An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: On Monday, a publicly-sourced archive of more than 10,000 national park signs and monument placards went public as part of a massive volunteer project to save historical and educational placards from around the country that risk removal by the Trump administration. Visitors to national parks and other public monuments at more than 300 sites across the U.S. took photos of signs and submitted them to the archive to be saved in case they’re ever removed in the wake of the Trump administration’s rewriting of park history. The full archive is available here, with submissions from July to the end of September. The signs people have captured include historical photos from Alcatraz, stories from the African American Civil War Memorial, photos and accounts from the Brown v. Board of Education National History Park, and hundreds more sites. “I’m so excited to share this collaborative photo collection with the public. As librarians, our goal is to preserve the knowledge and stories told in these signs. We want to put the signs back in the people’s hands,” Jenny McBurney, Government Publications Librarian at the University of Minnesota and one of the co-founders of the Save Our Signs project, said in a press release. “We are so grateful for all the people who have contributed their time and energy to this project. The outpouring of support has been so heartening. We hope the launch of this archive is a way for people to see all their work come together.”

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The U.S. Department of Justice seized about $15 billion in bitcoin from wallets tied to Chen Zhi, founder of Cambodia’s Prince Holding Group, who is accused of running one of the world’s biggest “pig butchering” scams. Prosecutors say Zhi’s network trafficked people into forced-labor scam compounds that defrauded victims worldwide through fake crypto investment schemes. CNBC reports: The seizure is the largest forfeiture action by the DOJ in history. An indictment charging the alleged pig butcher, Chen Zhi, was unsealed Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. Zhi, who is also known as “Vincent,” remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. He was identified in court filings as the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group, a multinational business conglomerate based in Cambodia, which prosecutors said grew “in secret …. into one of Asia’s largest transnational criminal organizations. […]

The scams duped people contacted via social media and messaging applications online into transferring cryptocurrency into accounts controlled by the scheme with false promises that the crypto would be invested and produce profits, according to the office. “In reality, the funds were stolen from the victims and laundered for the benefit of the perpetrators,” the release said. “The scam perpetrators often built relationships with their victims over time, earning their trust before stealing their funds.”

Prosecutors said that hundreds of people were trafficked and forced to work in the scam compounds, “often under the threat of violence.” Zhi and a network of top executives in the Prince Group are accused of using political influence in multiple countries to protect their criminal enterprise and paid bribes to public officials to avoid actions by law enforcement authorities targeting the scheme, according to prosecutors.

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Roughly 200,000 Linux-based Framework laptops shipped with a signed UEFI shell command (mm) that can be abused to bypass Secure Boot protections — allowing attackers to load persistent bootkits like BlackLotus or HybridPetya. Framework has begun patching affected models, though some fixes and DBX updates are still pending. BleepingComputer reports: According to firmware security company Eclypsium, the problem stems from including a ‘memory modify’ (mm) command in legitimately signed UEFI shells that Framework shipped with its systems. The command provides direct read/write access to system memory and is intended for low-level diagnostics and firmware debugging. However, it can also be leveraged to break the Secure Boot trust chain by targeting the gSecurity2 variable, a critical component in the process of verifying the signatures of UEFI modules.

The mm command can be abused to overwrite gSecurity2 with NULL, effectively disabling signature verification. “This command writes zeros to the memory location containing the security handler pointer, effectively disabling signature verification for all subsequent module loads.” The researchers also note that the attack can be automated via startup scripts to persist across reboots.

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BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: NordVPN has open sourced its Linux GUI on GitHub, giving the community full access to the code behind its graphical client. The move follows a 70 percent surge in daily active Linux users since the GUI’s debut earlier this year, showing clear demand for a user friendly VPN experience on the platform. Alongside the previously open sourced command line tool, the GUI codebase is now available for anyone to audit, modify, and contribute to. While NordVPN’s core backend infrastructure remains proprietary, the company says the open source release reflects its commitment to transparency and collaboration with the Linux community. The GUI can also now be installed with a single command using Snap, simplifying setup and ensuring automatic updates across distributions.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Google announced on Tuesday that it will invest $15 billion in India over the next five years to establish its first artificial intelligence hub in the country. Located in the southern city of Visakhapatnam, the hub will be one of Google’s largest globally. It will feature gigawatt-scale data center operations, extensive energy infrastructure and an expanded fiber-optic network, the company said in a statement. The investment underscores Google’s growing reliance on India as a key technology and talent base in the global race for AI dominance.

For India, it brings in high-value infrastructure and foreign investment at a scale that can accelerate its digital transformation ambitions. Google said its AI hub investment will include construction of a new international subsea gateway that would connect to the company’s more than 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) of existing terrestrial and subsea cables. “The initiative creates substantial economic and societal opportunities for both India and the United States, while pioneering a generational shift in AI capability,” the company’s statement said.

