"We've now replenished 90% of the stolen assets, and we're committed to covering the remaining 10%," Binance co-CEO Richard Teng posted on X, adding that "Our users will not bear the financial impact of this incident." "Binance said it was able to replace the funds taken in the record hack by using company money to buy new tokens," reports NBC News: The remaining 10% consists of tokens that are less liquid, meaning they may take longer to buy, it said in a statement posted on X... Binance said it has set aside around $6.34 billion of company funds internally to cover the losses. The money spent re-buying tokens came from using part of its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users, a bitcoin reserve it holds to protect customers in the event of security breaches, as well as some of its Futures Insurance Fund, and the company's own corporate treasury, it said on X. NBC News reports that the FBI blames the breach on a North Korea-sponsored group known as TraderTraitor: Members of [TraderTraitor] were observed by law enforcement converting stolen assets into the cryptocurrency ethereum, the FBI said in a statement, adding that it expects "further laundering" of the assets through the use of related technology... After the hack, the exchange stopped allowing customers to withdraw their funds, but it said Saturday it was still on track to reopen withdrawals Sunday. CNBC reports: The world's largest crypto exchange initially said the hack may involve "a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions." However, Co-CEO Richard Teng later said the attack involved a more complex process rather than the misuse of a single engineer's permissions. The New York Times describes what happened when Binance first spotted "a multibillion-dollar deluge of digital coins" pouring out of its accounts: As the news spread, Binance's top executives put together an informal war room on Wea, the company's internal messaging system, with about 100 participants, including specialized cryptocurrency tracers and security personnel. They eventually transitioned to a mass conference call, with 100 boxes on the screen, where employees took turns muting and then unmuting, communicating in a mixture of English and Chinese. Among them was He Yi, Binance's co-chief executive, who is seven months pregnant, and worked through the night from her base in Abu Dhabi, taking a call at 3 a.m. local time.... Much of the drama played out in public. Almost all crypto transactions are recorded on the blockchain, a ledger of money movements that anyone can look up. That meant crypto analysts could see funds leaving Binance in real time... North Koreans have targeted crypto companies for years, using the proceeds of those thefts to fund its nuclear program, according to Western officials. The hackers have developed increasingly complex strategies to steal crypto and launder the proceeds, a painstaking endeavor that can take months to complete. In a blog post on Friday, Chainalysis said the attackers had deployed "laundering patterns we have not seen before," conducting thousands of transactions over a short period, probably with the help of automation. At the same time, Binance's colleagues in the industry mobilized to intercept some of the laundered crypto. Certain digital coin issuers can freeze funds, allowing them to halt a money-laundering operation in its tracks. Soon after the hack, Tether and Circle, two major issuers, announced that they had frozen stashes of their own coins that the hackers had seized from Binance, a combined total of more than $2 billion in crypto. Binance is now working to gain access to those funds, the company said. But $2.4 billion in crypto is already "beyond any issuer's reach," according to [blockchain intelligence firmm] TRM. The article also includes President Trump's reaction when asked Friday about the breach. "I've always felt it was a little bit dangerous. But they say they have it pretty much under control. We'll see."

