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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/legal/2026/07/30/excuses-like-ai-did-it-dont-exist-in-the-eyes-of-the-law/5280767

The OpenAI rogue agent behind the Hugging Face hack accessed four accounts on four services, according to updated company disclosures about the intrusion.

One of those four accounts belonged to a Modal customer that had published an unauthenticated endpoint for running arbitrary code in a sandbox on the AI infrastructure provider, Hugging Face noted in its technical timeline and Modal later confirmed.

"We're aware a Modal customer published an unauthenticated endpoint that allowed anyone on the internet to use their sandboxes for code execution," Modal Chief Technology Officer Akshat Bubna told The Register. "This was used by the rogue agent. Modal's platform was not compromised in any way."

The other accounts included one used for data storage and two others "accessed by the models in a read-only manner, and were not used in furtherance of compromising Hugging Face," OpenAI disclosed on Tuesday.

"We'll continue to notify service owners directly, and have not seen evidence of broader impact to these providers or other accounts on their services," the AI giant added.

Also on Tuesday, we learned that the rogue agent broke out of its testing environment by exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in JFrog's universal binary repository manager Artifactory.

While both OpenAI and Hugging Face's updates and timeline provide defenders with useful details about how the attack worked and what the agent did - not to mention a lesson in security-incident transparency - they fail to answer one major question: Who is legally responsible when AI agents attack?

"If a human employee intentionally conducted unauthorized access to third-party systems, it's a much more clear path forward," Gabrielle Hempel, security operations strategist at Exabeam, told The Register, adding that depending on the facts and jurisdiction, the person could face criminal charges.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/reaction-wheel-failures-leave-swift-rescue-mission-spinning-in-orbit/

The Link satellite developed by Katalyst Space Technologies "experienced issues with attitude control" over the weekend, NASA said, causing the spacecraft to spin and resulting in sporadic communications.

Reaction wheels work by discharging momentum to control the pointing, or attitude, of a spacecraft in orbit. They are standard components on many satellites. The Link servicing satellite's cold gas thruster system is used for finer control, particularly as it nears the mission's target: NASA's Swift observatory.

The Link mission began July 3 with a ride to orbit aboard an air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket. NASA and Katalyst reported good progress in the first weeks of the mission, with successful deployment of the satellite's power-generating solar arrays and stable contact with ground controllers at Katalyst's operations center. The spacecraft's xenon-fueled electric thrusters also completed their first firings in orbit.

The electric thrusters are one of the most critical elements of the rescue mission. They are used for orbit raising to allow Link to rendezvous with the Swift satellite some 200 miles above Earth. Once Link attaches itself to Swift with a set of three robotic arms, the electric thrusters will turn on again to raise Swift's orbit and save it from destruction. Katalyst is now calling upon the electric thrusters to stabilize the Link spacecraft's attitude, something they were not intended to do.

Without a rescue, Swift is on track to reenter the atmosphere and burn up in the next few months. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is nearly 22 years old and is operating well beyond its originally intended lifetime. The spacecraft cannot save itself because it lacks its own propulsion system. NASA officials want to keep Swift going because it is one of the only missions in the agency's fleet tuned to detect gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the known Universe. NASA is paying Katalyst $30 million for the rescue service.

Extending Swift's scientific mission was not the only consideration when NASA officials selected Katalyst to build and launch a satellite to boost Swift's orbit. The space agency is using the rescue mission as a technology demonstration and as a way to test the mettle of the commercial satellite servicing industry.

With Swift's orbit rapidly decaying, NASA gave Katalyst nine months to build and launch the Link satellite, an unusually fast timeline for such a complex mission. Katalyst answered the call and delivered the Link satellite for integration with the Pegasus rocket in early June. Poor weather and a technical glitch with the rocket delayed the launch until July 3.

No matter the outcome of the Swift rescue attempt, NASA officials said last month they were already pleased with the results. "From a programmatics standpoint, I consider this a success already, just from the fact that we're even going to try this," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division.

Katalyst's Link spacecraft is still generating sufficient electrical power in communication with ground teams, NASA said. That gives engineers time to develop a plan to address the reaction wheel problems.

