An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Bumblebees can use tools to solve a problem, according to experiments that demonstrate their remarkably advanced cognitive abilities. The bees were given an adapted version of an experiment that, 100 years ago, first demonstrated chimpanzees could work out how to retrieve an out-of-reach banana by stacking boxes. Since then, various other primates, elephants and crows have joined an elite cohort of species known to be capable of this level of insight and spontaneous problem solving. In the latest research, bees were shown to be able to roll a polystyrene ball to a specific location and climb on to it in order to access an artificial flower on a low ceiling. The findings challenge the longstanding assumption that insects operate purely on instinct and mindless trial-and-error learning. "Most people think insects are reflex-based machines," said Dr Olli Loukola, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Oulu, Finland, and senior author. "That they can't have any emotional states or feel pain. Some people don't even realize that they have brains. I hope that these results change the worldview about that." "We are not claiming that bees think like humans," added Loukola. "But our findings show that miniature brains can generate flexible solutions to novel problems in ways we are only beginning to understand." The findings are published in the journal Science.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic is urging leading AI labs to consider slowing development, warning that frontier models are advancing fast enough that they may soon be able to improve themselves without direct human intervention. The company says a global ability to pause or slow AI development would "likely be a good thing," citing internal data about accelerating model capabilities. From a blog post: Using public benchmarks and previously unreported data from within Anthropic, The Anthropic Institute is showing that AI is already accelerating the development of AI systems. To take just one example: today, Anthropic engineers on average ship 8x as much code per quarter as they did from 2021-2025. The technical trends discussed in this piece suggest that AI systems are going to become much more capable in coming years. These trends have huge implications. AI that can build itself would be a major development in the history of technology -- one that could bring enormous good for the world in science, healthcare, and beyond. But full recursive self-improvement also might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems. If systems are capable of fully building their own successors, the ways we secure them, monitor them, and shape their behavior all grow much more important. [...] If it were possible to effectively slow the development of this technology to give ourselves more time to deal with its immense implications, we think that would likely be a good thing. But if a slowdown simply lets the least cautious actors catch up technologically, it could leave everyone less safe. Without a global coordination mechanism, companies and governments will have to make difficult decisions about safety while under competitive and geopolitical pressures. We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology. The Anthropic Institute will conduct research -- in collaboration with many others -- and take actions to help build the systems that a credible slowdown or pause would require. These systems would enable frontier AI developers to verify that others globally have actually stopped or slowed, and that a bad actor could not use the auspices of a coordinated slowdown to jump ahead in secret. If such systems existed, we expect that we would slow down or temporarily pause, if other developers at or near the frontier also did so in a verifiable manner...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new npm supply-chain attack has infected 36 packages with Rust-based infostealer malware called IronWorm. According to BleepingComputer, the malware "targets 86 environment variables (key-value pairs) and 20 credential files that may contain OpenAI, AWS, Anthropic, and npm credentials, vault configuration files, SSH keys, and Exodus cryptocurrency wallet files." From the report: According to researchers at supply-chain and devops company JFrog, IronWorm is written in Rust, hides behind an eBPF kernel rootkit, and communicates with the operator over the Tor network. The Rust-based malware self-propagates by using stolen credentials for publishing on npm; this includes secrets associated with npm's Trusted Publishing workflow. Once it compromises a developer or CI environment, it can publish trojanized versions of packages owned by the victim, which then infect additional developers and CI systems. This behavior is conceptually similar to Shai Hulud, which had its code published on GitHub recently. Although JFrog researchers did not find a clear connection between IronWorm and Shai Hulud, they observed the same commit names in both supply-chain attacks. This opens the possibility that the new malware is an evolution of TeamPCP's payload, since IronWorm appears to be "a custom, carefully built implant from an operation with its own infrastructure." [...] The company provides a list of all impacted package names and their versions in the report and recommends that developers upgrade to fixed releases, rotate their keys, and enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for all accounts. At the same time, Endor Labs and StepSecurity have spotted a very similar but distinct attack involving a JavaScript-based malware named binding.gyp, performing registry poisoning and GitHub Actions infection, unfolding during the same time-frame.