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"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/08/26/self-hosted-email-is-in-steep-decline-microsoft-and-google-are-taking-over/5292471

The number of large users hosting their own email servers has halved in the last decade, according to Artem Berezin, a researcher who works at business e-mail company Live Direct Marketing.

On the Internet Society blog, Berezin explained that DNS records reveal a lot about email.

"The MX record says where the mailbox lives. The SPF record says who may send on the domain's behalf. The DMARC record says what should happen when a message fails authentication," he wrote.

Berezin says he analyzes those records using daily forward-DNS snapshots captured by the OpenINTEL project run by the University of Twente, SURFnet and SIDN Labs. He also consults the Tranco project's assessment of the most popular domains to determine the million most popular domains, then "classifies each domain's MX hostname and SPF includes against open dictionaries of mailbox providers, sending platforms and SaaS applications." The data he uses goes back to 2016, but he admits the dictionaries he accesses don't offer a complete view of the world's email servers.

His lead finding is that in 2016, 44.6 percent of the top million domains ran their own mail server. In 2026, that's down to 22.4 percent. The number of self-hosted mail servers is falling fast – down by half a percent in 30 days.

Self-hosting an email server remains the most common way to process mail, however Google Workspace is hot on its heels with 21.8 percent of detectable MX records, ahead of Microsoft 365's 16.8 percent.

Berezin thinks the fact that two tech giants handle 38.6 percent of email is concerning.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260821-why-older-tech-is-sometimes-safer-from-hackers

The fear of hacking has made some people turn to other forms of technology ignored by new generations of cyber criminals.

You might not expect a world-renowned cyber security expert to rely on old, potentially vulnerable email software. But, for years, that's what Mikko Hyppönen did. Shunning mainstream options such as Hotmail and Gmail, he instead chose obsolete email software called Eudora.

"I used to run it years after it was out of [technical] support," says Hyppönen, a Finnish computer security expert.

He preferred Eudora for various reasons, arguing it was "really superior in many ways". Although Eudora was far from perfectly secure, as people switched to newer email tools, Hyppönen realised that hackers were forgetting about Eudora.

Hyppönen calls it "security by antiquity". Others use the phrase "security by obsolescence" and in both cases this means relying on an older technology or system since it may prove, somewhat counterintuitively, safer than more recent alternatives.

While Hyppönen stresses that using the latest, fully patched and updated software is still "the optimum situation", there are specific cases where older tech could be preferable from a security standpoint.

"The vast majority of attackers are criminals trying to make money and it doesn't make any sense for them to target systems being run by 50 people," he explains.

Hyppönen isn't alone. The Irish Aviation Authority, for instance, recently decided to keep ground-based radio navigation beacons in use because supposedly the more modern satellite-based global positioning system (GPS) has proven so susceptible to jamming in recent years.

"Security by antiquity" is, it turns out, a quiet way of beating cyber-criminals, hackers and enemy attackers.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

HaikuOS is proud to release Version: R1/beta6. (release notes)

Haiku is an open-source operating system that specifically targets personal computing. Inspired by the BeOS, Haiku is fast, simple to use, easy to learn and yet very powerful.

- (more about HaikuOS)

Downloads available here!

Please post comments on your experience with HaikuOS and the newest release!

Original Submission

The Human Reservation Plan

looorg writes:

Bill doesn't want to be left behind by Zuckerberg so he decided to share his own thoughts on AI. Different from his previous shared ideas about how great it was. Now there is a bit more doom and gloom. Crime. Unemployment. Healthcare. Horrible things. What the world needs is a plan. Guess who has a plan ... It's the pope, and Bill and "the government".

Set aside some jobs for humans.

A human reservation. For the human to human interactions. So you don't get the bad news from the machine. That it's the machine that tells one human to tell another human the bad news is apparently softening the blow of the bad news.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/work/make-ai-work-for-everyone/reader/a-turbulent-ai-era-and-critical-choices-to-make

http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=26/08/13/2028222

Gates Warns Society Faces An AI-Pocalypse Unless We Get More Socialist

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/26/gates-warns-society-faces-an-ai-pocalypse-unless-we-get-more-socialist/5292560

Bill Gates thinks that experts underestimate the potential havoc AI will wreak on society and says preparations to ease the transition are inadequate. 