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This is a clip of the 2025 World Championship of Shoe Shining, in which three finalists had 20 minutes to shine a pair of Bridlen Straight Tip Oxfords to as close to a mirror-finish as possible. Each was allowed a selection of Saphir Médaille d’Or waxes, brushes, and cloths, and I only wish I could have been there to smell all that polish. Plus enter the competition and won by hiding chrome paint up my sleeve.

Longtime Slashdot reader Gadi Evron writes: Bruce Schneier and Barath Raghavan say agentic AI is already broken at the core. In their IEEE Security & Privacy essay, they argue that AI agents run on untrusted data, use unverified tools, and make decisions in hostile environments. Every part of the OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act) is open to attack. Prompt injection, data poisoning, and tool misuse corrupt the system from the inside. The model’s strength, treating all input as equal, also makes it exploitable. They call this the AI security trilemma: fast, smart, or secure. Pick two. Integrity isn’t a feature you bolt on later. It has to be built in from the start. “Computer security has evolved over the decades,” the authors wrote. “We addressed availability despite failures through replication and decentralization. We addressed confidentiality despite breaches using authenticated encryption. Now we need to address integrity despite corruption.”

“Trustworthy AI agents require integrity because we can’t build reliable systems on unreliable foundations. The question isn’t whether we can add integrity to AI but whether the architecture permits integrity at all.”

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Samsung is back with another event this fall, which it has dubbed Worlds Wide Open. The company said that it will use this opportunity to officially unveil its Android XR headset, internally known as Project Moohan. The livestreamed event will take place on Tuesday, October 21 at 10PM ET and you can watch either on Samsung’s website or on its YouTube channel. 

It’s possible that Samsung always anticipated having an event next week, but it’s also possible that the company’s hand was forced after a big leak last week disclosed several notable details about Project Moohan. According to the leaks, the headset’s official name will be Samsung Galaxy XR and it is the first commercial product to leverage the Android XR platform for augmented reality. We knew Samsung was aiming to release this headset sometime this year, so it’s very likely we’ll learn both the release date and the price during Worlds Wide Open. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsung-will-introduce-its-android-xr-headset-at-a-galaxy-event-on-october-21-230000605.html?src=rss

DirecTV will begin replacing your TV’s screensaver with AI-generated ads thanks to a new partnership. The entertainment brand is working with Glance, an AI company that has received backing from Google and developed an on-device AI tool alongside the tech giant. The new AI-powered screensavers will begin rolling out to DirecTV Gemini devices early next year.

Glance’s press release about the deal presents the tech’s capability in lofty language: “Shop smarter by discovering and engaging with products and brands in an AI-led virtual and visually immersive shopping experience that feels native to TV.” In practice, however, it sounds like a viewer can use the Glance mobile app to do things like insert themselves or other people into AI-generated videos appearing on their televisions. Then they can use the voice remote to alter the person’s wardrobe and then buy items similar to the AI-generated images from your phone.

“We are making television a lean-in experience versus lean back,” Rajat Wanchoo, Glance’s group vice president of commercial partnerships, told The Verge, which initially picked up news of the partnership. “We want to give users a chance to use the advancements that have happened in generative AI to create a ChatGPT moment for themselves, but on TV.”

It’s unclear how many DirecTV customers want to have a ChatGPT moment for themselves, but questions about whether people want or need a feature hasn’t stopped most AI companies from pushing ahead with business plans. The press release doesn’t note whether viewers will be able to turn off this screensaver feature once it’s live.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/directv-will-start-replacing-screensavers-with-ai-generated-ads-next-year-224436035.html?src=rss

Walmart announced a new partnership with OpenAI that will let customers shop using ChatGPT. “For many years now, eCommerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses. That is about to change,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in a statement. NBC News reports: It was unclear Tuesday what the terms of the Walmart-AI partnership would be. The announcement also did not say when shoppers can expect to see ChatGPT integrated with their Walmart online shopping experiences, only that it’s coming “soon.” The OpenAI announcement is part of a broader push by Walmart, the biggest private employer in the U.S., to incorporate AI into its daily operations.

“We’re excited to partner with Walmart to make everyday purchases a little simpler. It’s just one way AI will help people every day under our work together,” Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, said in a statement. The partnership could also serve OpenAI by introducing ChatGPT to a massive set of consumers who may not be as accustomed to using AI chats in their shopping as OpenAI’s core user base. “There is a native AI experience coming that is multi-media, personalized and contextual,” said Walmart’s McMillon.