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The moderators of the biohacking subreddit say that peptide and hormone replacement therapy companies have been surreptitiously spamming Reddit in an attempt to get their posts scraped by AI chatbots. The strategy is an effort to systematically manipulate the answers provided by chatbots by manipulating the underlying source material that those chatbots will scrape -- in this case, a popular Reddit community. In a post last week, the moderators of r/biohackers said they would be banning new posts about peptides and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) because of attempted manipulation by the companies that make, market, and sell them. [...] "As AI search engines increasingly pull answers from Reddit, companies are using us for AEO. On top of that, there's been an explosion of peptide interest and AI usage flooding the sub. Together, this has put serious pressure on content quality," a post by the moderators read. [...] It has become incredibly difficult to stop Reddit manipulation, because the firms doing it are getting more sophisticated. The moderator said that there are really standard and long-running strategies where brands will hop in the comments and suggest their products: "That type of marketing has always existed and if people want to try something new because the brand resonated with them, cool. That's the way marketing should flow in my mind," they said. "But what I'm seeing that is way scarier to me is that there are companies that will reverse-engineer the actual prompt patterns that are prioritized by LLMs, and so you'll see someone post a super clickbait, high-traction, vague question like 'Is all the hype around Vitamin D actually worth it?" they added. "And that thread will do really well because everyone on biohackers actually has an opinion, so it gets engagement and prioritized by LLMs, and then brands will sneak in and they'll embed their brand mentions in those threads in the exact right places in a seemingly organic way. But none of it is organic, the entire thing is a strategy by an agency to prioritize brand mentions or a narrative within an LLM." The Reddit accounts that are doing this are "warmed up" or are made to seem human, meaning they have a posting history that is not just promotional. This makes them much harder to detect and moderate against. Some of the agencies doing this are paying real people to post promotional content, or have built communities where people are incentivized to post promotional content. The moderator said that Reddit's automated moderation tools have been helpful, but that the type of promotion happening has become so sophisticated that it has become more of a you-know-it-if-you-see it kind of thing. "A lot of it has become pattern recognition," they said. "You literally just sort of know what to look for. But the problem is you don't want to become punitive to the people who aren't doing this maliciously, and so I think the over-moderation risk is very real."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta has reportedly delayed the developer release of its Muse Spark AI model API multiple times, and as of Tuesday, had no scheduled launch date, according to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled). Reuters reports: A Meta spokesperson told Reuters on Wednesday that the company is already testing the Application Programming Interface (API) with some early partners and is looking forward to releasing it this month. "The muse spark API will be coming soon," Meta AI Chief Alexandr Wang announced in a post on X in April. Meta unveiled Muse Spark in April as the first model built to close the gap with rivals. Muse Spark is the first in a new series of models created by the company's Superintelligence Labs. Earlier on Wednesday, Meta unveiled an AI agent aimed at helping businesses carry out day-to-day operations, hinting at the company's ambitions to compete with rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet's Google.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. and its Five Eyes intelligence partners issued a joint warning (PDF) that Chinese military intelligence services are using LinkedIn and other professional networking sites to recruit people with access to government, military, foreign policy, or sensitive economic information. "These actors use an aggressive online recruitment strategy whereby intelligence officers or their affiliates pose as employees of private consultancies, think tanks or human resources firms, and place online job advertisements for foreign policy and defense analysts," the agencies said Wednesday. "China's military intelligence services ultimately seek to acquire privileged military, political and economic intelligence that can provide China with a strategic and tactical advantage over the Five Eyes." Bloomberg reports: China was targeting Five Eyes nationals with security clearance, particularly those working in foreign affairs, security and intelligence, and military personnel including people stationed in the Asia-Pacific region, it said. People with more peripheral access to government information, such as academics, journalists and think tank employees, were also being approached. The Chinese embassy in the UK strongly condemned the accusations, calling the allegation of Chinese espionage threats "entirely fabricated" and "malicious slander." The "Five Eyes" members have "engaged in unscrupulous espionage and intelligence-gathering activities around the globe. Their activities are the real threat to peace-loving countries," the embassy said in a statement Thursday. [...] According to the agencies, Chinese spies have commissioned reports to be written by those they've approached, paying them anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, with payments sometimes made in cryptocurrency. "Military members may be asked about their roles and unit activities, home base or naval vessel," the notice said. "Five Eyes agencies have identified individuals who have undertaken these activities, leading to criminal prosecutions, job losses, and security-clearance revocation," it warned.