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World's Oceans Hit Highest Temperature On Record As El Nino Grows

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The world's oceans are hotter than ever recorded, new data suggests, as they suffer from human-caused climate change and the growing El Nino weather phenomenon. The average surface temperature of the planet's seas outside the polar regions hit 21.1C (70F) on Saturday, according to figures from the European Copernicus climate change service. That edges past the 21.09C recorded on three separate days in March 2024, and is far above average for the time of year. [...] The data is based on sea temperatures 10m (32ft 10in) below the surface, using measurements from buoys, ships and satellites, which are combined to produce a global estimate. While the margin of record is currently very small and any global estimate comes with uncertainties, scientists say its timing is particularly notable. Average worldwide sea temperatures tend to reach their yearly peak in March or April, which corresponds to the end of summer in the southern hemisphere -- and not in August. The southern hemisphere contains more of the planet's ocean surface than the northern hemisphere and so exerts a bigger influence on average sea temperatures. What is especially concerning to scientists is that the oceans are already so hot when the natural El Nino weather phenomenon is still some way off its expected peak. "The fact that we are already breaking records is an early indicator of how strong the El Nino is becoming," said Dr Jeremy Grist, senior research fellow at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. "All things being equal we might expect the ocean temperature record to be broken again in March [or] April 2027," he added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hey all. I’m starting a podcast about CMS stuff called Headless, and WordPress 7.1 ended up being one of the main stories in the first episode.

That sentence probably just caused several people to fall asleep or keep scrolling, but hear me out.

I’ve spent a pretty stupid amount of my career around CMSs, DXPs, Drupal, WordPress, headless platforms, agencies, and all the other ways we’ve invented to describe putting content on the internet.

And I realized there really wasn’t a weekly show I wanted to listen to that just covered what actually happened in this industry and why any of it matters.

So I decided to make it.

The first episode is about something I noticed happening across several announcements this week:

WordPress shipped 7.1.
Storyblok plugged into Claude.
Salesforce expanded Headless 360.
Optimizely is giving agents more control inside the CMS.
Contentful is talking about what happens when your website visitor isn’t human.

My takeaway is that we might be watching the CMS get an entirely new kind of user: AI agents. (I know... this might not be news to everyone here... but when I step out of my LinkedIn bubble... I realize there are a lot of people not following the signals)

And that could make structured content, APIs, permissions, metadata, and all the traditionally boring CMS stuff suddenly much more important.

Anyway.

I have no idea if this will become a thing.

But I’m going to try doing it every week, covering the interesting CMS/DXP news, having some opinions about it, making fun of our industry when deserved, and hopefully talking to some smart people along the way.

If that sounds interesting, here’s the first episode:

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-cms-has-a-new-user-and-its-not-human/id6804680238?i=1000785544658
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1FG1olsK8yV0Q0y8LC0FqH?si=0UjSsl2MTgChoT1jRswNCg
YouTube: https://youtu.be/i5YJhz41EKY?si=wGUAStYgos1vH3hv

Would genuinely love feedback, especially from people who actually work in this world.

Including “your take is completely wrong.”

Honestly, that might make Episode 2 easier.

submitted by /u/Aggressive_Trip_4872
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BookingPress

Hi. I am building a site and testing out booking plugins. BookingPress looks pretty good to me and very promising; it has a wonderful dashboard. However, before I commit to buying the BookingPress plugin. I would like to know how good their customer service is. Trustpilot reviews are mainly about the plugin. If possible, I would like to avoid customer service and my first preference is to ask AI for tech support. But in case I need to talk to a human being, I would like to know how their customer service is.

  1. Have you contacted customer service?
  2. Was there ever a need for you to contact customer service?
  3. If yes, how was your experience?
submitted by /u/ashish-digital
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Do deactivated WP plugins and themes pose a security risk?

I have been using a wordpress plugin to do a security audit of my wordpress-backed website. I am the sole administrator of this site.

One thing I find very strange is that it reports deactivated themes and plugins as problems.

I keep my list of active plugins small, but I've never given a second thought to keeping plugins or themes I no longer use. Am I missing something? Can a malicious actor find some way to use to exploit deactivated plugins or themes?

submitted by /u/idiotprogrammer2017
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How do you track M&A deal flow without context slipping across deals?

Every time a 40-page CIM lands in your inbox, the clock starts. But the harder problem isn't analyzing one deal, it's keeping context across the 3 to 10 active opportunities you're juggling at once. You forget where a conversation stalled, and a broker follows up before you remember which business they represent.

Spreadsheets hold up until around deal 30, then nothing ties together. Salesforce is powerful but not built for deal flow; you spend weeks customizing objects for a system that still doesn't know what a CIM or an LOI is.

