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"Starting today, Linux desktops are now officially supported by Microsoft Defender," reports Neowin. A public preview of the threat detection app extends its enterprise security platform beyond servers to developer workstations running distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and RHEL. The offering includes antivirus protection, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management, threat hunting, and device isolation. From the report: Microsoft is also making it easier to onboard desktops through streamlined methods, offering a unified security operations experience, strengthened security, and improved response times. Organizations that are already familiar with securing Linux servers via Defender should feel right at home securing desktops too, as the experience is exactly the same. Defender knows whether it is securing a device in a data center, the cloud, or that it is owned by a developer and identifies them as such in inventory and security workflows. As stated previously, all Linux server distros are supported via Defender on desktops too. These include RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, SLES, Fedora, and Oracle Linux, GNOME, KDE, and more. That said, you do need Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 or a Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 subscription. You can enroll Defender on workstations using the same deployment methods you use for servers, but do check out the prerequisites here. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Epic Games' New Vibe-Coded Launcher Is 46% Faster Than Steam Epic has launched a preview of a new AI-generated Games Launcher that it says cold-starts 46% faster than Steam. Neowin reports: Epic commissioned a third-party company to benchmark this new launcher in its current Preview build versus the Steam client on Windows machines. The results reported that Epic's client is 46% faster than Valve's client during cold starts, clocking in at 5.47 seconds compared to Steam taking 10.07 seconds. When you restore both apps from system tray background states, the new client takes 0.36 seconds while Steam takes 0.42 seconds, according to the report. Speed aside, Epic says the new launcher gets a better interface, dedicated title summary pages, and custom top bars. "The updated client also lets players aggregate external PC game libraries, toggle between grid or list views, and monitor storage write rates alongside download queues," reports Neowin. Epic Games says Fortnite will finally come to Linux through this new client once Easy Anti-Cheat is rebuilt and kernel-level security agreements are established with major Linux distros.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - US Tech Giants Warn Europe That Data Sovereignty Requirements Could Cost $128 Billion A study commissioned by CCIA Europe, whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta, estimates that the EU's proposed Cloud and AI Development Act could impose 115 billion euros ($128 billion) in costs over a decade as governments and companies migrate workloads and rewrite software. The figure is more than six times the European Commission's upper estimate. However, roughly 80 billion euros ($89 billion) of it comes from a modeled scenario assuming sovereignty rules are extended to 25% of cloud workloads in essential private-sector industries.The Register reports: The report specifically targets Article 31 of the proposed legislation, which it says could allow the Commission to extend sovereignty requirements into essential private-sector services. CCIA argues that forcing businesses to move away from existing cloud infrastructure could trigger expensive software redevelopment projects, with code rewriting and re-architecting accounting for 69 percent of its estimated costs. Luxembourg would apparently take the biggest hit, with the study putting the cost at 1,711 euros per worker over ten years. Denmark (905 euros), Austria (900 euros), and Finland (864 euros) also face hefty bills, as does Ireland (856 euros), which hosts the European headquarters of several US tech giants. CCIA is urging EU governments to overhaul the proposed legislation, limit sovereignty restrictions to sensitive workloads, and abandon requirements based on corporate origin or personnel nationality in favor of what it calls risk-based technical safeguards. "Member States cannot rely on the Commission's incomplete estimates when deciding CADA's strict sovereignty requirements for cloud and AI providers," said Mitchell Rutledge, CCIA Europe's policy manager. "Taxpayers and businesses will foot the bill, yet the official assessment missed 70 percent of CADA's true impact." For AWS and Google, offering European customers greater control over their data also helps retain business that might otherwise migrate to European competitors. It's a rather convenient arrangement: sell customers sovereignty on one hand, while an industry association representing your interests warns governments against imposing too much of it on the other.