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CNN reports: The popular theory that comets were crucial in kick-starting life on Earth billions of years ago may not hold up, according to new computer simulations that counter decades of scientific thinking. The finding suggests the fragile organic molecules supposedly carried by the icy objects would have been destroyed on impact, upending an established origin of life theory that dates back to at least 1961 [with earlier versions postulated in 1908]... Early in its history — over 4 billion years ago — Earth may have experienced a period of heavy bombardment from more than 100,000 comets larger than 100 meters (328 feet), according to the new study, published Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports. Those impacts, however, were mostly too heavy for life-starting molecules to withstand. The team used the latest models of comet formation and evolution to simulate this early planetary period 100,000 times. "Given what we know about surface environments on the early Earth, on average, our simulations found that there were no successful impacts," said lead study author Richard Anslow, who conducted the research while completing his doctorate at the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom... "The typical velocities of these comets when they impact the Earth meant that actually very few, if any, would have been able to deliver intact organic molecules, so comets actually don't seem to be as useful for prebiotic chemistry as was previously thought," Anslow said. More precisely, 54% of the simulations showed no impact at all, while the remaining 46% had at least one and a "tiny minority" returned up to three collisions, Anslow said. "We can't rule out confidently that there was never a successful impact — there could have been one of these fluke impacts." However, such flukes had to occur in a "perfect location" that already met several important conditions, including the presence of liquid water and other chemicals needed to support life. That combination makes the overall process unlikely, he added. The article notes his argument that even if a successful impact occurred, it's unlikely an important chemical like hydrogen cyanide (HCN) could survive the impact, and would've dissolved in an ocean impact. Plus, "many other precursor molecules are also needed, such as compounds that contain phosphorus and sulfur, but these are not routinely found in comets, Anslow said." An alternative cosmic source of organic material could have been asteroids, which typically struck Earth more slowly and in greater numbers. Anslow pointed to recent findings on samples from asteroids Bennu and Ryugu, which contain the majority of protein-building amino acids. The recent study also raises another intriguing possibility: While Earth may not have had the ideal conditions to foster HCN from comet impacts, ancient Mars might have been better suited. "Because Mars is much smaller than Earth and further away from the sun, the typical impact velocity of comets is much lower, so while these impacts on Earth were destroying most of the HCN, this wasn't the case so much for Mars," Anslow said. This idea could add another dimension to the long-standing question of whether the red planet once supported life. While the authors closely analyzed how HCN could have survived comet impact, the chemical may have undergone reactions before the icy bodies entered Earth's atmosphere, said Queenie Chan, an associate professor of Earth sciences at Royal Holloway University of London, who was not involved with the study. This process could have created biologically important compounds, such as those protein building blocks, that are less volatile and more likely to survive.

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BBS-era "door" games are preserved by the site Break Into Chat, along with their history. Now the site's actually traced the origins of several ANSI art screens in the 1980s and "how different people later transformed the original images," starting from one of the most popular bulletin board systems in St. Louis, Missouri. Slashdot reader Kirkman14 writes: "Fire Escape" was curator of the authoritative list of bulletin board systems in St. Louis's area code and sysop of the area's most popular board. Like many sysops of that time, Fire Escape enlivened her bulletin board by finding and repurposing older ANSI art. Eventually her BBS had 18 different logon screens in its rotation, many of which featured flames or mushroom clouds or made liberal use of red and yellow. Break Into Chat follows the trail: Some, maybe even most, of Fire Escape's logon screens had actually been adapted from old school "public domain" ANSI art drawn in the late 1980s and early 1990s by folks such as Michael C. Ling, Lora Ruffner (aka "Ebony Eyes") and Violet Stymacks.... Stymacks was unusually generous with her ANSI art. When she first began drawing, she combed through Fidonet node lists looking for bulletin boards with interesting or inspiring names. When she found one, she would draw an ANSI screen that fit the board's theme, then send it to the sysop. Eventually, sysops began seeking her out, too. By late 1990, she claimed that 500 bulletin boards were using her screens. Three years later, that total had tripled, according to Boardwatch . I believe it — I have located more than 1,100 of her pieces so far. She was so prolific that it would be surprising if she hadn't reused or remixed her own work over the years... [D]id they intend for other people to do so? Or would they have considered such borrowing or adapting as "ripping" or just plain "stealing"? These questions have dogged the BBS, ASCII art, and ANSI art scenes from the beginning. A freelance writer named Patrick Grote grappled with this ethical dilemma in 1990. He had begun to publish archives of ANSI art that he had collected from various public messageboards and networks. But what were people allowed to do with the ANSI screens in these collections? Was it okay to modify them? "Tough call," Grote said. "I know some people copyright their screens by inserting a little '(C)' on it," Grote wrote in a README file included in these collections. "Is this 'true' copyrighting? I would say yes, but then again, I don't feel like having any legal action taken against me for using an ANSI screen. In my opinion, I would say leave the ones that say '(C)' alone, but make every effort to contact the artist and ask for permission...." When I corresponded with Fire Escape this year, she admitted her memory wasn't what it used to be, but felt certain that she had not asked any artists for permission because she didn't know who they were or how to reach them. "I figured if anyone had an issue, I'd just remove the screen," she said. "But no one ever said anything about it."

