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Microsoft Responds to Outcry After Quietly Installing Beta 'Photos' App on Enterprise Machines

✇Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
Microsoft's cloud storage app OneDrive got a new Photos app in the worst possible way, reports the blog Neowin . "The app is reportedly showing up even on Windows 11 Enterprise machines, despite apparently being a beta application aimed at consumer functionality." One admin questioned why a beta app was appearing on an Enterprise SKU in the first place, while another described the situation as yet another consumer-oriented feature being forced onto corporate PCs. Things get even more frustrating for IT departments because there does not appear to be a straightforward Microsoft-provided way to disable the app... Enterprise administrators generally need to know what is being installed on their managed devices, particularly when a software is labeled as beta. Quietly adding another application and leaving admins to clean it up themselves is therefore unlikely to win Microsoft many fans. But there's another problem, according to the blog Windows Latest. "OneDrive Photos automatically scans your system storage for photos," and apparently "doesn't need a Microsoft account to work, as it can also detect your local files." There's also a People section that groups similar faces in your photos. Microsoft asks for permission before turning it on and explicitly warns that facial data could be considered biometric data in some regions. The company says only you can see the grouped faces, that the data isn't shared with third parties, and that you can delete it by disabling the feature. In a statement to Neowin, Microsoft admitted this new photos "experience" they're "incubating" had gone "more broadly than it should have," and then promised that "We're fixing that." The spokesperson also said the Windows Photos app will "always give you the option of local and cloud photos" and, also a choice of whether or not to use it OneDrive." But there's another "awkward catch," notes the blog Digital Trends. "Users currently can't uninstall OneDrive Photos without removing the main OneDrive app too." Because OneDrive Photos is tied to the main OneDrive sync client, Windows 11 doesn't currently offer a separate uninstall option. The only straightforward way to get rid of OneDrive Photos right now is to uninstall OneDrive itself... Removing the main client can also affect its File Explorer integration and shortcuts... Microsoft says this will change. The company is working on controls that will let users remove OneDrive Photos separately from the main OneDrive app. On enterprise PCs managed through Intune, Microsoft says the app will automatically disappear where it isn't supported.

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Privacy Backlash Explodes Against Meta's Smart Glasses

✇Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
With nearly 70% of the market, "Meta wants its smart glasses to be a big hit," writes the Los Angeles Times. But after some users found ways to disable the light that warns people they're being filmed, "the high-tech specs have also turned into a liability, as some are calling the gadget 'pervert glasses...'" Some people are using the glasses — which look like a pair of regular spectacles — to record people without their knowledge and publish the videos on social media. The users secretly videotape and share what happens when they try to pick up women. Now, a growing number of people are worried they could be covertly recorded at the gym or even during sex. The backlash has prompted Meta to update its glasses to address privacy concerns, and some places have banned them, adding to the angst surrounding technology that's rapidly evolving... Concern about the glasses has exploded as more videos of interactions with people who don't know they're being recorded go viral on social media. On Instagram, some videos depict people getting approached in malls and grocery stores and on college campuses and sidewalks. While the videos are portrayed as jokes, the people filmed don't appear to know they're being recorded and sometimes seem uncomfortable, telling the strangers to leave them alone or stop harassing them. The outcry has spread beyond social media, with comedian Jimmy Kimmel calling the Meta devices "pervert glasses" on national television and singer Lorde telling concertgoers that smart glasses are "not sexy..." Instagram, which is owned by Meta, has been disabling accounts and taking down some of these pickup or prank videos for violating the platform's rules against harassment and bullying... Businesses are making their own calls about smart glasses. The 5 Point Cafe in Seattle, which banned Google Glass in the past, has banned Meta glasses from its diner and dive bar. "Leave your Meta-SpyBan Display at home, they are officially Ray-Ban-ned from all of our restaurants. We serve privacy, not side-eye surveillance," a 2025 Instagram post from the business states. An Android app that warns people if they're being recorded has roughly 110,000 downloads in the last six months, according to the article. The app's creator says it's a "social problem" that "we don't value privacy, that we feel entitled to use others for our entertainment or our private gain, and technology amplifies that." The American Civil Liberties Union and more than 70 organizations even sent a letter urging Meta to promise they'd leave facial recognition features out of their smart glasses, according to the article. But a Meta spokesperson said "no final decision has been made."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AI Reviews Bring 'New Normal' to Linux Release Candidates: Lots of Bug Fixes