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration Thursday in upholding the power of federal regulators to enforce data privacy laws on telecommunications companies. The 8-1 decision (PDF) preserved one of the Federal Communications Commission's key tools, though the companies also won a concession from the Republican administration that could shift the regulatory landscape. The appeal from telecommunications giants Verizon and AT&T challenged a combined $100 million in penalties imposed after the agency determined that the companies had failed to safeguard customer location data. The companies argued that the FCC's process was unconstitutional because it gave them little opportunity to tell their side of the story in front of a jury. The administration defended the fines are an essential regulatory tool. But the government also said companies did not have to pay the penalties right away, a regulatory shift in the companies' favor. The Supreme Court agreed, affirming the FCC's power to order fines when challenges are still available. "The orders at issue did not settle the carriers' legal obligations because, stated simply, they did not create an obligation to pay," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. [...] Other agencies use similar enforcement methods, so a sweeping victory for AT&T and Verizon could have had widespread effects, advocates said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report from NJ.com: Samsung is pulling up stakes in New Jersey and heading to Texas, a move that could leave roughly 1,000 Garden State workers facing a stark choice: relocate or risk losing their jobs. The South Korean tech giant confirmed this week that it will move its US headquarters from Englewood Cliffs, NJ, to its existing campus in Plano, Texas, marking a stunning reversal less than a year after it celebrated the opening of a new headquarters in Bergen County. The relocation is expected to be completed by the end of the year, according to company statements. "Samsung Electronics America Inc. is undergoing a business transformation designed to better position our organization for long-term growth and future success. As part of this effort, we are relocating our U.S. headquarters from New Jersey to our existing campus in Plano, Texas, building on our 30-year presence in the state," said Samsung in a statement emailed to NJ.com on Tuesday. "As part of this strategy, we will be optimizing parts of the organization to ensure our roles and functions align to key business priorities. We recognize such adjustments will have an impact on our people and we will be providing support to those affected," it continued.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

joshuark shares a report from The Verge: Apple will introduce age verification in the App Store for users in Texas starting on Thursday, June 4th. The move, as spotted by MacRumors, comes just days after a federal appeals court allowed Texas' App Store Accountability Act to go into effect while a lawsuit against it proceeds. People in Texas who are creating a new Apple account will need to verify they're over 18 using a credit card or government ID. Apple may also automatically verify users' age using the age of their account and whether they have a credit card on file. Despite Apple's attempts to push back on app store-level age verification, the company has announced plans to implement age checks to comply with laws in places like Utah, Louisiana, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, and the UK. Google is required to make similar changes to the Play Store and is also introducing age-checking tools for developers. Last December, a judge blocked the App Store Accountability Act (SB 2420) from taking effect, but an appeals court has now reversed this decision -- at least while the court figures out whether the law is constitutional. Even if this law gets struck down in Texas, a federal version with the same name is still making its way through Congress and could impose age verification at the app store nationwide.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: UK regulators today ordered (PDF) Google to put clearer attributions and links to publishers' content in its AI-generated search features. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also said Google must give publishers a way to opt out of AI features in search. "In a world first, publishers will now have effective tools to prevent their content being used to power AI features in search, such as AI Overviews," the CMA said today. "This will put publishers, like news organizations, in a stronger position to negotiate content deals with Google. To boost consumer trust, Google is also now required to make sure that publisher content is properly attributed, using clear links, in AI-generated search results." The CMA ruled that Google may not penalize publishers for opting out of AI, meaning that Google can't downrank opted-out publishers in general search results. The CMA said Google will have nine months to comply with all requirements but that the agency "expects important parts of the controls to become available to publishers well before that deadline. Google will also be required to submit and publish compliance reports, supported by key data and metrics, explaining changes it has made and how it has complied." [...] The CMA applied the rules to Google after determining that it has "strategic market status" in general search services, and has ongoing investigations into Apple and Microsoft. Google today said it will comply with the CMA decision. The News Media Association, a trade group in the UK, said that "the legally enforceable Conduct Requirements for Google Search published today are a significant step towards leveling the playing field and building a fair, transparent digital economy where premium content is properly respected and fairly compensated." The group called on the UK to implement "robust enforcement."