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Companies like Google, Netflix, TikTok, and Meta may soon owe the French government, reports Tom's Hardware: France has approved a proposed tax that aims to tax the amount of internet data per gigabyte sent to French users in the country... According to minutes released by the National Assembly, members voted 11-10 in support of the motion on October 30 — which now means the new law has been added to the country's next budget, despite major opposition from the government side and the finance committee rapporteur. The latest amendment, introduced by socialist lawmaker Laurent Lhardit, could see content providers pay €0.055 (roughly $0.06) to the government for every gigabyte of content distributed to French users. With approximately 154 million users and counting in France, the proposal's authors say such a tax could generate around €10 billion ($11.2 billion) in annual revenue for the government. The said proposal, though yet to be passed as it must survive further parliamentary scrutiny, aims at companies that generate substantial internet traffic as opposed to taxing their advertising revenue, profits and subscriptions. Its explanatory notes particularly mention Google, Meta, Netflix, Amazon, and content delivery network Akamai as major potential contributors. Notably, TikTok and other similar platforms could fall under this broader scope depending on how these rules are applied. Internet service providers, including Orange Free and Liad, would be required to measure the volume of data and identify the companies responsible for sending it to French users. The Data will then be collected and submitted quarterly to France's tax administration under the supervision of telecommunications watchdog Arcep. The measure becomes law if it clears the remaining stages of France's budget process, the article points out, "with parliament scheduled to vote on the budget's first section in early November." "VideoLAN, the French nonprofit organization behind the VLC media player, warned that the proposed levy could cost it more than €1 million annually," reports CircleID. "Its response illustrates how traffic-based taxation could affect organizations distributing large volumes of data without corresponding commercial revenue."

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The Hubble Space Telescope "will plunge back into the atmosphere in the early-to-mid-2030s," reports Ars Technica. So now NASA has released a Request For Information (RFI) "asking commercial companies for ideas on how to reboost, service, or a controlled disposal of Hubble." Specifically, NASA is looking for information about companies' current and near-term capabilities for capturing Hubble and boosting it to an altitude of at least 373 miles (600 km), enhancing the telescope's performance, or guiding Hubble to a controlled reentry. "The requirement includes that the boost and/or servicing mission must not harm the HST and that this mission is expected to occur by 2032," NASA wrote in the RFI. The contractor would be responsible for providing the launch vehicle, servicing spacecraft, mission operations, and "crew if applicable." NASA is not committing to buying a Hubble rescue mission, but officials want to know who might be interested in mounting such a mission, how much it would cost, and which companies would have a realistic shot at reaching Hubble before it falls out of orbit and burns up on reentry. Orbital dynamicists currently predict that it will likely happen in 2033 or 2034 without intervention, but reentry forecasts can change based on solar activity... A reboost to NASA's requirement of 373 miles (600 km) would likely keep Hubble in orbit for at least 25 more years. "NASA last raised the orbit of Hubble in 2002," the article points out, "when the Space Shuttle Columbia visited the observatory for a servicing mission." The final shuttle servicing flight in 2009 did not reboost the telescope's orbit, and with the retirement of the shuttle fleet two years later, Hubble has steadily lost altitude with no way to stave off eventual destruction... NASA's newer flagship observatories, sometimes described as successors to Hubble, are not actually one-for-one replacements. Hubble is tuned to observe the Universe in visible and ultraviolet light, while the Webb and Roman telescopes peer deeper into the infrared Universe. Astronomers will likely have to wait for the launch of NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory in the 2040s for an improvement on Hubble's visible and ultraviolet vision.

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Slashdot reader ElectricVs shares this report from American Buildout, a new site covering "the intersection of data centers, energy and power, finance, and Main Street." Dozens of unexplained drones flew over and near U.S. nuclear facilities between February 2024 and March 2026, according to records the Nuclear Regulatory Commission made public this week. In all, facility operators filed 67 reports of drones over or near 28 sites in 17 states. They include the Three Mile Island site near Middletown, Pennsylvania., where Constellation Energy plans to restart Unit 1 as the Crane Clean Energy Center. In one incident, about five drones flew roughly 100 feet above the [970-megawatt] reactor building at River Bend Station in Louisiana. The story was first reported by the publication The Liberation Times. The NRC published the documents on its website in response to the publication's freedom of information request... Every entry carries the status "Closed Unresolved." "Most of the incidents happened after dark," the article points out, "and none of the records identifies a drone operator. About half of the incidents, 33 of 67, occurred in an eight-week window between Dec. 3, 2024, and Jan. 24, 2025." (Virginia's Surry Power Station experienced five different incidents in December of 2024, including one involving "at least eight drones in two waves.") 100 miles west of Chicago, "drone activity" continued for more than two hours at the Byron Nuclear Station, where two separate drones were reported. In Waterford, Connecticut, "security observed four drones flying back and forth..." The article notes a 2024 paper from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission citing a 2019 analysis that "concluded U.S. plants had no risk-significant vulnerabilities that adversaries could exploit with commercially available drones to cause radiological sabotage, or theft or diversion of special nuclear material."