✇Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
Linux Torvalds expects Linux 7.2 should be released next weekend "unless something really bad pops up," Torvalds said while announcing today's release candidate. But there's something interesting about Linux 7.2-rc7, writes Phoronix. "By the time the Linux kernel typically hits a -rc7 release things have usually settled quite well. But in today's world of AI/LLM coding/review agents, the kernel activity continues at an all-time high." Tons of bug fixes continued to trickle in across the kernel spectrum for all sorts of issues. The HWMON hardware monitoring subsystem saw several critical and high severity bug fixes, on the memory management side was a nasty race condition leading to a use-after-free in the kernel for the past eight years, Btrfs restored its fixup worker infrastructure to deal with silent data loss, lots of AI patches in the networking realm, and the kernel was patched for the Safe RET Interrupt Vulnerability. Linus Torvalds wrote in the 7.2-rc7 announcement: "Another week, another -rc. I can't say that I'm exactly thrilled about the size of this all, but it is what it is: the new normal with a lot of fixes, many of them due to review by various AI tools. And nothing looks particularly scary per se — it's just that there's a lot here. Most of it is fairly small, although we have a couple of larger diffs: s390/zcrypt fixes stand out in the diffstat, and so does btrfs bringing back the fixup worker infrastructure. And some netfilter ipset fixes. But aside from a few places like that, most of this is just lots of tiny fixes. It's pretty much spread all over — drivers (gpu, sound, networking, you name it), filesystems, core networking, arch code...

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Flock Accused of Reactivating Its Cameras Without Notifying a Town

✇Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
A Massachusetts newspaper reports that officials from the town of Littleton (population: 10,141) "claim that five of Littletonâ(TM)s Flock Safety cameras were switched back on by the company without informing the town..." Littleton had temporarily disabled the cameras earlier this year, according to the article, but upon discovering the cameras were still active, city officials say they directed the Town Counsel "to initiate cancellation of the contract with Flock Safety and directed the Town Administrator to coordinate the removal of the six cameras on public ways" with the Department of Public Works. Ironically, it's the same Massachusetts town that last year was breached by a Chinese-state-sponsored hacking group for over 300 days. Flock has also considered dashcams installed in hundreds of thousands Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers' vehicles "to scan license plates those drivers travelled passed," reports 404 Media, "essentially turning Uber and Lyft drivers into roaming surveillance vehicles, according to a Flock presentation shared with 404 Media... 404 Media first revealed the intended partnership last August when multiple sources provided information on the plan."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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California City Declares State of Emergency After Cyberattack

✇Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
NBC Bay Area brings news from the small idyllic California town of Suisun City (population: 29,518). The city council "declared a state of emergency Saturday after a cyberattack that shut down computer systems including 911 public safety operations." "Malicious software infected and compromised" the East Bay community's information technology systems beginning about 5:45 a.m. Friday, the city said on social media. "The cybersecurity incident hit critical public safety operations, including 911 routing, police and fire dispatch, records and city services," the city said. "There is no imminent threat to the public," the city said. "All public safety services remain active." The city shut down its computer network "to contain the threat and preserve evidence for a federal investigation," it said... Suisun City dispatchers were taking calls for service through the Solano County dispatch center. Suisun City police officers and firefighters continued responding to calls for service, the city said, but online city services and internal operations were unavailable. On Facebook the city said it was "working alongside federal, state and regional agencies, including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and California Office of Emergency Services to maintain emergency services, investigate the incident and restore systems." But Bay Area PBS station KQED notes "They're only the latest local government in the region to be hit by a cyberattack." Earlier this year, Foster City and Pittsburg experienced other cyberattacks that impacted services in their own jurisdictions. Foster City declared a state of emergency after a March ransomware incident that shut down many services for more than a week. Pittsburg lost almost $1 million to a February phishing attack, though over half of it was recovered.