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA has officially ended the MAVEN mission after the Mars orbiter stopped responding in December, apparently after an unexpected spin drained its batteries and knocked out communications. Launched in 2013 and orbiting Mars since 2014, MAVEN spent more than a decade studying how the planet lost its atmosphere and helped explain how Mars transformed from a potentially habitable world into the cold, dry planet seen today. The New York Times reports: The NASA spacecraft MAVEN, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, had been orbiting around the Red Planet since 2014. NASA last received a signal from MAVEN on Dec. 6, shortly before the spacecraft passed behind Mars. Then the spacecraft stopped responding. A review board found that MAVEN began unexpectedly rotating, causing its batteries to drain too quickly and resulting in a loss of power to the communications system. "The team is certainly broken up about this," said Shannon Curry, the principal investigator of the mission and a scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, at a news conference on Wednesday. "But at the same time, we are incredibly proud of the science we've accomplished over the last decade." NASA officials declined to speculate on the root cause of the mishap. A final report is expected to be released later this year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has reportedly killed its planned new Stargate series despite giving it a series order in 2025. According to Variety, studio executives were worried it would only appeal to longtime fans. ScreenRant reports: Reports of what became Gero's Stargate series started in 2022, after Amazon acquired MGM Studios. Dean Devlin, who co-wrote the 1994 Stargate movie with Emmerich, was another executive producer for the Amazon show, as were Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell via Safehouse Pictures. The project also had Brad Wright and Joe Mallozzi as consulting producers, with both having had extensive history working within the Stargate franchise. On X, Michael Shanks, who played Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1, posted in response to the news that: "Yep. They did that." Mallozzi was resistant to the idea that the series was being geared toward diehard fans: "Nope. No. Sorry. Gonna have to push back on this. We were ever mindful of creating a show that would have broad appeal." In an additional post, Mallozzi went into further detail about why the cancellation is so disappointing: Before the new series was canceled by Amazon, Stargate began with Emmerich and Devlin's movie starring Kurt Russell and James Spader. This paved the way for 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1, followed by five seasons of Stargate Atlantis. There has also been the two-season Stargate Universe, the one-season animated show Stargate Infinity, the web miniseries Stargate Origins, and the 2008 direct-to-video movies Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate Continuum, along with numerous games.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The secondary market for decades old, low-tech John Deere tractors has been booming for years as farmers have sought reliable tractors that they can actually fix without having to deal with John Deere's repair monopoly. A Canadian company has seen that demand and came up with a radical thought: What if they made a new, repairable, "no-tech" tractor to solve what has become a gigantic pain point for farmers? Alberta's Ursa Ag says that it has been inundated with demand after announcing its tractor, which costs roughly half as much as a Deere and has the benefit of not being a repair nightmare. [...] Ursa Ag markets its tractors as "no frills" and "built to last." Ursa Ag's Doug Wilson told me that the company designed the tractor because of a need in the marketplace for a new machine that isn't loaded with tech and is easy to maintain. The company follows in the footsteps of consumer electronics companies like Fairphone, which makes a repairable smartphone and Framework, which makes modular, repairable laptops. The demand Ursa Ag has seen is part of the backlash to manufacturer repair monopolies and the injection of technology and internet-connected sensors and terms of use into even the most basic of gadgets. "I talk to farmers every day and I hear from farmers every day about how they went out and bought machinery from 1987 so that it wouldn't have a computer on it," Wilson said. "All of this came from a simple discussion with a customer who wanted to be able to turn [the tractor] on at the start of the day, to use it, and shut it off at the end of the day. It needed to work, so that's what we built." Ursa Ag's tractor has been hyped in agriculture circles after Wilson showed the tractor off at a Canadian farm show and it was featured by Farms.com. Wilson said more than a thousand farmers have contacted him after that show, from roughly 30 countries. "I got a handwritten letter from a farmer in France who doesn't own a computer and wanted us to mail him information about the tractors," he said. He said the company has thus far made a couple fewer than 100 tractors but is working on tripling its production capacity and has seen a lot of demand over the last few months. "Given the number of my customers that carry flip phones, I would say there is consumer pressure to back away from some of the technology that is unnecessary to perform everyday tasks," Wilson said. "So that is definitely transferable to dishwashers and washing machines, refrigerators. Refrigerators that have screens on them that'll tell you what's inside. It's a little crazy." "That high-tech stuff, the million-dollar John Deere tractor has a place. It has technology that is well worth the money," Wilson said. "But that technology is needed for 5 percent of what a farm does. There are so many applications for tractors on farms that don't require technology. The technology that goes into even a calculator is not required for most farming applications."