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Earlier The Drive reported a police chief "had to direct his staff to disconnect the power cords from Flock cameras in Plymouth, Minnesota after Flock Safety ignored and failed to respond to the department's notice the city was canceling its service. "But in other instances Flock's gone and reinstalled cameras without permission," The Drive reported this week: On September 29th the city of Dayton, Minnesota posted a community update on its Facebook page alerting residents that Flock had installed and put into service two cameras against the City's direction without authorization... "The City notified Flock on September 18, 2026, that the program was on hold, and no work orders were to be completed. Unfortunately, the City's direction was not followed, and the camera was placed back into service without authorization." The statement continued and noted, "Following the report, City staff reviewed locations throughout the community to determine whether any additional cameras had been reinstalled, and one additional location was identified. The Police Department has been notified, and both cameras will be removed promptly...." The Minnesota cities of both St. Paul and Crystal told Kare 11 that they removed the Flock cameras themselves following their respective city council votes in August and September respectively. The cameras are stored and are still waiting to be picked up by Flock. Crystal Chief of Police Pete Underthun told Kare 11, "Once we made this decision, I personally went to the locations and removed the cameras and poles myself." Chief Underthun noted, "We are still working with the company to close out our contract and for them to pick the cameras up from our garage."

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Reddit's stock plunged 29.22% on Friday, reports CNBC, its worst drop since becoming a public company in 2024. Thursday Reddit reported a sales growth that was weaker than previous quarters, and also forecast weak sales for the quarter to come (below analysts expectations): The report comes as the company has seen a shift in its search referral traffic with the rise of Google's AI Overview. In an interview with CNBC, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said search-referral traffic from Google went "down meaningfully in this quarter" due to AI... Multiple analysts downgraded the stock following Reddit's disappointing results, with Citizens noting that "search changes highlight the problem with selling content to Google" and that as referral problems worsen, uncertainty around user growth amid the login requirement switch "puts more pressure on user monetization." Reddit's CEO also said that forcing users to login will help the company's advertising business. "Reddit is the last platform to provide basically unfettered logged-out access, and that's largely because of me. I've been holding that line." "I think users will probably go through the same understanding that I have, which is that it's a sign of the times. It's an evolution of how these platforms work."

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Meta's smart glasses face new questions from two U.S. Senators, reports Gizmodo. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey "are requesting that Meta provide more information before Thanksgiving on whether it conducted detailed human rights due diligence and safety testing on the product before releasing it," reports Gizmodo. The Senators also requested information from Meta about " how it evaluated the privacy risks posed by the glasses, and what kinds of safeguards are currently in place." "Although Meta identified risks to bystander privacy and vulnerable populations before launching its glasses in 2021, it nevertheless launched a product tailor-made for invading the privacy of its users and bystanders," [the senators wrote in a letter Thursday...] The glasses have also been spotted on ICE agents during raids, and have raised potential surveillance concerns. The surveillance fears were even reportedly raised by the New York Police Department's counterterrorism unit in a memo issued earlier this year.... "Meta's own disclosures confirm that imagery processed through its glasses' visual AI features may be retained and used to train AI systems, including with the assistance of human reviewers," the senators' letter states, calling the practice an invasion of privacy. "Retaining that material for AI development, thereby extending the period during which it can be accessed, disclosed, or misused, exploits people's highly sensitive information for Meta's commercial benefit."