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AI-Powered Browser Just Generates Every Website From Scratch

✇Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
XDA Developers reports: On July 22, a Google DeepMind engineer, Vidy Thatte, shared a snippet of a browser he built that "treats every URL as a prompt and generates a site from scratch" on his X account. Just a few days later, he shared a TestFlight link to let iPhone users try it for themselves. The browser he launched is called Gem, and it's a browser that doesn't really...browse. Instead of fetching a webpage from a server the way Chrome or Safari would, Gem hands whatever URL you type over to Google's Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite model and asks it to generate a webpage on the spot. If you enter a real address, it builds its own interpretation of that site rather than loading the actual thing. If you enter an address that doesn't exist, Gemini simply invents a website to fill the gap. In other words, you're not visiting the internet so much as browsing one the model dreams up as you go... Thatte's reasoning was that with a model as fast and cheap as Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite, there's almost no practical difference anymore between loading a website and generating a brand-new one on the fly... Given that this tool is powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and it's just a side project rather than a full-fledged tool, it doesn't come with Gemini access baked in. Gem requires you to bring your own Gemini API key to get it working. Every URL you enter fires off a request to the model, so Gem needs a key linked to your Google account to actually generate anything, with the usage billed to you. You can grab a key for free from Google AI Studio, paste it into Gem's settings, and you're ready to start typing URLs. While you can get started for free, I ran into the limits within two minutes of playing around. So, I did need to enable billing on my API key and decided to load $10 into it. While the blogger's own site seemed to only get the Gemini logo, tapping it revealed nearly two dozen remixing options. (Dark mode, Reader, Neubrutalist, Broadsheet, Blueprint, Comic book, Punk zine, Notebook, Chalkboard, Receipt, Teletext, System 7, Wes Anderson, Cyber neon, Clay, Frosted, Geocities, Matrix, Museum, Windows 95, Terminal, Vaporwave, and Hide images...) "The frontend morphed before my eyes. Every new edit took practically no time to load, and within a second or two, the same XDA articles would reappear wearing a completely different skin..." For another site, it kept the article headlines, but then rewrote all the text! And after entering an address they knew didn't exist — their own name — in two seconds the browser whipped up a slick portfolio "genuinely been better than some of what those tools produced with far more time and context to work with." But its link to a LinkedIn profile led to a lookalike page, because Gem "had simply generated its own version of it, complete with a made-up follower number and details I never wrote...."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ask Slashdot: What are the Costs of Switching Between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome?

✇Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
UI changes, lost productivity, untransferrable knowledge... Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes the folly of switching to an unfamiliar new environment to be "more productive"... Champions of the switch often insist workers will be able to hit the ground running and get the same or even more work done from the get-go in the new unfamiliar environment because it's 'more productive', a conclusion often shaped by conventional wisdom or their 'gut' feeling. Decision makers may also mistake their own 'light-user experience' for universal experience and believe all platforms are fungible. And while it's one thing for a business to delay their delivery dates and increase costs of by introducing a switch in computing environments that's of unquantified and possibly dubious value, how about when a switch in computing environments is made that affects schoolchildren's ability to learn for a period of time? While a MacBook Neo is indeed cute, what might be the possible consequences of a decision to move 25,000 students off Windows and onto MacBook Neos...? Or even the impact on a single kid who moves from a MacBook school to a Windows or Chrome school (or whose home computing environment isn't aligned with their school). Or students whose teachers decide learning in their classrooms should now additionally require an understanding of the Minecraft computing platform/UI (used in over 40,000 school systems.). Learning Management Systems and now various AI Edtech tools used by schoolkids are also subject to change. "Even if students and schools eventually benefit from a new platform, one wonders how much learning is lost during the switch," theodp asks, "and what the financial and educational ROI and payback period look like." Are there bigger problems than we realize? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. What are the costs of switching between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome?

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Not a great month for our favorite Elementor-related plugins...

✇WordPress
By: /u/hackrepair

A supply chain hit has just taken down the BdThemes lineup, disabling popular plugins like Element Pack and Prime Slider on the official WordPress directory. This is not your typical code hack. They did not touch any files on the WordPress servers. Instead, they went upstream and poisoned the remote static JSON feed that pushes promotional banners into the admin dashboard.
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Element Pack Addons for Elementor, Prime Slider Addons for Elementor, Pixel Gallery Addons for Elementor, Ultimate Post Kit Addons for Elementor, Ultimate Store Kit, Live Copy Paste for Elementor, Smart Admin Assistant.
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In short, an escaping flaw allowed malicious data from that feed to execute JavaScript whenever an administrator loaded a WordPress admin page. The injected JavaScript could silently create rogue administrators, install a web shell, and establish persistent backdoors. Yeah, that's not good.