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli writes: Fedora Linux 43 users upgrading to the latest Dovecot mail server discovered something rather unsettling: some older Microsoft Outlook configurations may have been silently ignoring SSL/TLS settings for POP3 email connections for years. According to a Fedora community blog post, affected Outlook clients reportedly continued using insecure port 110 connections even when encryption was enabled in the application settings. The issue surfaced after Dovecot 2.4 disabled plaintext authentication on non secure connections by default, causing Outlook users to suddenly lose mailbox access after the Fedora 43 upgrade. The report suggests the behavior may date back as far as Outlook 2007, although modern Outlook builds were not fully tested. Fedora admins stress that the problem could be limited to legacy account configurations rather than current versions of Outlook itself. Still, the discovery has sparked discussion among Linux admins and security folks because many users likely assumed their email traffic was encrypted simply because Outlook claimed SSL/TLS was enabled. The incident also highlights how stricter defaults in modern open source infrastructure can expose ancient assumptions and questionable behaviors that quietly survived for decades.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ancient Slashdot reader whitroth shares a report from Politico, with the caption: "shutting down Microsoft Office for the International Criminal Court (ICC) was clearly a wake-up call." From the report: The EU is moving to counter American dominance in technology by reaching for one of the oldest tools in its arsenal: industrial strategy. As the European Commission unveiled a plan Wednesday to reduce Europe's reliance on the foreign technology providers that underpin the modern economy, it was careful to stress that it was not picking a fight with U.S. digital giants. Instead, the tech sovereignty package -- motivated in no small part by U.S. President Donald Trump's weaponization of Europe's dependence on American firms -- takes a longer-term view: boost the continent's players so they can eventually challenge their U.S. rivals. [...] If adopted, the package will direct public money toward products that contribute to Europe's economy and independence from foreign firms; cut red tape for data centers; beef up research and innovation through "leadership initiatives"; incentivize countries to share digital capacities in a new "Eurocloud" forum; and require EU governments to come up with national strategies to boost the adoption of cutting-edge tech, including AI. The package will also seek to ramp up the bloc's demand for advanced chips -- a response to criticism by the industry -- with a series of industrial initiatives to revise a 2023 chips law. [...] As part of its proposal to keep a list of trustworthy countries, the Commission would require EU governments to run a so-called "sovereignty risk assessment" for every digital service they rely on, measuring foreign control, potential access to sensitive data and the risk of operational disruption. Within a year, they would have to determine the appropriate level of protection for each public sector and procure digital services accordingly -- unless they can prove doing so would come at a "disproportionate cost," the proposal reads. However, the Commission reserves the right to overrule their assessment in future legislation if it believes they downplayed the risks. The Commission estimated that just one percent of Europe's public services are so sensitive that they would be required under the proposed certification scheme to rely on the strict level that totally excludes foreign technology. "We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure," Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. "This is about protecting our citizens, defending our interests and making our own choices."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has reportedly doubled 2026 MacBook Neo production from 5 million to 10 million units after stronger-than-expected demand for its $599 budget laptop. MacRumors reports: On an earnings call in late April, Apple's CEO Tim Cook said that customer response to the MacBook Neo was "off the charts," and the popularity of the laptop has reportedly led the company to significantly boost production. [...] Apple was very optimistic about the MacBook Neo before announcing it, but the company still "undercalled" the level of enthusiasm that the laptop would generate, according to Cook. He said that MacBook Neo demand exceeded Apple's expectations and helped to drive a record number of first-time Mac buyers last quarter. New figures from market research firm IDC support Apple's claim that the MacBook Neo is selling well, and the Windows PC industry has taken notice. For example, Dell recently introduced a redesigned XPS 13 laptop from $699 and said it has features "you won't find on a MacBook Neo," such as a touch screen and a backlit keyboard. "Apple's MacBook Neo is a capable machine, and its arrival confirms that there's real appetite for premium quality at accessible prices," admitted Dell.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has launched Gemma 4 12B, a 12-billion-parameter open AI model designed to run locally on your laptop without depending entirely on cloud infrastructure. WION reports: According to Google, the new model delivers performance close to much larger AI systems while requiring significantly less memory. The company says Gemma 4 12B can run locally on devices equipped with just 16GB of VRAM, making advanced AI more accessible to developers, researchers and businesses. The launch highlights a growing trend across the AI industry: bringing powerful AI models directly to personal computers instead of relying solely on remote data centers. Gemma is Google's family of open AI models built using technology and research from its Gemini program. The new Gemma 4 12B model contains 12 billion parameters and has been designed to handle multiple types of information, including text, images and audio. Unlike traditional AI systems that focus only on text, Gemma 4 12B can understand visual content, process audio inputs and perform advanced reasoning tasks. This makes it suitable for a wider range of applications, from software development and content creation to research and automation. Google says the model is available under the Apache 2.0 licence, allowing developers and organizations to use, modify and deploy it with relatively few restrictions. [...] One of the most significant technical changes in Gemma 4 12B is its new unified architecture. Traditionally, multimodal AI systems use separate components known as encoders to process images, audio and text before combining the information. Google says Gemma 4 12B removes the need for separate multimodal encoders. Instead, the model processes different types of information through a unified architecture. According to the company, this helps improve efficiency while reducing memory requirements and computational overhead. The result is a model that can deliver advanced multimodal capabilities while remaining small enough to run locally on modern hardware.