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Kotaku reports: r/opensource, Reddit's primary "subreddit for everything open source related," has banned all AI-assisted and AI-related projects.... As reported by The Verge, the subreddit's October 24 post, titled "Your tokens aren't valuable: No more AI," features four new main rules: all projects must now be at least "1 year old," have "multiple contributors," be posted by someone who must "speak English," and cannot be "made by" or "intended for" AI... [T]he ban on AI is simple; as the subreddit's moderators explain, "AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community." Unsurprisingly, this is the part that's upset the majority of the users in the thread.... [T]he moderator who posted the new guidelines stated in a separate comment that the overwhelmingly negative response is due to "some guy on twitter claiming to be alternative news" who posted an "opinionated editorial pointing hundreds of people to the thread." Given the timing of when the thread was posted, alongside the fact that the X post in question mentions "the Linux kernel," they are presumably referring to this post by The Lunduke Journal. The moderator may be correct, as almost all of the top comments on the post are from users who have never posted in r/opensource before. The use of AI "doesn't change whether something is open source or not," complained one commenter, who added "I guess Linux is no longer allowed here? Linus uses AI for kernel development now." The moderator has since updated their post to acknowledge that Redditors have now already created a rival community called r/OpenSourceAIAllowed — plus three more alternatives: r/TrueOpenSource r/OpenSourceWare r/ActuallyOpenSource UPDATE (10/26): Monday saw a new comment from the moderator stressing that "Adjustments will be made." "Linux is not, nor could conceivably ever be banned. Interpreting any set of rules as such is simply bad faith. Someone's pet project pumped out in two claude code session limits will not be welcome. The line is somewhere between those, and it will likely move over time from continuous feedback. "We will cater to humans, and as many and as inclusively as possible. No rule will ever target or favor any ethnicity or social strata."

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Brazil's 80-year-old president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was re-elected Sunday, reports the Guardian, "defeating his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, to claim a historic fourth term in power." And the results could impact the climate, suggests the Associated Press, since under da Silva the annual deforestation rate in the Amazon fell to its lowest level since records began in 1988: Official satellite data showed the rainforest lost 3,335 square kilometers (1,300 square miles) from Aug. 2025 through July 2026, the period used to calculate the annual rate... During Jair Bolsonaro's presidency, from 2019 to 2022, Amazon deforestation surged by about 60%, with more than 45,000 square kilometers (17,400 square miles) cleared, according to official data. Under Lula, deforestation has fallen 71% since 2023, the government said. One of Lula's first moves after taking office in January 2023 for a third, non-consecutive term was to revive the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon, known by its Portuguese acronym, PPCDAm. Launched in 2004 during his first administration, the plan had been shelved under Bolsonaro.... The plan has four pillars: strengthening monitoring and enforcement; promoting a sustainable economy; managing protected areas and determining how undesignated public forests should be used; and using regulations and financial incentives to curb deforestation. Measures included restoring sanctions for illegal forest clearing detected by satellites, a practice seen as the most effective tool to curb deforestation that was halted under Bolsonaro. The government also proposed barring properties with illegal deforestation from receiving bank loans and allocated more funding to priority Amazon municipalities that demonstrated reductions in forest loss. It also funded efforts to fight environmental crime and develop subsidized credit for sustainable businesses in the Amazon... Deforestation and other land-use changes are Brazil's largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, which drive global warming. The stakes are especially high in the Amazon, which stores vast amounts of carbon dioxide and generates atmospheric moisture that helps regulate weather far beyond South America... Degradation from wildfires, logging and drought affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. A strong El Niño, a periodic warming of the equatorial Pacific, could intensify those threats in 2026 and 2027 by bringing hotter, drier conditions that fuel wildfires. The article notes that Lula's reelection campaign promised zero net deforestation by 2030, plus restoration to offset all forest loss, legal or illegal.