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Google Is Silently Linking Your Phone Number Across All Signed-In Accounts Google has made Android's phone-number verification opt-out, automatically verifying and associating a device's phone number with every Google account signed in on that phone, including secondary and work accounts. Android Authority reports: As spotted in a recent Reddit thread, users report receiving confirmation emails out of the blue from "noreply-phone-verification@google.com" stating that their phone number has been verified. The feature, known in Google settings as "Phone number verification," links your active phone number across all Google accounts signed in on the same phone, including secondary profiles, work accounts, and throwaway handles. Google's support documentation has long noted that it periodically re-verifies your device's phone number to keep communication and recovery features up to date. However, this support page was updated sometime between August and October 2025 to add this rather aggressive behavior of turning on phone number verification by default, as well as adding all phone numbers to all Google accounts signed in on the device. To disable automatic phone number verification on Android, open your phone's Settings app, tap Google, and select the All Services tab. Under Privacy & Security, find Phone number verification and turn off Verify phone numbers automatically. "[T]urning off the phone number verification toggle only prevents future linking," notes the report. "If Google has already attached your number across secondary accounts, you will need to open your Google Account Personal Info page, head to Contact info > Phone, and manually remove the number from each profile where it doesn't belong." Is this conversation helpful so far?
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Anthropic Warns Small AI Models Could Self-Replicate Through IoT Devices An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AI company Anthropic is warning that advances in small AI models could soon usher in a new era of self-replicating malware that's capable of infecting smart fridges, vacuum cleaners, and a wide range of other Internet-of-things devices and is more resistant to takedown. By next year, smaller AI models may be able to autonomously self-replicate on all kinds of IoT devices, the company said. Eventually, the capability could enable computer worms, which propagate without requiring human interaction and are capable of infecting unfamiliar IoT devices. An experiment the company performed recently revealed significant challenges in bringing such an AI malware replicator to fruition, so the finding is necessarily tempered. Still, the results do raise concerns about the possibility of new forms of computer worms. Anthropic further warned not only about the new potential malware, but also that it could be difficult to stop. In its blog post, it wrote that "a replicator like this would be challenging to shut down, since there's no centralized point to shut off -- though it may be slow (with a doubling time of days). Unlike non-AI malware, it could also figure out unfamiliar devices on its own." Smaller AI models require much less powerful hardware to run than do frontier models. Anthropic ran small open-weight models on real or simulated low-cost, off-brand Android TV boxes and other types of IoT hardware. Company researchers found that by using quantization to represent the models using fewer bits and splitting the workloads into "shards" running on each device, the models were able to establish inference, meaning that the model weights loaded and could generate output. [...] This finding was the starting point for further research that asked: Would it be possible for small models to create self-replicating infections that run themselves on IoT devices the way traditional IoT worms, like Mirai, install DDoS code and other payloads? Unlike Mirai, these AI worms could pose a much higher threat, since the models could tailor exploits and payloads dynamically, depending on the target. Once such an infection chain began, it might also be harder for defenders to stop it. "Such an 'AI worm' could carry its model weights with it as it reproduces (or re-download them from a public hub), and then run inference directly on compromised hardware," Anthropic said. "Effectively, the weights would become part of the malware payload." Further reading: Anthropic Bans Cruelty Toward Claude
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Google Play Now Lets Anyone Build Private, Vibe-Coded Apps That Run On Android Google Play is adding support for private personal Android apps, allowing users to build an app with tools like Google AI Studio and run it on their own devices without publishing it publicly to the Play Store. "These personal apps won't show up in Google Play's search or listing pages, and won't be shared with anyone except for the app's creator," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The idea comes as more people are experimenting with building their own applications via AI for specific, personal needs. However, being able to use that app on their own Android device has meant publishing to Google Play, making it accessible to the Play Store's some 3 billion users. That led many to limit their vibe-coding efforts to web apps that could run on any device instead of something built natively for Android. Now, Google says Android device owners can vibe-code an app using Google AI Studio, then launch it for their own use. These apps are still required to comply with Google Play's existing policies but allow users to experiment more directly with building apps for Android. Initially, the feature will be available to users in the U.S., age 18 and up. [...] In the months ahead, the company said that users will be able to share their vibe-coded creations with a network of trusted friends. That means the apps you built for family or friends, or maybe your child's T-ball league, could be used with a small group of people, without having to go public on the Play Store. And if the app ever really becomes popular, there will be a way to shift the personal app to one that's published on the Google Play Store for everyone to try, after completing the trust and safety reviews.