The Microsoft founder and former CEO is usually a cheerful proponent of AI tech,  talking up its potential to transform healthcare, education, and business productivity.

Yet in a missive posted to his personal website, the billionaire philanthropist says the AI era is likely to be one of the most turbulent times in human history, and how we allow it to play out will determine whether the world becomes a fairer place or if the divide between rich and poor becomes greater than ever.

This kind of talk will sound dangerously close to socialism for many Americans. There are always winners and losers in a market-led economy, so why should things be any different with AI? Those wealthy enough to invest in it and control it will prosper, as others will find themselves on skid row.

But, Gates says, this time it will be different. Previous technology transitions happened over several generations and created new jobs where human cognition was required, whereas AI is starting to replace human cognition. The winners are likely to be a small group of people, and the losers will be everyone else.

It will not affect just one or two sectors, according to the AI fab club: AI will replace human roles in fields as diverse as law, customer services, medicine, software, and manufacturing. And it will hit these industries rapidly, over the course of a decade or less, rather than taking a few generations.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.ghacks.net/2026/08/24/aliexpress-ran-silent-browser-audio-to-fingerprint-and-track-devices-researchers-find/

AliExpress has been found to run silent audio processes in the browser to fingerprint and track devices. Code on the homepage, linked to Alibaba's security systems, uses the Web Audio API to send a signal through a device's audio hardware and measure the small, device-specific differences in how it returns.

This creates a fingerprint that does not rely on cookies. The issue only came to light after a developer noticed problems using multipoint Bluetooth headphones while an AliExpress tab was open.

This type of fingerprinting is not something most users would notice.

The issue came to light when a developer's multipoint Bluetooth headphones would not switch properly from a computer to a phone while an AliExpress tab was open. Once the tab was closed, the problem disappeared.

Looking at the site's code, the developer found it used the Web Audio API to build audio-processing graphs set to zero volume. There was no audible sound, but the process still connected to the computer's audio system and kept the audio path active in the background.

This seems to be what interfered with the headphones' ability to switch devices. Since the processing graph ran at zero gain and connected directly to the system's audio output, muting the browser tab had no effect.

The same code can be used for browser fingerprinting, which collects device-specific details to recognize a browser over time. Here, the scripts measured small differences in how a device processed the same audio signal. These differences depend on the computer's processor, sound hardware, operating system, browser, and drivers.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Red Tetris stickers and shirtless Windows 95 tots - accidental collectibles gathering dust:

In a future edition of The Antiques Roadshow, the hosts might get all excited about a mint Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows... with a sticker on the box instead of a printed Tetris promotion.

Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen explained the reasoning behind using the sticker instead of simply printing what was in the box. Microsoft hadn't locked down the rights for Tetris before the first print run of the packaging, so went with what it had.

The Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows debuted in 1990, the same year that Windows 3.0 was released and ushered in an era of Microsoft desktop dominance. Three more iterations of the entertainment pack followed, which included FreeCell, before Microsoft pulled the plug in 1992 (although a Best Of version arrived in 1994, and there was another version for Windows CE later in the 1990s).

We'll draw a discreet veil over the ad-festooned version currently in the Microsoft Store.

The floppy disks in the box included several card games, Minesweeper, and a Windows version of the fiendishly addictive and massively popular game of the era, Tetris.

But it might not have gone that way. Chen explained in a post on his Old New Thing blog, "At the time the first run of boxes were being printed, the negotiations to license Tetris hadn't yet concluded. There was a chance that the negotiations would fall through, and the Entertainment Pack would have to be released without Tetris."

So, rather than risk throwing away a production run, Microsoft went ahead with the Tetris-less branding, and added a sticker when the deal was done. Later print runs made the sticker part of the box art, hence the rarity of the original.

Microsoft has a bit of a history of inadvertently creating collectibles. Chen recalled an incident with Windows 95, when an anti-piracy hologram on the case depicted a child pointing at a computer monitor and the Windows 95 logo. The child was shirtless, which caused offense in some quarters. Microsoft's solution? A new hologram with the baby in a shirt and overalls.