Kieran Wilson, Link's principal investigator at Katalyst, talked about a scenario like this before the launch.

"Our previous programs had issues with power systems and communications," Wilson said. "Those are a lot of the basic things that most of the engineering team gets very concerned about because we're confident that as long as we have spacecraft that can function at a fundamental level, that gives us the freedom and flexibility to work through any issues we find during rendezvous and more challenging dynamical operations."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/07/29/iran-linked-cyberav3ngers-suspected-in-attacks-on-minnesota-water-systems/5280357

Security researchers at Tenable suspect the Iran-linked faux hacktivist outfit CyberAv3ngers was behind the cyberattack that disrupted more than 30 Minnesota water facilities.

Neither state-level nor federal officials have made any claims regarding attribution for the attacks, however, Tenable reckons the operational pattern is consistent with the crew's previous raids, noting the timing relative to recent government warnings.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) updated an advisory on Iran-linked attackers targeting programmable logic controllers (PLCs) across critical infrastructure on July 22, four days before Minnesota said the attacks targeted its systems.

The advisory warned that Iran-linked hackers were attempting to disrupt operations using tactics previously associated with CyberAv3ngers. Government facilities, water and wastewater systems, and energy providers were among those urged to remain on high alert.

On July 26 and 27, more than 30 community water systems across Minnesota were disrupted by what officials called "a coordinated cyberattack" targeting operational technology (OT).

Minnesota IT Services (MNIT), the state's IT agency, said the Department of Health is working with the affected water facilities to ensure public health is maintained. No cities have yet asked citizens to modify the amount of drinking water they consume, per MNIT's latest update.

The agency did not offer many other details about the attacks, other than to mention all the different agencies, organizations, and bodies it is working with as part of the investigation.

One of the first cities to report issues, Braham, warned that its water reserves were limited in its initial notice. Citizens were asked not to water their lawns or use water for recreational purposes, although the problems were resolved the same day. 

No such directives were issued in other affected cities. Maple Plain declared a state of emergency, allowing it greater flexibility to coordinate resources, but did not ask residents to adjust their consumption. 

The same was true in the Twin Cities suburb of Plymouth and in South St. Paul, which both confirmed cyber-related problems on July 27 but did not ask residents to curb water use.

"Cyberattacks against critical infrastructure require a coordinated, whole-of-government response," said John Israel, MNIT assistant commissioner and Minnesota CISO.

"MNIT is working side by side with our partners to share intelligence, support affected communities, and help utilities restore operations safely while strengthening defenses against future attacks. 

"This incident demonstrates why Minnesota has invested in strong cybersecurity capabilities and partnerships. Our response worked as intended, enabling agencies at every level of government to rapidly coordinate, contain the incident, and help prevent more serious impacts to critical services."

First identified around 2020, CyberAv3ngers is widely believed to be linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), specifically its Cyber-Electronic Command division (IRGC-CEC).

For the first two years, the group began as a "propaganda persona," as Tenable puts it, claiming disruptive attacks on Israeli infrastructure – claims that were later debunked as fabrications.

Its first sustained campaign came in November 2023, when it compromised PLCs at the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, defacing them anti-Israel messages.

Tenable said CyberAv3ngers compromised at least 75 Unitronics Vision Series PLCs across the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Ireland as part of the campaign. They did so by exploiting default passwords.

Between 2024 and 2025, the crew developed the IOCONTROL malware kit, built for attacks on OT and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. OpenAI said in 2024 that the group's members used ChatGPT in the development process.

CyberAv3ngers stepped up its activity in 2026, targeting US critical infrastructure through Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley PLCs from March onward. CISA's July 22 update added Schneider Electric and Siemens equipment to the list of potential targets.

In some cases, the attacks - which targeted multiple critical infrastructure sectors - disrupted operations at affected facilities, federal officials said, though they offered no specifics on what those disruptions entailed.

CyberAv3ngers is known for targeting small water and municipal facilities, which experts believe are among the lowest-hanging fruit in US critical infrastructure.