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Netflix Cuts About 6% of Jobs In Biggest Layoffs Since 2022 Netflix is laying off about 1,000 employees, or 6% of its workforce, in its largest round of cuts since 2022. The company says its business remains strong, but it is facing growing pressure from YouTube, TikTok, and other rivals. Reuters reports: The bulk of the job cuts would be in Netflix's product, tech, legal and human-resources teams, the email Co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos sent to employees on Wednesday showed. "Our mission -- to entertain the world -- is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people âand resources," they said in the memo. "Our business is strong and growing, and we remain on track to deliver our full-year forecast."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Dutch Tax Authorities Cancel Microsoft 365 Cloud Rollout, Turn Toward Open Source An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Netherlands' Tax and Customs Administration has abandoned its planned Microsoft 365 public-cloud rollout. Why? The reasons were clear at the Open Source Summit Europe conference, where the Linux Foundation (LF) released the 2026 State of Open Source in Europe. In it, the nonprofit, pro-open-source organization revealed that 94% of European Union (EU) organizations say digital sovereignty is important, with 61% considering it very important. As Thierry Carrez, the Linux Foundation Europe GM, said in his keynote, "Europe has clearly heard the message on digital sovereignty." In an interview onstage at the summit, Nithya Ruff, chair of the LF board, added that it's not just Europe: "Digital sovereignty is a need that the entire world feels, whether it's Sierra Leone or the US or China." It's not just the Dutch tax collectors, though. The Netherlands is also exploring switching from Windows and proprietary software to Linux and open-source programs across the board. [...] The Netherlands had planned to switch to Microsoft 365 in 2025. The idea then was to complete the rollout by the end of 2026. About 5,000 employees had already migrated when the Dutch Advisory Council on ICT Assessment recommended reversing the public-cloud rollout in June. The government paused the plan in July; the latest announcement replaces that rollout with an on-premises/open-source approach. The Tax and Customs Administration isn't replacing all of Microsoft Office with a single open-source suite, at least not yet. Instead, the government will keep the existing Microsoft software for now. Looking ahead, State Secretary for Finance Eelco Eerenberg set out the replacement timetable in a letter to Parliament: "In 2027, the provision for mail and calendar will be realized on-premises. Later in 2027 and 2028, European open-source solutions for personal storage and collaboration will follow. This allows us to work toward a sustainable and more autonomous solution for these functionalities." [...] For now, the on-premises email/calendar environment will still use Microsoft software, including Outlook. The open-source portion concerns personal storage and collaboration, not a wholesale replacement of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or the entire desktop environment. As for why the Netherlands pulled back, the ICT assessment found serious concerns over "information security, information processing and future-proofing." Key issues included routing confidential documents through American servers, relying on standard Microsoft encryption rather than Double Key Encryption, and inadequate end-to-end encryption for Teams calls. The assessment also identified "vendor lock-in, reduced flexibility, concerns about digital sovereignty, and the absence of an adequate exit strategy" as dealbreakers. ZDNet notes that other Dutch government agencies are developing an open-source alternative called DAWO (Digital Autonomous Work Environment for Government), which would begin by replacing Windows with the Linux distribution NixOS.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Anthropic Reinvents Source Control As Claude Floods the World With Code Anthropic says Claude-generated code has scaled so quickly that its existing Git-based infrastructure could not keep up. In response, the company built a custom centralized source-control system called Scion, along with AI-assisted review and search tools. The Register reports: "In May 2026, Anthropic averaged around 2,500 code changes merged per day; as of September, we merged over 30,000 per day," the biz said in a blog post on Tuesday. "We don't expect this rate of growth to slow down anytime soon; the latent demand for merging code is practically infinite, and every bottleneck we remove immediately leads to a further increase in the amount of code we produce." After several months of model prompting and five months of migration, the result is a homemade version control system called Scion, a monorepo scheme that sounds a bit like Subversion, Apache's centralized version control system. [...] Scion has been designed to meet the needs of AI agents, so the client leaves much of the work