Curious what people here are actually using. Have you made a general CRM work for M&A pipeline tracking, or found something more specialized? How do you keep CIMs, financials, and broker conversations organized across concurrent deals?

submitted by /u/Easyprofitsniper_
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Weedhack Malware Spreads via Fake Minecraft Clients and SEO Poisoning

Cybersecurity researchers have found that several websites are still actively distributing a malware family known as Weedhack to gamers by masquerading as Minecraft clients. McAfee Labs said it detected and blocked more than 6,300 attempts to access malicious sites, adding that it found lookalike gaming websites designed to mimic legitimate projects, including branding, feature lists, FAQs,

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Amazon Hikes Hardware Prices By 60%, Blaming Memory Shortage

Amazon has raised the prices of its hardware devices by as much as 60%, blaming "significant increases in memory and storage component costs." TechCrunch reports: The price explosion impacted Fire TVs, Echos, Kindles, and Eeros. One egregious example that's been cited is that of the Echo Dot, one of Amazon's cheapest smart speakers, the price of which jumped 60% overnight, from $49.99 to $79.99. Price-tracking sites like CamelCamelCamel show the stark uptick, which has previously hovered much lower. [...] The company also said that it would continue to offer occasional promotions to customers over the course of the next year. Amazon said in a statement: "The consumer electronics industry is facing significant increases in memory and storage component costs. After absorbing these increases for as long as we could, we recently adjusted pricing across our product lines."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Réduire l’espace vide sur la page Boutique WooCommerce avec Astra Free ?

Bonjour,

J’utilise WordPress avec WooCommerce, Astra Free et Elementor Free.

Sur ma page Boutique, j’ai un très grand espace vide entre la bannière/titre « BOUTIQUE » et la liste des produits (voir capture).

J’aimerais simplement réduire cet espace, mais je ne trouve aucun réglage permettant de le faire dans Astra > Personnaliser > WooCommerce > Catalogue de produits.

Est-ce qu’il existe un réglage que j’ai raté dans la version gratuite d’Astra ?

Je précise que j’utilise uniquement les versions gratuites d’Astra et Elementor.

Merci !

submitted by /u/Special_Barnacle4714
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SEC Investigating Near-Implosion of AI Hedge Fund

The SEC is investigating the near-collapse of AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness, sending subpoenas to major Wall Street banks for details about the fund's trades, borrowing, and communications with lenders. The fund, founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, managed over $30 billion and borrowed tens of billions more before leveraged bets unraveled, forcing it to sell most of its stock portfolio to Citadel at a discount. The New York Times reports: The subpoenas asked for details on the timing of Situational Awareness's trades and for its communications with lenders about the money it was borrowing, also known as "leverage," two of those people said. The subpoenas additionally warned the banks to preserve any information regarding the San Francisco hedge fund. The S.E.C. oversees financial markets with an eye toward protecting small investors, and has brought civil cases regularly against investment firms that produced large losses. Any investigation into Situational Awareness would be at its earliest stages, and it's no guarantee that it would lead to fines or other punishment. The hedge fund has not been accused of wrongdoing. [...] Situational Awareness had a fast rise and an even quicker retreat. Founded just two years ago by Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former researcher at OpenAI, it rode the A.I. boom to soaring investment returns. To achieve those results, however, the fund relied on heavy borrowing, as well as complicated and expensive financial instruments that magnify gains -- and losses. The latter piled up quickly last month when the stock prices of publicly traded, high-flying A.I. companies dipped. At the same time, shares in more traditional technology companies -- which the hedge fund had been betting against -- rose, compounding the problem. Situational Awareness was forced into a fire sale. It wound up selling most of its stock portfolio to a rival, Citadel, at a discount.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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What happens after a prospect fill out the form on your entreprise plan?

Lead fills form, you emails three days later, books a call, demo happens, proposal goes out as a PDF, three weeks of email negotiation, legal reviews a contract in DocuSign, deal closes in the CRM, someone manually creates an invoice in another tool, payment eventually lands.

How long does it take? how many tools do you use? How many things usually fall thriught the cracks? Any data loss between handovers?

We built something that cuts this to one system. Happy to share if anyone is curious.

submitted by /u/kamhla
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Not everyone needs a huge CRM.

I built a Notion CRM for small agencies and consultants who want their sales workflow organized without feeling like they're setting up an entire enterprise system.

It keeps Deals, Companies, Contacts, and follow-ups connected, with views for active, won, and lost deals.

If you just want to try the deal side first, I also made the Deal Tracker available separately for free.