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The problem? Understanding how AI coding agents interact with the software you build. "Whether you're maintaining an SDK, building a command-line interface, or publishing an MCP server or skills... you need to understand whether agents can discover and use what you ship, and what your team can change." Results can vary, and configurations keep changing, with behaviors influenced by everything from custom instructions and MCP servers to skills and plugins. So after a year of development Microsoft has created Scope, "an open-source platform built on Kubernetes for turning those interactions into evidence product teams can act on." Details are available on... the Microsoft open source blog: Available under the MIT License, Scope supports a continuous Developer Agent Experience (DevAx) learning loop grounded in repeatable experiments. The Azure Cosmos DB team's experience shows what that loop can deliver... "The evaluations led to 20 Agent Kit issues and 27 documentation issues resolved," [says Jay Gordon, Senior Program Manager, Azure Cosmos DB]... These results connect evaluation to decisions a product team can make: which documentation needs clarification, where tooling needs a fix, and whether an update changes agent behavior.... [The gains] demonstrate how targeted changes, informed by observed behavior, can improve the way agents use a product. For more on the shift from building for human developers to supporting agents, watch Your Product Was Built for Humans. Is It Ready for Agents? or join us at AI DevCon NYC conference in November. Scope surfaces everything from incorrect assumptions in documentation (or recurring missed instructions) to whether agents select the intended SDK, initialize it correctly, and use its APIs, leading to clearer descriptions for command-line tool and more actionable errors. Microsoft's open source blog also explains why AI agent evaluation needs an open-source foundation: The challenges behind agent experience aren't unique to one product or organization. SDK maintainers, tool authors, researchers, and agent developers are all asking how agents behave and what helps them succeed. No single team can represent every language, workflow, or integration. An open project can bring more scenarios, more failure cases, and more viewpoints into the evaluation process... Opening Scope's execution and evaluation code gives contributors a way to question the methods, investigate unexpected results, and improve the evaluation itself. A shared foundation also reduces duplicated infrastructure. Agent integrations, reusable criteria, and trace-analysis improvements can help other teams study their own products without rebuilding the same machinery. The goal isn't one universal benchmark or definition of success. It's a common starting point that teams can adapt to their needs. The MIT License lets teams use and extend Scope, while self-managed deployments let them evaluate private workloads without publishing their code or run data.... Scope streams activity as the agent works and retains interactions and workspace snapshots for later review. Your team can follow tool calls, inspect generated files, and connect a failed requirement to the steps that preceded it. Those traces provide observable evidence of what the agent did, helping turn a failure into a concrete documentation, SDK, or tooling improvement.

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"59% of maintainers report growing contribution volume since the rise of GenAI," according to a new study published by Linux Foundation Research. But 25% of their incoming pull requests "are estimated to be low-quality, also known as 'AI slop'." And on large projects, 69% see growing contributions — and estimate that 31% are low-quality/AI slop. So what do these results show us? "Generative AI is fundamentally changing how people participate in open source," says the head of Open Source Ecosystem Development at Huawei's R&D subsidiary Futurewei, which helped support the study. Specifically GenAI is "lowering barriers to contribution" but also "creating new challenges" for maintainers and communities. Their recommendation? "Build the governance, transparency and trust mechanisms that allow AI-assisted contributions to strengthen, but not overwhelm, the open source ecosystem." "Open source projects need to design for a growing AI-generated contributor base, not simply react to it," said Hilary Carter, SVP of Research at the Linux Foundation. "That means setting clear expectations for GenAI, putting responsibility for testing and disclosure on contributors and giving maintainers better tools to manage incoming pull requests. If we get those fundamentals right, AI can expand participation without overburdening and increasing costs for maintainers." More from the blog It's FOSS: LF Research is the Linux Foundation's research arm. It was set up in 2021 and publishes studies on how open source is built and used, drawing on surveys and project data. Its latest report, Navigating Open Source Software Development in the Generative AI Era, surveyed 234 contributors and maintainers on how generative AI is affecting the way open source gets made... 64% say reviews now take longer. Burnout is their top concern at 63%, narrowly ahead of contribution quality at 60%. You will also find that policies have not caught up to the AI-assisted coding and vulnerability reporting trend. Of the 119 respondents who answered the question, 35% said their project has a formal policy permitting AI use. Another 32% have none and no plans for one, 23% plan to write one, and 10% ban AI contributions outright.... Most maintainers (71%) say AI makes it easier for newcomers to start contributing. Other interesting findings: "Respondents estimate average time reductions across all six OSS development activities measured, including proposal discussions (19%) and code authoring (52%). For high-complexity tasks, however, 21% of respondents report taking more time when using GenAI." "71% of maintainers agree GenAI reduces barriers to entry for OSS, but 53% of maintainers disagree that GenAI has improved community trust." Developers are reinvesting the time they save back into open source: 66% report using productivity gains to address technical debt, 63% to develop new features and 58% for learning and upskilling. Continued investment in human mentorship remains important: 46% of maintainers say GenAI increases the need for mentorship of new contributors, compared with 32% who say it decreases that need. OpenSSF and LF AI & Data also helped support the study.