Why is this important?
The plugin files themselves did not need to be altered.
Let's let that sink in for a moment...

https://preview.redd.it/wa22w0vsneih1.png?width=791&format=png&auto=webp&s=9cc4ad1c533796ddc8394ebba6bf7070c7a3126d

submitted by /u/hackrepair
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pushing a staging site to live site

✇WordPress
By: /u/supperdog99

i have made a lot of changes to my old website on a staging site and now are wanting to push it to the live sit. i have watched videos and asked ai but i just cant find away to do this for free. i used wp staging to make the staging site and the only way i can find to do this is to pay for pro which is around $300. so does anyone know how to do this for free.

submitted by /u/supperdog99
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I'm using a post grid layout from TPD in a container and before it fully loads in, it looks white. How to fix this?

✇WordPress
By: /u/SpaceyPanda

https://preview.redd.it/cy7omnui9eih1.png?width=1863&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf30afec4813f3470eeb55c3d6d392ca392da362

I'm using a post grid layout from TPD in a container and before it fully loads in, it looks white. How to fix this? Is there a ways to make it look less distracting, perhaps black like the background?

submitted by /u/SpaceyPanda
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I've given up with WordPress!

✇WordPress
By: /u/W0CBF

I have been trying to learn WordPress but frustrated to the end. I have my site written in html and wanted to convert it to WordPress. I have followed several of the YouTube videos on setting up the site but their visuals do not follow what I have on my host site. Thanks for reading and let me know what you would recommend. I am 75 years old and proficient in several computer languages. Thanks@

submitted by /u/W0CBF
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Why can't I change the color of the blog post title?

✇WordPress
By: /u/odub1

https://preview.redd.it/7yo0j3hcrdih1.png?width=3734&format=png&auto=webp&s=68b8c66135f3b9ad25b799d1505457f1f667c983

I've literally searched everywhere..trying to change the color of the title of this blog "Meet the 2026 Calvary Board" and have had zero luck..I know there's a bit of a learning curve w WP but I'm about to lose my mind.

I've tried everything, every button without messing anything up and I CAN NOT change the color to black.

Any help is appreciated! Thank you!

submitted by /u/odub1
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Scalelist review - worth trying for building lead lists fast?

✇CRM - Customer Relationship Managment
By: /u/Gold_End7671

We brought in Scalelist for the past couple weeks after seeing it mentioned here. The UI is clean and the filters are pretty thorough - you can drill down by industry, company size, job titles, the usual stuff. Data quality seems decent, maybe 70-80% accuracy on emails from what I've spot checked.

The pricing is where it gets tricky. Their starter plan is like a hundred bucks a month for 1,000 verified emails, which feels steep compared to other lead list building tools. Also noticed their mobile number coverage is pretty limited - only found numbers for maybe 15% of my contacts.

Biggest frustration is the search speed. Running a search with multiple filters can take 30-45 seconds, which adds up when you're building multiple lists. Their Chrome extension is buggy too - crashes half the time on LinkedIn.

We've been looking at UpLead as well but their credits system is confusing and I keep hearing mixed things. Also been eyeing Prospeo which seems to have better mobile coverage from what I've read.

Anyone else using Scalelist for outbound prospecting? How's your experience been? curious what others think about it specifically before I fully commit to switching.

submitted by /u/Gold_End7671
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Slashdot Reader Builds 'Spaced Linux', a New Devuan-Based, User-Friendly Desktop Distro