Would love to hear what you’d want in a simple CRM setup.

submitted by /u/eve9656
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Trump Admin Moves to Impose More Than $100K Fee For H-1B Worker Visas

The Trump administration is proposing to make permanent a $103,265 fee on certain new H-1B visas, dramatically increasing costs for employers that rely on highly skilled foreign workers in tech, education, and research. "A federal judge in June ruled that the fee was illegal and blocked the Trump administration from collecting it," reports Reuters. "A Boston-based appeals court is reviewing that decision while a different court considers whether a judge properly rejected a challenge to the fee by a major business group." From the report: Trump's temporary fee increase expires in September, one year after it was issued. The proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, posted in the Federal Register on Monday, would make a fee of $103,265 permanent. It could be finalized by the end of the year. The H-1B program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers with training in specialty fields and offers 65,000 visas annually, with another 20,000 for workers with advanced degrees, approved for three to six years. Those visas typically came with fees between $2,000 and $5,000 before Trump's order. The fee would not apply to visas granted to foreign citizens already in the United States on student visas, who make up a large share of new H-1B recipients, or to renewals of current visas.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Need help figuring out SMTP issues

Hello,

I have set up a Wordpress site (www.Magic.Army) and am using WooCommerce to manage my storefront. Everything seems to be functioning great except that I cannot get any emails to work via purchases or the contact form.

I am using WP Mail SMTP (free) along with Brevo (also free). I have followed this guide to set everything up. All of the DNS records have propogated, and I'm getting confirmation on the Brevo site that my domain is verified on every record. I've ensured all of the settings are congruent between Brevo and WP Mail SMTP, to include the 'From Email' field. I have tried generating several new API keys to ensure that wasn't the issue, and nothing changed.

Whenever I go to send a test email, I get the following error:
Action Needed: It doesn't look like the DKIM record required by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) has been added to your domain. Please check out our step-by-step guide for details on how to add this record to your domain's DNS.

From what I can tell, that error is a bug and will be persistent even if everything is functioning correctly, but I figured it's worth mentioning since everything is not working correctly. That said, the DKIM records are there and can be seen/accessed.

Emails are not going into any sort of spam folder, and there's nothing in my 'Sent' emails folder, either. Any ideas on what could be causing this issue?

Edit: SOLVED
Turns out you're not allowed to use captial letters in your 'From Address'. Switched to all lowercase and everything now works fine.

submitted by /u/terridax_
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Raspberry Pi Shares Its Official Tutorial For Making a Cyberdeck

Raspberry Pi has published an official guide for building a cyberdeck, leaning into a viral trend of homemade portable computers built from repurposed cases, purses, and other oddball hardware. The guide uses a Raspberry Pi 5, keyboard, battery, and Pelican-style case. The Verge reports: Raspberry Pi's head of social, Ashley Whittaker, acknowledged the cyberdeck trend today, saying "we haven't been able to get away from cyberdecks this year." Raspberry Pi has also increased its prices multiple times this year due to rising costs for RAM and other components, which could be another reason to support this growing market of active and would-be hobbyists. The 16GB version of the Raspberry Pi 5 included in the company's official cyberdeck guide got a $100 price hike in April, nearly as much as the board's original $120 price.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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What does it mean to have a good data foundation?

I feel like when prepping for a client call, the useful context is in email, a drive folder, someone's calendar, or in someone's head. The CRM sometimes has the record, not necessarily all of the important information or is linked in the right way.

How are you guys solving this today? I'm thinking about how AI agents can help with data compilation but AI Assistants need a good data model to build from. Are you running into this?

submitted by /u/JennySurfs
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I need a sanity check: wpmudev

I spent some time this weekend finding the entrance vector for a site that was getting re-hacked after cleanup. I mean I knew it would get re-hacked since I wasn't finding the the vector in the usual "easy" ways. Turns out it was this: nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-15459

The WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Authentication Bypass in all versions up to, and including, 5.0.0. On sites not yet connected to the WPMU DEV Hub — the default state after installation — the site API key that keys the WDP-AUTH request signature is empty, making the signature verified by validate_hash() trivially forgeable

It's bad enough this plugin adds an alternate auth path to your web site, with full admin control given to some 3rd party you don't know. But I also learned this plugin, wpmudev-updates, is usually stealth-installed with other plugins from WPMU DEV, so users don't know it's being installed. To top it off, it doesn't show up in the plugin dashboard so they don't even know it's there.

In the case of the site mentioned above, I think it was installed with another plugin a couple of years ago, and that plugin was since removed, but wpmudev-updates did not get removed.

Is it just me or is it a little crazy to allow plugins to provide auth bypass for complete admin control of your site by third parties? Is this a common pattern? What other plugins do this aside from the WPMU DEV ones? (I'm talking about the situation where there ISN'T an active exploit in the code ... the intended use scenario is what seems insane to me).

submitted by /u/abqcheeks
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Wordpress admin VERY slow

Hello all. I have a webpage that is not the fastest, but not slow either. My WordPress admin, however, is absurdly slow. I use custom ACF fields to create posts that change content based on “level”: beginner, mid, expert. I have more than 50 posts (150 content levels). I have not really had any speed issues until recently. I noticed the speed deteriorated quite a lot after switching from HTTP to HTTPS. Does anyone know if this may be why?

submitted by /u/No_Worry5419
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