However, some original versions still exist. Chen said, "So if you still have your copy of Windows 95, go look at the hologram. If the baby in your hologram isn't wearing a shirt, you have a genuine collector's item."

We can just imagine the excitement at the recording now, as someone produces not only a stickered version of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows, but also the topless baby version of Windows 95...

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Chang'e 7 didn't meet unspecified 'launch requirements':

China's Manned Space Agency (CMSA) on Sunday cancelled a planned Monday moonshot launch.

The mission plan for Chang'e 7 calls for it to send a lander to a region near the Moon's South Pole, in a location thought likely to contain ice in deep craters.

The lander carries two other vehicles: a wheeled rover, and a hopper. China wants to test the latter to see if it can jump over crater rims to look for ice, and then hop out again and continue exploring.

The lander is also important to China, because it's equipped with tech to enable a precision autonomous landing – a tricky feat given the chaotic terrain moon mappers believe awaits it.

China has built the lander, rover, and hopper to survive multiple Lunar nights, the stretches of two weeks or more without light, during which the mercury can dip below a hellish minus 200 Celsius in the shadows.

The mission also involves an orbiter to help the ground vehicles send data home and carry out its own observations.

Richard de Grijs, a professor of astrophysics at Australia's Macquarie University, last week wrote that the mission is significant because it represents "a transition from simply exploring the Moon to determining whether its resources can actually be used."

"Chinese scientists won't be looking for signs of water; we already have compelling evidence for lunar polar water," he wrote. "The question at the mission's core is where exactly that water is located, in what form and concentration, and whether it could realistically be accessed."

Sadly, we won't begin to get the answers to those questions until next year.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NTFS3-Vulnerability-For-Root

A reported security vulnerability for the NTFS3 driver has gone unaddressed since being reported earlier this summer. The vulnerability allows a pre-crafted NTFS image on a USB flash drive or similar to allow the user to gain root access to the running Linux system.

After being reported privately two months ago and going unresolved, a SUID injection leading to local privilege escalation was made public. A Phoronix reader noted the disclosure via the NTFS3 mailing list.

Vova Tokarev who discovered the issue noted:

        "A pre-crafted NTFS image (e.g. USB drive) with $LXUID=0, $LXGID=0, $LXMOD=0104755 already in the MFT produces a setuid-root binary the moment the volume is mounted. No setxattr() is involved -- the EAs are on disk. The -EPERM check doesn't help.

        The root cause is still at fs/ntfs3/xattr.c:1022:

        inode->i_mode = le32_to_cpu(value[2]);

        This loads S_ISUID/S_ISGID directly from untrusted on-disk data. Desktop automounters (udisks) mount NTFS with suid by default, so plugging in a crafted USB gives any local user euid=0.

        Suggested one-line fix:

        - inode->i_mode = le32_to_cpu(value[2]);
        + inode->i_mode = le32_to_cpu(value[2]) & ~(S_ISUID | S_ISGID);

        I have a full PoC and working demo."

Those interested can find the proof of concept and demo along with more information via this mailing list post.

As of writing the vulnerability has yet to be addressed by the mainline NTFS3 kernel driver. This doesn't appear to impact the newer NTFS driver alternative that also continues maturing within the mainline kernel tree.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Attacks on these industrial controllers could lead to sabotage of critical infrastructure:

Agencies Claim Threat Actors Use AI Tools To Generate Exploitation

“The actors leverage Internet scanning services to find Internet-exposed PLCs running outdated software or that are otherwise poorly protected,” the agency said in its warning. “The U.S. critical infrastructure sectors most targeted by this threat activity include Critical Manufacturing, Energy, Water and Wastewater, Chemical, Food and Agriculture, and Commercial Facilities. This is not a theoretical risk — it is an active threat. Depending on the specific circumstances, exploitation of poorly protected PLCs could lead to disruption of critical industrial processes, safety incidents, downtime or equipment damage, compromise of sensitive data, compliance violations, and cascading impacts across interconnected systems.”

What makes the threat especially dangerous is that the use of AI tools could enable potential attackers to make malicious files look and behave like legitimate monitoring tools. They achieve this by using open-source industrial automation libraries, making it easier for unsuspecting users to fall victim to their attacks. Although the agencies did not specify where these attacks could originate, they came less than a month after the water infrastructure of several states was hit by cyberattacks thought to have originated from Iran.