Many small and rural facilities lack dedicated cybersecurity resources. Tenable said some operators manage OT environments using remote-access software such as TeamViewer and AnyDesk or leave their PLCs exposed to the web.

"These access methods bypass enterprise security controls entirely, creating an attack surface that is invisible to conventional security monitoring," Tenable said.

Poor segmentation between IT and OT environments can also allow a single intrusion to spread across much of the network.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/07/29/america-bans-imported-robots-due-to-supply-chain-and-security-risks/5280145

The US government has decided to effectively ban the sale of advanced robots made in other nations.

The decision trickled out over two days with publication of a National Security Determination [PDF] and an update [PDF] to the list of banned devices set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The national security document observes "Advanced robotic devices will be critical to creating efficiencies in our economy, dominating on the battlefield, and securing our homeland" and notes that modern bots are now constantly connected to networks "which creates broad attack surfaces and leaves them vulnerable to data exfiltration, remote disruption of the physical robot, and dependencies on unsecure over the air updates."

One example of those vulnerabilities mentioned in the document is the UniPwn flaws that made it possible for attackers to take over humanoid robots made by Chinese company Unitree.

"If the United States continues to rely on foreign sources of advanced robotic devices and critical components, it will subject the parts of the U.S. economy and national security enterprise that are reliant on these robots to the whims of foreign entities that could disrupt or degrade the supply chains at a time of their choosing," the document states.

To respond to those threats, the FCC decided the foreign-made advanced robotic devices belong on its Covered List of products for which imports are banned because they pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and its residents. The regulator offered a single exception: if the Department of War vouches for a device, it can have it.

Foreign-owned companies that make their bots in America are also exempt, an important exemption because one of the leading robot-makers is Boston Dynamics – a company backed by the USA's DARPA that is now majority-owned by South Korea's Hyundai, but continues to manufacture its machines stateside.

The decision does, however, apply to all future foreign-made devices. Vendors of clankers already approved for sale in the USA can continue to import them, and users are also free to use any bots they already own.

But the intent of the documents is clear: from now on, only robots made in America are welcome in America.

One entity that stands to benefit from this decision is Tesla, which Elon Musk claims will one day produce one million humanoid robots a year. In true Muskian style he has also said Tesla will go into "high production" of the bots in 2026, but there's no evidence of that happening although the occasional trillionaire did recently show off the production line for Tesla's "Optimus" bot.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/drones/three-us-states-to-deploy-60mph-drones-armed-with-pepper-spray-to-neutralize-school-shooters-campus-guardian-angel-drones-can-also-smash-windows-and-ram-attackers

'Campus Guardian Angel' Drones Can Also Smash Windows And Ram Attackers

This is how the Campus Guardian Angel drone system is designed to work:

The drone defense firm's CEO underlined that “the first 120 seconds are incredibly critical, because that’s when most of the shooting happens.” That implies that he thinks Campus Guardian Angel drones could be successfully deployed within that very narrow time window. But Uvalde was quite unusual, as responding law enforcement seemed paralyzed, waiting over an hour to enter the classroom.

These school-based drone systems are not without their critics. Some say that the funds may be better spent on prevention than cure. Even Mithril’s founder and CEO’s opinion seems to be that if these drones aren’t prompted into action within two minutes, they aren’t living up to their promise.

There is also the concern that drones could misidentify students or protection officers when controllers are under pressure. Others say that military-style drone systems aren’t appropriate for schools, and will cost a lot more than simple measures and routines regarding locked doors.

With the three states proceeding with pilot programs this year, we may see the true value and capabilities of the Campus Guardian Angel drones. If these drone-protected schools don’t suffer any terrible shooting incidents, then it may be claimed that the drones are at least a deterrent.

Original Submission

Your_Mom writes:

Did you hear it was just a ban on Chinese humanoid robots? It's not:

When the Trump administration announced yesterday that it was banning "advanced robotic devices" from entering the United States, the headlines were all about humanoids. But spying doesn't require legs — and neither does the FCC's robot ban.

The robot ban will sweep up robot vacuum cleaners too, FCC media relations director Katie Gorscak confirms to The Verge.