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"As of today in systemd Git it's now possible for the systemd programs to be written in the Rust programming language as an alternative to C," reports Phoronix: Core systemd code like the systemd library doesn't yet support Rust code, but for the various systemd programs / leaf components there is now support for using Rust... The new systemd-keyring-setup utility in Rust is used for provisioning keyrings and enrolling X.509 certificates into the kernel's dm-verity / fs-verity / BPF keyrings during the boot process while dealing them afterward. This systemd-keyring-setup code hasn't been merged yet but is expected soon now that the Rust infrastructure has landed. Originally it was all part of a single big commit before being split-up for the Rust enablement, systemd-keyring-setup, and other preparations for this new component. Systemd developers aren't planning on porting existing C code to Rust, all the Rust code is built with Meson [no Cargo usage], and C linkage only is mandated. Systemd Rust components come out slightly larger than C with a test program being 32KB compared to 20KB for its C twin. For now at least the systemd Rust support is optional and toggled by the -Drust= Meson option with it being auto by default.

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From the student newspaper at the University of California, Berkeley: Richard Borcherds, a UC Berkeley professor and Fields medalist, no longer grades his students' homework. After seeing how many of his students used AI to consistently receive top scores, he felt there was "no point" in paying readers to grade for correctness in homework, as AI use is now unavoidable. Borcherds revealed this in a sit-down interview Tuesday, following OpenAI's announcement that AI agents apparently solved one of mathematics' most difficult unsolved problems, the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem. "If AI continues to improve at present rate, then, in a few years, there'll be nothing human mathematicians can do that AI can't do better," Borcherds said. Borcherds said he currently grades on completion if a student hands in their homework. He admitted that it is "not a very good system," but at the moment, he has no alternative... Campus has tried several AI detection tools, including Turnitin and Rumi, but have determined that these tools aren't adequate enough to be standardized on campus. The article points out that at the university, each class's AI policy "is up to the discretion of faculty."

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BeamFS creator Aurelien Desbrieres is not calling for a merge, but is requesting feedback on an 18-patch proposal that takes the place of FTRFS, an earlier filesystem he proposed in April. The Linux/Open Source blog It's FOSS reports: Filesystems that can repair damage, like Btrfs and ZFS, usually do it by falling back on a spare copy of the data. BeamFS skips that and stores Reed-Solomon error-correcting codes inside every block. Every read gets checked against those codes, and small amounts of damage are corrected before the data reaches the application. If the filesystem can tell the damage is beyond repair, the read fails with an error instead of returning the wrong bytes... In his technical report, ext4 and ext3 returned wrong data without any error, while Btrfs refused to read the file. BeamFS returned the correct file every time except once, when a flip hit a pointer to the file's data and it refused the read. "Aurelien says he used Anthropic's Claude to write the code, the tool that checks the patches, and the cover letter..."

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"Despite massive investments and widespread hype around AI , the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech," writes the chief economist at U.S. asset management firm Apollo Global. He adds that "there are still no signs of AI boosting productivity growth... [M]ainstream corporate America is pulling back and starting to view token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins." VC-backed companies are spending more and more on tokens, but mainstream corporate America does not need the latest model and is unwilling to pay for it. As long as agentic AI and token spending are confined to a small part of the economy, the macroeconomic effects of AI will be very limited... The question looking ahead is whether, even as models become commoditized, mainstream corporate America can turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins. That may be harder than it sounds. AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment. Judgment depends on context, and the answer varies with which human or which model you ask. Perhaps most importantly, AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness, all of which shape reputational risk and ultimately drive revenue growth and profit margins. The bottom line is that the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7, and so far, there is no evidence that revenue growth or margins are improving outside the tech sector. More details from TechCrunch: Apollo's Torsten Slok focuses on what he calls the S&P 493 — the S&P 500, minus Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — finding that profit margins and revenue per worker appear to be flat, with no evidence that AI is improving productivity... Recent studies have also found that AI has yet to deliver significant productivity gains.

