeper for academic success within American higher education, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. The organization significantly shapes university admissions by controlling not only who gains entry to college but also influencing what students know upon arrival.
  This central role in managing and defining higher education admissions positions the Board uniquely. The story adds: The College Board writes the cur
  
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• FTC Tells Staff To Stop Calling the Agency 'Independent' in Complaints

  28-03-2025 17:05 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Staff at the Federal Trade Commission have been instructed to no longer refer to the agency as "independent" in complaints, according to an email obtained by The Verge.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• 75% of Scientists in Nature Poll Weigh Leaving US

  28-03-2025 16:26 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A Nature survey has found that three-quarters of responding U.S. scientists are considering leaving the nation following disruptions to science under the Trump administration.
  Out of 1,608 respondents, 75.3% said they were contemplating leaving the country. Scientists cited concerns over research funding and the general treatment of science as contributing factors for their reasoning. Europe and Canada were mentioned as potential destinations for those looking for opportunities abroad.Read more
  
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• Microsoft President Calls For a National Talent Strategy For Electricians

  28-03-2025 15:46 via news.slashdot.org
  
  theodp writes: "As I prepared for a White House meeting last fall on the nation's electricity needs," begins Microsoft President Brad Smith in The Country Needs More Electricity --And More Electricians, a Fox Business op-ed. "I met with the leaders at Microsoft who are building our AI infrastructure across the country. During our discussion, I asked them to identify the single biggest challenge for data center expansion in the U.S. I expected they would mention slow permitting, delays in bringin
  
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• SoftBank May Pledge More Than $1 Trillion for AI Effort in US, Nikkei Says

  28-03-2025 14:35 via slashdot.org
  
  SoftBank Group plans to create industrial parks for AI across the US and is considering an investment of more than $1 trillion, Nikkei reported. From a report: Founder and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son is expected to visit the US to discuss his ideas for such industrial parks, the newspaper said. The factories would likely use AI-equipped robots that would operate autonomously because of labor shortages in the country, according to the report.
  Son teamed up with OpenAI and Oracle in Janu
  
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• 'Apple Needs a Snow Sequoia'

  28-03-2025 13:30 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  uninet writes: The same year Apple launched the iPhone, it unveiled a massive upgrade to Mac OS X known as Leopard, sporting "300 New Features." Two years later, it did something almost unheard of: it released Snow Leopard, an upgrade all about how little it added and how much it took away. Apple needs to make it snow again. Current releases of MacOS Sequoia and iOS/iPadOS 18 are riddled with easily reproducible bugs in high-traffic areas, the author argues, suggesting Apple's engineers aren't u
  
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• CISA Releases Malware Analysis Report on RESURGE Malware Associated with Ivanti Connect Secure

  28-03-2025 13:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA has published a Malware Analysis Report (MAR) with analysis and associated detection signatures on a new malware variant CISA has identified as RESURGE. RESURGE contains capabilities of the SPAWNCHIMERA[1] malware variant, including surviving reboots; however, RESURGE contains distinctive commands that alter its behavior. These commands: Create a web shell, manipulate integrity checks, and modify files. 
  Enable the use of web shells for credential harvesting, account creation, pa
  
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• IBM US Cuts May Run Deeper Than Feared - and the Jobs Are Heading To India

  28-03-2025 10:45 via slashdot.org
  
  The Register: Following our report last week on IBM's ongoing layoffs, current and former employees got in touch to confirm what many suspected: The US cuts run deeper than reported, and the jobs are heading to India. IBM's own careers site numbers back that up. On January 7, 2024, Big Blue listed just 173 open positions in India. On November 23, 2024, there were 2,946 jobs available in the nation. At the time of writing, the IT titan listed 3,866 roles in India.
  American jobs listed for these t
  
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• As NASA Faces Cuts, China Reveals Ambitious Plans For Planetary Exploration

  28-03-2025 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  As NASA faces potential budget cuts, China is unveiling an ambitious series of deep space missions -- including Mars sample returns, outer planet exploration, and a future Mars base. While some of China's plans are aspirational, their track record of successful missions lends credibility to their expanding role in space. Ars Technica reports: China created a new entity called the "Deep Space Exploration Laboratory" three years ago to strengthen the country's approach to exploring the Solar Syste
  
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• Anthropic Maps AI Model 'Thought' Processes

  28-03-2025 07:14 via slashdot.org
  
  Anthropic researchers have developed a breakthrough "cross-layer transcoder" (CLT) that functions like an fMRI for large language models, mapping how they process information internally. Testing on Claude 3.5 Haiku, researchers discovered the model performs longer-range planning for specific tasks -- such as selecting rhyming words before constructing poem sentences -- and processes multilingual concepts in a shared neural space before converting outputs to specific languages.
  The team also conf
  
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• Labor Arbitrage RIP

  28-03-2025 05:30 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: For decades, India's economic promise has rested on its demographic dividend -- the competitive edge of a massive, young, and increasingly educated workforce. Economists and policymakers have routinely cited the country's population profile as its ticket to economic superpower status, with projections of reaching $10 trillion in GDP and achieving high-income status by 2047. These forecasts depend heavily on a critical assumption: that roughly 500 million Indi
  
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• Virginia Will Punish Fast Drivers With Devices That Limit Their Speed

  28-03-2025 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Virginia is set to become the first state in the country to require some reckless drivers to put devices on their cars that make it impossible to drive too fast. D.C. passed similar legislation last year. Several other states, including Maryland, are considering joining them. It's an embrace of a technological solution to a human problem: Speeding contributes to more than 10,000 deaths a year. Under the Virginia legislation, a judge c
  
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• OpenAI Says 'Our GPUs Are Melting' As It Limits ChatGPT Image Generation Requests

  28-03-2025 01:30 via slashdot.org
  
  Following OpenAI's viral Studio Ghibli moment, CEO Sam Altman says it has temporarily limited image generation in ChatGPT due to the overwhelming demand on its GPU infrastructure. "It's super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT, but our GPUs are melting," he posted on X today. The Verge reports: The demand crunch already caused the artificial intelligence company to push back availability of the built-in image generator for users on ChatGPT's free tier. But apparently that measure alone was
  
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• US Robotics Companies Push For National Strategy To Compete With China

  28-03-2025 00:55 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  U.S. robotics companies, including Tesla and Boston Dynamics, are urging lawmakers to establish a national robotics strategy to keep pace with China's aggressive investment in AI-driven robotics. The Associated Press reports: Jeff Cardenas, co-founder and CEO of humanoid startup Apptronik, of Austin, Texas, pointed out to lawmakers that it was American carmaker General Motors that deployed the first industrial robot at a New Jersey assembly plant in 1961. But the U.S. then ceded its early lead t
  
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• Ubisoft Spins Out Subsidiary With a Billion-Dollar Investment From Tencent

  28-03-2025 00:10 via slashdot.org
  
  Ubisoft is launching a new subsidiary focused on Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six, backed by a 1.16 billion-euro investment from Tencent. "The as-yet-unnamed subsidiary will fold in the teams working on those three series, including Ubisoft studios in Montreal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona and Sofia," reports Engadget. From the report: This new business will receive an investment of 1.16 billion-euro (roughly $1.25 billion) from its longstanding partner Tencent, granting the
  
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