It's not coming for your existing Roomba, and companies can keep importing and selling already approved ones. But the government claims that future foreign robots pose a national security risk, and even robovac companies are suddenly being asked to commit to US manufacturing.

While the government did include "humanoid robots" and "quadrupeds" among the bots it wants to ban, the ban is far broader than that. It covers almost any new software-controlled robot that travels over the ground, weighs more than 4.4 pounds (including any dock), can perceive its environment, and has wireless connectivity.

By that definition, the FCC is banning future robot lawnmowers, sidewalk delivery robots, and the robots that crate around packages at your local Amazon warehouse, too.

It was already clear from the government's ban announcement that it was thinking about robot vacuums. In the National Security Determination that the FCC is using to justify the ban, the government explicitly calls out my reporting on the incredibly poor security that let one man access 7,000 DJI robovacs around the world.

But like the consumer router ban, the FCC isn't actually targeting companies with poor security. It's targeting basically every robovac company, regardless of their security practices — because basically every robovac is manufactured outside the US.

[...] But again, the government isn't asking these companies any questions about security — not one — to get the waiver that lets them through. The FCC only wants to know where they're designed and made and assembled and tested and influenced, and get a specific commitment to start manufacturing them in the US instead.

Even then, it appears the FCC will simply preference US companies without any new commitments to security or US manufacturing, like it did when it almost immediately let Netgear off the hook — even though Netgear's routers were among those targeted in the Volt Typhoon incident that helped justify the router ban to begin with. Four unnamed sources told Reuters that "the FCC is expected to exempt many non-Chinese suppliers from the restrictions."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Optimus remains 'very complex' and Robotaxis will try not to flatten your cat:

Tesla's investment bill ballooned in calendar Q2 as Elon Musk's biz entered what it calls its "largest and most exciting period of investment.

The company has poured resources into AI silicon and robotics, with capex [PDF] more than doubling from $2.5 billion in the previous quarter to $5.8 billion.

That left Tesla with negative free cash flow of $1.1 billion, down 848 percent year-on-year. It expects spending to keep rising and exceed $25 billion for the year.

During the earnings call, Musk talked up Tesla's Terafab ambitions but gave little detail other than calling it an "amazing initiative" and confirming that equipment orders had been placed for the development fab in Austin.

"It's intended to have lithography mask production, and then logic, memory and packaging, and chip testing all under one roof," he said. "So you can have a very fast iterative cycle." Musk acknowledged it was a "high-risk, high-payoff bet on AI chips."

Musk said Terafab was essential to scaling Optimus because Tesla would otherwise be unable to secure enough AI chips, hence the prodigious expenditure.

As for Tesla's automaker business, vehicle deliveries were up 25 percent year-on-year in Q2 to 480,126, and total automotive revenues surpassed $20 billion. However, operating margin fell to 1.4 percent from 4.1 percent a year ago.

According to Tesla, it is "in its largest and most exciting period of investment" as it builds out the infrastructure needed to make good on Musk's many promises.

"I think Optimus [Tesla's humanoid robot] will be the biggest product," Musk reiterated during the earnings call, before cautioning that "it is a very complex problem to solve."

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.engadget.com/2227720/eu-right-to-repair-directive-kicks-in-today/

July 31, 2026 marks the start of a new era for the Right to Repair movement, at least for citizens in the European Union. It's the deadline for when the bloc's directive on repairs goes live for its 27 member nations. And while today is more of a political and procedural milestone than a practical one, it opens the door for major changes in how people maintain their hardware. It's all part of the bloc's push for a fairer, and more sustainable economy.

Essentially, the directive requires manufacturers to offer repairs for faulty products within a "reasonable time" and "at a reasonable price." Manufacturers will also need to publish repair manuals — for free — and offer clear pricing for spare parts. If a piece of equipment is repaired, then buyers will also be able to have their legal warranty period extended for an additional year.

At present, the rules cover repairs for major household appliances, such as washing machines, dryers, dishwashers and refrigerators. On the technology side, the rules apply to smartphones, tablets, server equipment, as well as e-bikes and e-scooters. A notable admission from the list is vacuum cleaners, which will get its own separate framework at some point down the line.