to the server; the source control queries are exposed via API so internal tools can respond without needing a local repo, and there's less synchronization but more need for server speed. "In Scion, the unit of work is a 'changeset,' an entry in a write-ahead log," Anthropic explains. "A changeset stores most of what you'd expect from a commit in git. But where a git commit stores a pointer to the tree, a changeset stores a list of the files that changed relative to its first parent, along with content-addressed pointers to the compressed file contents in blob storage." [...] Anthropic says its bespoke system isn't right for general use. There will be no open source release. Nonetheless, the company contends that its own code scaling problems will become commonplace in other organizations over the next few months, so it wanted to share its approach -- having ample funding to pay for writing custom infrastructure tools.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Skydance's Discovery+ Prices Increase By Up to 20% Discovery+ has raised prices for new subscribers, increasing its ad-free plan from $10 to $12 per month and its ad-supported plan from $6 to $7. The hike comes shortly after Paramount Skydance acquired Warner Bros. Discovery. Ars Technica reports: The new prices take effect for new subscribers immediately. Current subscribers to the streaming service, which primarily features unscripted content, like reality shows and documentaries, will receive 30 days' notice before the new prices take effect, starting with bills issued as of November 12. [...] However, a Skydance spokesperson told Ars Technica that the pricing changes were in the works before Discovery+ knew about the merger's closing date and were not planned in anticipation of a merger. The spokesperson said that Discovery+'s prices are regularly evaluated to ensure that they are in line with the content and experience that the service offers, and the new prices reflect that. Discovery+ has increased its prices three times since launching in 2012. Before today, the most recent price hike occurred in January 2025, when ad-based monthly subscriptions increased from $5 to $6, and ad-free plans went from $9 to $10.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - FBI Arrests Saudi OpenAI Employee For Planting Recording Device In Conference Room An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: An OpenAI employee was arrested after a "sophisticated recording device" was found hidden inside the executive conference room. Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, who is a national of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was arrested in connection with the matter, the DOJ said. The company said an employee planted the device a few days before it was found, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation "moved quickly to make an arrest," the post said. The employee was terminated. FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that Alfozan "allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer's executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company's super intelligence technology." Alfozan is also listed as a partner at Raed Ventures, a venture capital firm that focuses on the Middle East and North Africa, according to its website. The firm announced on Feb. 6, 2025, that H.H. Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, had joined the firm as a venture partner. Alfozan was announced as a venture partner two days later. The Raed announcement for Alfozan lists Meta, Microsoft and SAP as previous roles and said he studied computer science and engineering at MIT. "At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data," OpenAI said in the post. "We take protecting our technology, data and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - GTA 6 Is Reportedly Coming to PC In Early 2027 GamesBeat reports that Rockstar plans to release Grand Theft Auto VI on PC in the first quarter of 2027, just a few months after its November 19, 2026 launch on consoles. The report follows Microsoft's announcement last week that it had secured exclusive cloud-streaming rights to the game. Since Rockstar has yet to officially announce a PC version, "this deal will allow Xbox to market its Xbox Cloud Gaming service to PC players who would otherwise need an Xbox Series X / S or PS5 console," The Verge reported at the time. GamesBeat reports: The Q1 2027 PC release window for GTA VI comes only a few months after the game's November 2026 console launch, representing a significantly quicker turnaround for PC development than the previous iteration of Grand Theft Auto, whose April 2015 PC release came roughly a year and seven months after the September 2013 release of Grand Theft Auto V. The user base of Grand Theft Auto V skews largely towards console players, with PC players representing a small minority. With GTA VI's production budget rumored to exceed $2 billion, Rockstar is highly incentivized to pull all the levers it can as fast as it can to monetize the game's upcoming sequel -- and PC players represent a significant expansion of the GTA VI audience. The potential benefits of launching GTA VI relatively quickly on PC go beyond the opportunity to grow the game's casual player base. Rockstar has signaled its plans to implement user-generated content creation tools into GTA VI, and the company's August 2023 acquisition of Cfx.re, the development team behind the prominent Grand Theft Auto V roleplaying server company FiveM, made it clear that Rockstar considers online roleplaying in GTA to be a factor in the game's future.