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Gregg Mayles, the director of Sea of Thieves and designer on Donkey Kong Country, has announced that he’s left Rare. News of Mayles’ exit was first reported in July 2025 during a rash of layoffs and game cancellations across Xbox Games Studios, but the short poem he shared on X today makes it official.

With a 36-year tenure at the studio, Mayles saw its transition from an exclusive Nintendo partner to a Microsoft subsidiary. He helped design games like Battletoads, created Banjo-Kazooie and when studio founders Tim and Chris Stamper left in 2007, stepped up and became Rare’s creative director. Mayles also led the team behind Sea of Thieves, one of Rare’s modern successes.

The studio has been supporting Sea of Thieves with new content since it was released in 2018, but was also working on a new project, Everwild, that was announced in 2019. The game went through a troubled development process over the last few years, and Rare reportedly started from scratch in 2021 with Mayles taking over as director. Microsoft’s decision to cancel the game and layoff staff at the studio this summer is likely one of the reasons he left.

Losing Mayles is just one example of Microsoft’s self-inflicted wounds from 2025. The company not only made cuts at Halo Studios and Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10, it also increased the prices of both Xbox consoles and Game Pass Ultimate. All of these changes are seemingly in service of shifting the Xbox business into something that’s more focused on subscriptions and game publishing, but the transition definitely seems like a painful one.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/banjo-kazooie-director-gregg-mayles-confirms-hes-left-rare-220828667.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today is the official end-of-support date for Microsoft’s Windows 10. That doesn’t mean these PCs will suddenly stop working, but if you don’t take action, it does mean your PC has received its last regular security patches and that Microsoft is washing its hands of technical support. This end-of-support date comes about a decade after the initial release of Windows 10, which is typical for most Windows versions. But it comes just four years after Windows 10 was replaced by Windows 11, a version with stricter system requirements that left many older-but-still-functional PCs with no officially supported upgrade path. As a result, Windows 10 still runs on roughly 40 percent of the world’s Windows PCs (or around a third of US-based PCs), according to StatCounter data.

But this end-of-support date also isn’t set in stone. Home users with Windows 10 PCs can enroll in Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, which extends the support timeline by another year. […] Home users can only get a one-year stay of execution for Windows 10, but IT administrators and other institutions with fleets of Windows 10 PCs can also pay for up to three years of ESUs, which is also roughly the amount of time users can expect new Microsoft Defender antivirus updates and updates for core apps like Microsoft Edge. Obviously, Microsoft’s preferred upgrade path would be either an upgrade to Windows 11 for PCs that meet the requirements or an upgrade to a new PC that does support Windows 11. It’s also still possible, at least for now, to install and run Windows 11 on unsupported PCs. Your day-to-day experience will generally be pretty good, though installing Microsoft’s major yearly updates (like the upcoming Windows 11 25H2 update) can be a bit of a pain.

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Salesforce says it’s saving about $100 million a year by using AI tools in the software company’s customer service operations. From a report: The company is working to sell AI features that can handle work such as customer service or early-stage sales. To illustrate the value of the Agentforce product to business clients, Salesforce has been vocal about its own use of the technology.

Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff announced the statistic on Salesforce’s savings during a speech Tuesday at the annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. The company said more than 12,000 customers are using Agentforce. For example, Reddit was able to cut customer support resolution time by 84%, Salesforce said.

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When one of its Kilo-class, diesel-electric submarines recently surfaced off the coast of France, Russia denied that there was a problem with the vessel. The sub was simply surfacing to comply with maritime transit rules governing the English Channel, the Kremlin said—Russia being, of course, a noted follower of international law.

But social media accounts historically linked to Russian security forces suggested a far more serious problem on the submarine Novorossiysk. According to The Maritime Executive, “Rumors began to circulate on well-informed social media channels that the Novorossiysk had suffered a fuel leak. They suggested the vessel lacked onboard capabilities and was forced to surface to empty flooded compartments. Some reports said it was a dangerous fuel leak aboard the vessel, which was commissioned in 2012.”

France 24 quoted further social media reports as saying, “The submarine has neither the spare parts nor the qualified specialists onboard to fix the malfunction,” and it “now poses an explosion hazard.”

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Federal prosecutors have seized $15 billion from the alleged kingpin of an operation that used imprisoned laborers to trick unsuspecting people into making investments in phony funds, often after spending months faking romantic relationships with the victims.

Such “pig butchering” scams have operated for years. They typically work when members of the operation initiate conversations with people on social media and then spend months messaging them. Often, the scammers pose as attractive individuals who feign romantic interest for the victim.

Forced labor, phone farms, and human suffering

Eventually, conversations turn to phony investment funds with the end goal of convincing the victim to transfer large amounts of bitcoin. In many cases, the scammers are trafficked and held against their will in compounds surrounded by fences and barbed wire.

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