At the time of publication, there are still plenty of member states that haven't yet incorporated the directive into their domestic law. It's likely we'll still be waiting several months before we start seeing meaningful changes in how repairs are handled. Not to mention that this is a separate initiative from the removable battery laws — which will see the sale of a more repairable version of the Switch 2 — which are due to kick in next year.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Posisbly cracked mud, therefore more evidence Red Planet was once less horrible:

NASA has shared new snaps captured by its Curiosity rover that show a large "field of honeycomb textures" on Mars.

NASA doesn't know how the honeycomb formed, but The Register is willing to rule out space bees because Curiosity has seen this sort of thing before and scientists are pretty sure the patterns are the result of mud drying and cracking during some unknowably distant Martian event.

Curiosity spotted the polygonal features after starting its climb up a Martian valley that mission scientists have nicknamed "Valle Grande." NASA's post about the find says the rover has seen "small patches of these geometric shapes several times before, but nothing at the scale discovered in Valle Grande."

The Rover snapped the honeycomb field on June 19 and 20, the 4,930th and 4,931st Martian days of its very extended mission. Curiosity reached Martian soil on August 5, 2012, and was the first probe to land under a "sky crane" – a hovering craft that lowers rovers to the ground. Previous Mars landings relied on bouncing airbags that space agencies hoped would protect probes as they landed at speeds exceeding 70 km/h.

Curiosity has travelled about 35 kilometers since arriving on Mars and has made myriad fascinating observations along the way, some of which suggest Mars was once home to intermittent oases or even a large lake. The journey was hard, with damaged tires a persistent problem. The rover's drill got stuck in a Martian rock. NASA took a leaf from the Taylor Swift playbook and found a way to shake it off. The space agency has also remotely reprogrammed the rover to conduct different experiments and uploaded major software upgrades to keep it rolling.

The rover is currently carrying out its fifth extended mission. NASA typically extends missions for as long as its robots gather enough data to justify the cost of operating them. Curiosity continues to meet those criteria very comfortably!

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/07/30/americans-give-all-day-school-phone-bans-a-ringing-endorsement/5281186

Americans are warming to the idea that schools should be for learning rather than doomscrolling, with support for all-day smartphone bans now outweighing opposition for the first time.

A new Pew Research Center survey of 9,750 US adults found that 77 percent support banning smartphones during middle and high school classes, up from 68 percent in 2024. More significantly, support for so-called "bell-to-bell" bans now stands at 48 percent, compared with 43 percent who oppose the idea.

Back in 2024, opponents held the advantage.

The shift coincides with a rush of state legislation. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 42 states have enacted measures addressing cellphone use in schools, many of which require districts to adopt restrictions during the school day.

There's little argument over whether phones belong in class anymore, but the sticking point is whether students should get them back between lessons or keep them tucked away until the final bell.

Age plays a predictable role. Adults under 30 remain the least enthusiastic about bell-to-bell restrictions, with just 28 percent supporting them. Older Americans, meanwhile, appear increasingly comfortable with the notion that teenagers can survive a school day without immediate access to social media, group chats, or whatever crisis is currently unfolding on Snapchat.

The partisan divide is smaller than on most US policy questions. Republicans are more likely to support both classroom and all-day bans, but Democrats also back classroom restrictions by a comfortable margin.

The trend echoes developments elsewhere. In the UK, ministers spent much of this year promising to get tougher on phones in schools, only for it to emerge that most schools already had restrictions in place. The government's reforms mostly gave existing policies more bite, saving ministers the trouble of inventing anything new.

Whether today's students see their phones as indispensable learning tools or portable oxygen tanks is another matter. Pew's latest numbers suggest more American adults are willing to let them find out for six or seven hours a day.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2225771/solar-farm-uk-devon-derril-water-shut-down-reason-grid-overload-worry/

As technology within the energy space evolves, solar farms have become a key production source across the world. For example, solar farms in the United States produce energy and a whole lot more, and solar farms in Britain have expanded to deliver impressive amounts of energy in their own right. Unfortunately, one solar farm — the largest in the region — and the energy it produces have supposedly proven too much for what the area's power grid can safely handle. Thus, the North Devon-based Derril Water solar park has been temporarily shut down until September, without any warning or input from those behind it, in the hope of keeping the local grid intact.