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The blog Android Authority offers this TLDR: Google updated its privacy policy to clarify that it could use information shared through Personal Intelligence to personalize ads. Gmail, Drive, and Photos content isn't used for targeted ads by default, but connecting them to eligible Google services could change that. Digital Trends explains: Google has long promised that your Gmail, Drive, and Google Photos content never helps it personalize ads. However, since October 16, 2026, its privacy policy adds a catch. The promise lapses if you let other ad-showing Google services use that content. That means using Personal Intelligence, an opt-in tool that lets Google's AI search read your connected apps, does exactly that (via Google). If you ask Google's AI Mode where to eat near your hotel, and it can identify your hotel from the booking confirmation in Gmail, find the location in Maps, and then suggest a few places you might like. That's the helpful half. The twist, however, is that AI Mode can also show sponsored results. Google mentions that the personalized ads follow what the question and answer are about. So, while your inbox never goes to an advertiser, it can quietly shape the answer, which, in turn, shapes the ads. Google's defense is elaborate. First, it says connecting the apps is optional. Second, advertisers can't see the information or content Google accesses in your Workspace apps (including your inbox and photos). Finally, sensitive topics like health are off-limits. Ars Technica shares the response they got from a Google spokesperson: that Google isn't scanning your entire inbox to feed their advertising profiles, but if you choose to pipe your personal data into an AI search tool — then the ads Google shows you could be based on that information. If you want to ensure ads never use your personal data in this way, you'll need to make sure Personal Intelligence is turned off. The easiest way is to access the Gemini settings for Personal Intelligence and disable the connected apps. These settings are also a few levels deep in your main Google account settings under Data & privacy > Personalization settings > Manage Personalized Recommendations in Search Services > Connected Content Apps. From there, you can disable connections to Workspace and Google Photos.

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The Free Software Foundation's "EncryptFest" today covers both encryption and privacy. The free two-hour event runs from 13:00-15:00 Eastern Daylight Time (17:00-19:00 UTC), and includes: — A discussion on "bulk surveillance, and how encryption protects personal privacy" — A short video from renowned cryptographer Bruce Schneier. — A discussion with Henry Fisher, the founder of Techlore and a digital rights activist — A hands-on workshop on how you can encrypt your email using the FSF's Email Self-Defense guide "as a concrete step to enhance your data privacy" You may join us virtually, or if you are in Boston, Massachusetts, United States (the FSF's home base), you can join us in-person at the Boston Public Library's Copley Square branch. You may also join us in-person at MakeHaven in New Haven, Connecticut, US, and meet our deputy director Sean O'Brien. Whether attending our event online or in-person, please register. It will help us plan ahead and enable us to contact you about other important details before the workshop, like what to expect and what to bring... Bulk surveillance violates our fundamental rights and makes free speech dangerous. Email encryption is an excellent tool you can use to shield yourself from bulk surveillance. Encrypting your email is also a concrete step towards protecting your data from others whose intentions may not be honorable.

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"As of 2026, the company has issued more than 60 million digital certificates," notes Wikipedia. But now, InfoWorld reports: A certificate authority's decision to abandon the global SSL/TLS market is exposing a weakness many organizations rarely examine: their dependence on complex PKI trust chains. Following the compromise of private keys behind eight of its intermediate certificate authorities, eMudhra is exiting the global SSL/TLS certificate business and is offering customers Sectigo-issued replacements... [In a press note the company added] that data sovereignty and compliance requirements had increased the business's complexity and cost... The company said it will contact affected customers to replace certificates free of cost. It also said it will keep revocation and certificate status services running until every issued certificate has expired or been replaced... Yash Kadakia, co-founder and CTO of Security Brigade, said that moving to another root operated by the same company does not necessarily address concerns over trust and governance. "The last thing organisations need is to migrate twice," Kadakia said. But there's another concern, the article points out. "Analysts warn that enterprises may discover they have only limited visibility into the certificate hierarchies underpinning critical services." Replacing a website's certificate may not address every dependency in an enterprise environment, according to Sakshi Grover, research director at IDC. She said residual exposure lies in systems that maintain their own trust stores and do not update on the same schedule as browsers. These include Java keystores, language runtimes, container images, mutual TLS configurations, proxies, load balancers, VPN and security appliances, and embedded devices. "The harder finding for many organizations will be that they can't answer these questions at all," Grover said, referring to where certificate trust decisions are made outside browsers and operating systems... Grover recommended that security teams first identify where trust decisions occur outside browsers and operating systems, prioritising systems that accept connections from external parties and mutual TLS endpoints. Teams should then determine which systems can be updated to distrust a specific intermediate certificate or public key, she said.

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