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has released (PDF) technical specs and 2D CAD drawings for the Fitbit Air to encourage users to make their own accessories. "These CAD drawings include crucial mating dimensions, tolerances, and mating force specifications -- including attach and detach force -- to help you build a high-quality accessory band," Google says on a store page listing. 9to5Google reports: Noting how the "community has already come up with innovative and creative new ideas to make the Fitbit Air [their] own" since launch last month, Google is "officially releasing the hardware specifications and accessory design guidelines for the Fitbit Air tracker to the public." For example, owners have already found their own bicep band solutions. This information would typically just be available for third-party accessory companies, but Google wants to open things up to "independent designers and artisan makers." The Google Store page also lists other things developers should keep in mind, such as sensor clearance, sensor pressure, secure retention, and skin-friendly materials.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft's Build developer conference kicked off today, and as with almost everything the company has done in the last few years, Microsoft's opening keynote focused overwhelmingly on AI and other closely related technologies. [...] On the hardware front, we didn't get any updates for existing Surface devices (not counting yesterday's Surface Laptop Ultra announcement), but we did get something new: the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is "a compact developer PC" built around Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip with up to 128GB of built-in memory. The Dev Box looks a little like a cartoon anvil or piano fell onto an Xbox Series X and flattened it. Its aluminum casing was designed "to double as a heatsink," and its preloaded version of Windows 11 Pro will include a "purposeful" set of developer-centric default settings and preinstalled tools. This is a follow-up of sorts to the Windows Dev Kit 2023, also known as "Project Volterra." This Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3-powered PC was essentially the system board from a Surface Pro tablet stuffed into a plastic box, and it was introduced alongside Arm-native versions of several Microsoft developer tools. It helped to set the stage for the Arm-based flagship Surface devices that launched the next year, which benefitted from a better and faster x86-to-Arm code translation technology called Prism and a greater number of Arm-native third-party apps that didn't need to be translated in the first place. Microsoft didn't announce pricing or specific specs for the RTX Spark Dev Box, but you can probably expect it to cost quite a bit more than the $600 that Project Volterra did. Hopefully, Microsoft can keep the price at least somewhat lower than the $4,699 asking price for Nvidia's similarly specced DGX Spark box. On the software side, several developer-centric changes are coming to Windows 11, particularly for users of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Microsoft is introducing a Windows-native version of the coreutils command line tools, so that commands or scripts made for Linux work within Windows and the other way around; the ability to run WSL inside of containers, said to be arriving in "the coming months"; and something called Windows Developer Configurations that uses the WinGet tool to quickly set up "a distraction-free dev environment with VS Code, GitHub Copilot, WSL, PowerShell 7 and developer-optimized settings with one command on any Windows 11 device." Microsoft also introduced Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC), as "enterprise-grade sandboxed environments" that let AI agents like OpenClaw operate on Windows without getting unrestricted access to the whole system. In theory, MXC could let organizations enforce agent-specific limits, such as blocking access to personal accounts, separating work and personal data, or requiring permission before deleting files. The MXC GitHub repo also notes support for "multiple containment backends," meaning the same sandboxing concept could apply beyond AI agents to other plugins, tools, and workloads. Further reading: Microsoft Unveils Scout, an Autonomous AI Agent Built On OpenClaw

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta is scaling back parts of its employee tracking initiative after staff objected to software that collected mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and other actions for AI training data. According to Reuters, the company will now let workers pause collection for up to 30 minutes and request exemptions. Reuters reports: [Stephane Kasriel, a vice president in Meta's AI model-building Superintelligence Labs unit] said the team behind the software had also introduced "several optimizations" to reduce its impact on computer battery life, after employees complained it was consuming so much data it was causing their home internet usage to spike. "While we remain confident in the privacy protections we put in place at launch, which went through several layers of risk review, we have heard your concerns about personal data on work devices, battery life, and wanting more control over when capturing happens," Kasriel said in the memo.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.