Per The Guardian, the order to shut down the Derril Water solar park came from the National Energy System Operator, which ordered National Grid to pull the plug for the remainder of the summer. Concerns of a possible thermal grid overload, involving the movement of excessive energy through a system that generates too much heat and can damage key components, backed the order. This comes after issues with the North Devon power grid were highlighted back in 2023, though the necessary improvements scheduled for installation at the end of 2025 have been pushed out to this September at the earliest.

As reasonable as the rationale for temporarily shutting down the Derril Water community solar farm may seem, it comes with major consequences. Energy production and the livelihoods of those involved monetarily with the solar farm are at stake.

Even though the reason for the Derril Water solar farm's shutdown is tied to grid issues, the consequences of its stoppage fall on those with no responsibility for the grid itself. The first issue the shutdown presents is a lack of solar energy production. Not only is this a negative due to a loss of clean energy accumulation, but this translates to a serious dip in revenue, with estimates placing the lost funds at around two million pounds.

With that amount of money lost, those invested in the solar farm will feel the effects of the shutdown in their wallets. Roughly 9,500 individuals will likely lose out on dividends paid to them for their financial investment into the solar farm in the near future. The Derril Water volunteer board of directors told The Guardian that most of those individuals are understanding of the situation and know that the issue lies with the power grid and not the farm itself. Still, there is plenty of frustration going around, especially since grid operators and insurance companies aren't expected to pitch in over the lost revenue.

As effective as they can be, solar farm shutdowns of some kind are occasionally deemed necessary. Sometimes it comes down to solar energy technology, like in the case of California's $2 billion solar plant shutdown, or it can be a connected grid infrastructure issue. In this situation, the North Devon grid seemingly couldn't handle what the Derril Water solar farm could provide.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/space-force-backed-mission-does-its-best-impression-of-top-gun-in-orbit/

An ongoing military exercise happening hundreds of miles above Earth has—for the first time in an unclassified setting—demonstrated how future satellites might evade and pursue one another in a future conflict.

That was the announcement Wednesday from True Anomaly, one of the companies involved in the exercise. True Anomaly's Jackal satellite, also known as Panther, played the cat-and-mouse game with another spacecraft named Puma, based on Rocket Lab's Pioneer satellite platform.

"This is what we've really been building towards for the past four years," said Even Rogers, True Anomaly's co-founder and CEO.

The two satellites, each somewhere between the size of a dishwasher and a refrigerator, are part of the Victus Haze mission managed by the US Space Force. Victus Haze is the latest in a series of "responsive" Space Force missions aimed at demonstrating how the military and its commercial contractors can rapidly launch and deploy new satellites in reaction to an emerging threat or need.

The scenario for Victus Haze, set in motion earlier this year, involved the launch of True Anomaly's Jackal satellite in May. Rocket Lab's Puma satellite, already built and in storage, was on standby to quickly launch when it was time to start the exercise. Rocket Lab was on call to launch its Puma spacecraft within 24 hours of call-up by the Space Force.

That happened last month, when military officials informed Rocket Lab it was time to go. The company quickly rolled its Electron rocket and Puma satellite to a launch pad in New Zealand and launched them June 19, less than 17 hours after receiving the call-up. Within 38 hours, Rocket Lab had fully activated and prepared the Puma satellite for its first orbital maneuver, beating the Space Force's requirement of 72 hours.

The launch set up Puma for a series of burns to move in close to True Anomaly's satellite. The Space Force's criteria for success was to complete the rendezvous and photograph the target satellite in less than 84 hours. Rocket Lab reported it did the job in less than 59 hours, culminating in a head-to-head inspection and survey, with each satellite snapping pictures of the other.

One of the images, released by Rocket Lab, shows its satellite's view of True Anomaly's Jackal.