✇Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
"I've been a Linux IT administrator for 30 years now," says crhylove (Slashdot reader #205,956), in a new video on his YouTube channel. "I used to be a data center architect, at one point I was the IT director for 13 school districts... I just haven't been happy overall with all the other operating systems out there... " I've been working really diligently for the last few weeks on a new distro called Spaced Linux that is exactly what I want to use. It's heavily focused on the [zoom-friendly 3D] Compiz desktop, very efficient using the rolling Devuan Ceres backend, and avoids dependency hell by promoting mostly Flatpak usage. It's still early, but it's already working great for me, it's been my daily driver for a few weeks now. There's also user-friendly themes — everything from Linux, Android, GeoWorks, and Mac OS X to Windows 11, Windows XP, and even Windows 3.11 (dark or light theme). And you can also run Windows apps under Wine. "And let me tell you, Nvidia runs perfectly on here now..." he adds in the video. "It just works really, really well out of the box." He's now working on voice-command features, bur argues that Spaced Linux "is already extremely usable, extremely efficient, extremely fast, and extremely reliable.... And it's only going to get better and better."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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I'm tired of crm providers putting essential features behind paywall!!

✇CRM - Customer Relationship Managment
By: /u/Ok-Amoeba-9258

Recently I went to an AI conference and got quite a handful of leads ~300. Felt like the right point where I should switch from my excel sheets to actually start considering a CRM now since I will be needing things like email open rates, follow ups, tracking lead with a person in team etc.

Sadly, all the popular CRMs I checked out, had some small but critical feature behind a paywall. I tried hubspot, leadsquared, zoho crm, asana(as a hack) before I gave up. Like even using basic filters and sort feature is paywalled!

Knowing that selecting a CRM is going to be a one time activity, I really don't want to pick a CRM and later realise that some stupid feature requires $10 to unlock.

At this point I’m seriously considering building a simple CRM for myself that just includes all of this without locking random useful features behind higher plans. I strongly believe for small business a proper functional CRM should be free of such bs. If you have less than 1000 leads to manage, happy to onboard you if interested (free of cost ofc).

submitted by /u/Ok-Amoeba-9258
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OpenAI Announces It's Enhancing Security Controls, Pausing Some Work for New AI Model Astra

✇Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
OpenAI announced Friday it's pausing work on its Astra AI model because of security concerns. The Guardian reports: The company had evaluated the agent, Astra, and found "significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity", which had moved to a "critical" threshold... OpenAI stated that the model was not involved in an incident in which one of its AI agents went rogue during a test, accessed the open web and hacked a startup, Hugging Face... The reports have increased concerns about advancements in AI models and humans' ability to control them. Still, critics of the AI industry have warned that such disclosures from OpenAI and its competitors Anthropic and Meta could be designed to generate hype about the technology's power and thus spur additional interest from investors. To prevent potential rogue behavior from AI agents, OpenAI is "implementing stricter security controls for higher-capability models and associated activities, including isolated testing environments, restricted network and tool access", the company's blogpost stated. It will also install "enhanced model weight protections and encryption, additional monitoring and detection capabilities". The company will pause internal activities involving Astra that do not meet these new requirements. "We believe it's important to be transparent with the public and the safety and security communities about this potential shift in capabilities..." OpenAI wrote in a blog post titled "Responding to the next frontier of critical cyber capabilities." Under our Preparedness Framework, a model reaches the Critical cybersecurity threshold if it can identify and develop functional zero-day exploits of all severity levels in many hardened real-world critical systems without human intervention, or can devise and execute end-to-end novel strategies for cyberattacks against hardened targets given only a high level desired goal. While we continue to benchmark and assess this model, our preliminary evaluations indicate strong enough performance that we cannot rule out Critical capability level at this time... Accordingly, we have scaled up robustness testing of our safeguards and security controls so that they are appropriate for a deployment of these capabilities... - We are implementing stricter security controls for higher-capability models and associated activities, including isolated testing environments, restricted network and tool access, enhanced model weight protections and encryption, additional monitoring and detection capabilities, and sandboxed execution. - We are pausing internal activities involving Astra that do not yet meet these strengthened security control requirements. - We have implemented universal monitoring for risky actions and misalignment across all agentic applications of Astra, including training and evaluation. Monitors evaluate the model's Chain of Thought and trigger a security response to review and interrupt high risk activity. - We will work with relevant government agencies and select AI safety organizations to test the capabilities for this model... We believe advanced cyber-capable models should help defenders identify and address vulnerabilities before attackers do. We're committed to working alongside governments, safety institutes, and civil society to ensure that the frontier capabilities of models like Astra, and those that follow, are deployed responsibly and broadly for the benefit of all humanity.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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