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Disney Offers $20 Million For Character.AI Assets As Startup Files For Bankruptcy Character.AI has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and plans to sell substantially all of its assets, with Disney offering $20 million as a "stalking-horse bidder" for select intellectual property and company claims. However, the company said Disney's bid is subject to "higher or better offers." Deadline reports: The company, which allows users to create and interact with AI-generated avatars, said it made the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. It said it hopes the process will allow it to "facilitate a value-maximizing sale of all or substantially all" of its assets. The Character.AI platform will continue to operate during the bankruptcy. The Disney agreement, reached prior to the filing, would give the media giant a non-exclusive perpetual license of select intellectual property and company claims from Character.AI. Disney would pay $20 million and provide resources during a transition period as the company explores a sale. [...] Character.AI said it is aiming to conclude the sale process by late November or early December. Character.AI has faced a series of controversies over the past year or so. Most notably, the company settled multiple lawsuits alleging its chatbots encouraged self-harm and suicide among teenagers, including a high-profile case involving 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III. The company also faces lawsuits from Kentucky, which alleges its chatbots encouraged self-harm, and Pennsylvania, which claims the bots illegally impersonated licensed doctors. The latter allegations follow earlier complaints that Character.AI's therapy chatbots engaged in the unlicensed practice of medicine. In September 2025, Disney accused Character.AI of copyright infringement and using its characters in chatbots that were "sexually exploitive and otherwise harmful and dangerous to children," prompting their removal from the platform. These mounting legal challenges and regulatory scrutiny ultimately contributed to this eventual bankruptcy filing.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Kroger to Lay Off 3,000 Corporate Employees In AI Restructuring Kroger says it will cut 3,000 corporate jobs over the next three years as it expands its use of AI and other technology to streamline operations. "Technology is reshaping what's possible," CEO Greg Foran wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. "The way work gets done is changing across every industry; we must adapt and take advantage of technology. We need to adopt capabilities, reduce duplicative work and look closely at where work is best fit to be done." ABC News reports: Kroger last month outlined its AI strategy, meant "to improve the customer experience, make work easier for associates and produce better business outcomes." Cincinnati-based Kroger is the largest standalone U.S. supermarket chain with 409,000 employees and more than 2,700 stores operating under various brands, including Ralphs, King Soopers, Smith's and Fred Meyer. Kroger named former Walmart executive Foran CEO in February, 11 months after the abrupt resignation of its previous CEO. Foran has a reputation for being tech-savvy and detail-oriented. He led Walmart's U.S. division from 2014 to 2019, where he focused on cleaning up stores, ensuring items were in stock and improving the fresh produce selection. He also introduced online ordering and pickup, and accelerated Walmart's digital capabilities.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Ledger Confirms Spy Chip Implant Behind Wallet Crypto Thefts Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from BleepingComputer: Ledger has confirmed that some of its devices distributed through Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBilis were compromised with a hardware implant that drained users' cryptocurrency wallets. The company has been investigating reports of users losing funds from wallets purchased through CryptoBilis, a major Malaysia-based hardware wallet retailer operating across Southeast Asia. Some researchers have shown the implant in Ledger X since September 16, saying tampered devices were available for nearly half the price of the original hardware. [...] In a report over the weekend, Tibane Labs notes that the threat actor made room for the malicious circuitry by replacing the original battery with a smaller one, which powers both the implant and the Ledger X. "Under the battery and antenna sits an ST STM32G431KBU6 (Arm CortexM4, 128 KB flash, UFQFPN32)," the researchers found inside one of the devices. For connectivity, the actor used "a tiny eSIM, an 8pad package just 2x2 mm, next to the MCU, and a shielded LTE module that sends the words out." [...] Ledger is advising users to avoid purchasing from unauthorized resellers as they run an increased risk of getting counterfeit or modified devices. The company is also reminding its authorized resellers and distributors to get the products only through authorized channels and to avoid restocking returned products. Ledger provides a 'Genuine Check' mechanism to determine the authenticity of the device; however, it explicitly warns that it cannot detect added implants when the device's original Secure Element remains intact.
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