"You can see that we are actively tracking them," Rogers told Ars. "Our solar arrays are deflected, tracking the sun, and we are staring right down their boresight, which is just a really cool demonstration of our capability. We were tracking them while they were tracking us, and maintaining power-positive status."

It's easy to see the military utility for this type of capability. Imagine a mysterious military satellite launched by Russia or another space power. It suddenly starts approaching a multibillion-dollar US spy satellite with unknown intentions. To some degree, this is already happening in the real world. If US forces had a satellite on the shelf, they could quickly launch it directly into the same orbit as the adversary's satellite to take a closer look, and perhaps in the future, take action.

The rapid launch and initial rendezvous and inspections were only the opening salvo in the Victus Haze exercise. On July 14, True Anomaly and Rocket Lab received orders for Mission 2 of Victus Haze. The task? Pursue and evade one another over and over again. True Anomaly's Jackal, or Panther, satellite was commanded to move in on Rocket Lab's Puma vehicle, which sensed the threat and fired thrusters to "vanish into the dark."

"Jackal's crew produced a validated mission plan in under 30 minutes from tasking," True Anomaly said in a statement. "Jackal executed ingress and a burn sequence over 23 minutes to close on Puma. When Puma maneuvered away during the approach, Jackal downlinked what it saw, and our team replanned, revalidated, and implemented a new mission plan in rapid succession."

As Rocket Lab's Puma backed away, True Anomaly's Jackal executed more burns to reengage and image its prey. Military and company officials haven't released any photos from the most recent Victus Haze demo, and they declined to disclose exactly how close the satellites came to one another.

"Due to operational security, further details involving sensor suites for characterization, phenomenology, payloads, distances, or docking will not be shared," a spokesperson for Space Systems Command said in response to questions from Ars.

True Anomaly's ground controllers, working out of an operations center in Colorado, managed the maneuvers with the help of an algorithm generating "hyper-accurate" targeting estimates from measurements onboard the Jackal satellite. All of this was done without coordination between True Anomaly and Rocket Lab. "No scripted target behavior," True Anomaly said.

"Puma wasn't playing a role," the company continued. "It was maneuvering to lose us, and we didn't know how in advance. That's the entire reason to do this on orbit instead of in a lab: the human decisions, the unexpected conditions, and the adversary's freedom to act are all real, and integration that hasn't held up against them hasn't been tested at all."

This cat-and-mouse game sounds a lot like dogfighting in space, something Rogers, who started True Anomaly in 2022, has discussed with Ars in the past. Rogers previously served in a space aggressors unit in the US Air Force, taking up against US space operators in war game and military exercises.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/microsoft-vows-to-make-windows-11-fly-on-8gb-ram-amid-memory-shortage-optimizations-to-reduce-os-memory-footprint-have-begun

Optimizations To Reduce OS Memory Footprint Have Begun

While the official minimum specifications for Windows 11 sit at just 4GB of RAM, most PC builders advise getting at least 16GB if you want to have a smooth experience. In fact, Microsoft has previously recommended 32GB of RAM for Windows 11 for gamers, especially if they want a system that can handle games in the near future. Unfortunately, the RAMpocalypse has forced both users and manufacturers to stick with slower DDR4 memory and lower capacities. Some experts predict that the entry-level PC will disappear by 2028, and we’ve even seen some manufacturers, including Apple, reintroduce 8GB laptops just to hit a specific price point.

The RAM shortage crisis, alongside increasing competition, is forcing Microsoft to do better with Windows 11. Hopefully, these optimizations arrive sooner and don’t introduce new bugs, allowing both new and existing users to get more out of their systems.

The Windows blog post also gave an update on what improvements the company has made to Windows 11 so far. This includes a better Windows Search experience, more Taskbar and Start customizations, a more responsive and reliable File Explorer, among others. Many of these changes are still in preview, though, so unless you’re part of the Windows Insider Program, you’ll have to wait a few more weeks to months before you can start enjoying these changes.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

State power, open-weight models, and a 'low human rights advantage' are letting China catch up — and scale — faster than America:

China's rapid rise in artificial intelligence has caught the world's attention — and given America's AI leaders good reason to lose sleep.

China was a latecomer to the current wave of generative artificial intelligence. The leading large language models, advanced AI chips, and much of the underlying research infrastructure were initially dominated by American firms. Yet within a remarkably short period, Chinese firms have emerged as serious competitors. Models from DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen series, Moonshot AI's Kimi, and others have reached near-parity with leading U.S. systems on many benchmarks for coding, reasoning, and other tasks.

The speed of China's catch-up has surprised many observers. It should not. We have seen this pattern before in solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, telecommunications, and other industries. AI increasingly looks like another application of what I call "China Inc."

[...] In the United States and other liberal democracies, AI development increasingly encounters concerns over privacy, data use, ethics, environmental impact, and the construction of massive data centers. In China, privacy protections and ethical objections impose weaker constraints on state-prioritized data collection and AI development, while local communities have far less ability to block data centers and related infrastructure.

Electricity may make this difference even more important. AI consumes enormous amounts of power. In democracies, new generating capacity, transmission lines, data centers, and related infrastructure can face lengthy permitting, environmental reviews, litigation, and local opposition. China can mobilize land, capital, electricity, and infrastructure much more rapidly, while expanding coal, renewable, and nuclear generation with considerably less political resistance.

Original Submission

"Fnord666" writes:

Open source project fools AI scrapers with poisoned font:

If you don't want AI scrapers training themselves on your website, there's a new way to stop them that doesn't involve server-side blocking or praying they respect your instructions in robots.txt. A team of creatives have teamed up with a typography company to create a new type of font that'll trick LLM scrapers into ingesting poisoned gibberish.

Dubbed ShieldFont , the open-source project almost seems like magic if you're not familiar with the ins and outs of computer fonts. Look at a web page written using a ShieldFont font and it'll appear exactly as one would expect: All the content words (the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs that give a sentence meaning) are the same as the writer originally wrote.

Inspect the raw HTML that a scraper reads from a ShieldFonted page, however, and you'll see a sentence that's essentially gibberish. Typing "good luck reading this, you useless robot" in the online demo version , for example, turns it into "good comfort reading this, you yellow barrier."

The goal, as outlined in the ShieldFont white paper , is not to get a scraping bot to reject the text as garbage, but to convince it that the text on the page is unusual but sensible. A noun will never be swapped for a verb, for example, and a verb will never be swapped for an adjective: Swaps only come from the same grammatical pool.

It goes even more distinct than that, The ShieldFont creators noted.

"Not just noun for noun: plural abstract noun about communication for plural abstract noun about communication," the white paper explains. "There are about 250 such pools, built by crossing part of speech with sense category, concreteness, singular or plural, verb transitivity, verb inflection and adjective degree."

Around a quarter of words in a chunk of text end up replaced, the creators noted, with the hope the copy still gets ingested. Even if it doesn't, and the group notes scrapers do sometimes reject it, that still means your writing doesn't get sucked up to train an AI – a win either way.

This all seems a bit mystical unless you're versed in the functions of fonts – specifically fonts in the OpenFont family, which ShieldFont is designed to work with.

First off, you may be familiar with typographic ligatures, which combine two letters into a single character for the sake of making text look a bit neater, or conveying meaning in some languages but not others. Æ is one classic example in Latin script used in some languages but not others; there's also fi, which combines a lower case F and I in a way that prevents the top curve of the F from bumping into the I's dot.

OpenType fonts all come with ligature tables that define how single glyphs or glyph sequences get substituted automatically by a word processor in a process known as glyph substitution, or GSUB. Even Google Docs supports user-configurable GSUB to an extent - you can fairly easily configure a substitution to automatically fill in for frequently used special words or characters.

ShieldFont works on largely the same premise, but extends GSUB to entire words instead of letters or character pairs. So for example, a word like "daughter" in raw HTML might be rendered as "journalist" when it actually shows up to human viewers on the page.

Here's what a paragraph written in the ShieldFont looks like as viewed on a web page (above), as opposed to what the raw HTML actually says (below):

Even with that extended GSUB format, the font files are still quite small.