There were even claims from Iran that networking devices from American and European companies failed during an attack even though they were disconnected from the rest of the world. Aside from these scenarios in active warfare, cyberattacks could also be used in gray warfare, where opponents can inflict maximum damage while retaining plausible deniability, reducing the chances of retaliation.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2238061/company-making-no-tech-tractor-maximum-repairability/

America's agricultural sector is a key component of the country's economy, and critical to maintaining ongoing food supplies. Statistics tell an interesting story, where the number of farms has steadily dropped since the early 1980's, while also tripling output between 1948 and 2021. One of the reasons fewer farmers have been able to produce more has to do with advances in equipment technology. Today, there are several major tractor brands to choose from, though they rank differently in terms of things like reliability and resale value. However, it seems tractor manufacturers may have taken the idea of high-tech farming a bit too far for many farmers. This is evident when looking at the ongoing surge of sales within the older used tractor market.

One Canadian company, Ursa Ag, has noticed this trend and decided to go against the industry, relying on basic fundamental operation over today's complex software, autosteer, GPS, and connectivity features. It isn't just smaller farms interested in investing in these basic machines, but also massive players in the U.S. dairy industry looking to equip their fleets. Ursa Ag is said to be tripling production of its new "no frills" machines in an attempt to keep up with demand. Speaking with 404 media, Doug Wilson with Ursa Ag conceded that cutting-edge agricultural equipment does have its place, "But that technology is needed for 5 percent of what a farm does. There are so many applications for tractors on farms that don't require technology."

One of the biggest reasons is cost. For around half the money of a new John Deere, you could get a new Ursa Ag. Saving money on equipment is crucial for farmers, as crop farm profit margins over the last few years have hovered around 5%, which doesn't leave much room for added expenses. North American Equipment Dealers Association CEO in 2024, Kim Rominger, confirmed that technology is "absolutely" responsible for the increasingly higher prices seen on equipment, per Manitoba Cooperator.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Expanded multistage chain of thought monitoring makes frontier model work more expensive:

OpenAI on Tuesday said its decision to suspend model training work, implemented after unreleased, unsupervised AI models hacked HuggingFace, remains in effect as the AI biz tries to implement stronger security measures. Some of those measures will increase compute overhead by 20 percent of the observed inference workload.

An OpenAI spokesperson told The Register that those costs reflect internal research and won't be passed on directly to customers. The company has not revealed what portion of its total inference compute is subject to such monitoring now, or under its prior monitoring regime.

"We have paused some frontier RL [reinforcement learning] training to ensure that we can meet the appropriate alignment, security and monitoring standards for the new level of capabilities in front of us," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a social media post. "Model progress is now extremely rapid, and we always said we would take action if we felt that model capabilities were outstripping the pace of safety and alignment."

Altman said he still expects new models, presumably the delayed Astra, will ship soon. The training pause affects further-out releases.

OpenAI in its post reiterated its plans to focus on monitoring, model alignment, and security measures to prevent its models from running amok as they did last month. Following the HuggingFace incident, OpenAI "paused frontier model inference in research clusters for runs that could execute code or use tools that could access the internet."

The biz said it allows some workloads to run, but paused others until they can be moved under a more stringent security regime that includes sandboxing, network isolation, and continuous security testing.

"Our largest planned frontier RL (reinforcement learning) run remains on hold while we conduct smaller-scale training and evaluations to assess model behavior, validate our safeguards, and establish more evidence of alignment before proceeding," the company wrote.

[...] If you choose to believe the company's assurance that it will not pass on the cost of model thought policing to customers, it follows that OpenAI's losses will increase. It's difficult to imagine that would be a sustainable stance if OpenAI goes public.

But given the company's reported $600+ billion in AI infrastructure commitments and its expectation to remain unprofitable until at least 2030, what's a bit more expense for the sake of uncertain security?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

And they looked absolutely ridiculous doing it:

Usain Bolt's 2009 world record for the 100-meter dash still remains unbroken at 9.58 seconds, but only if we're talking about humans. During the second annual World Humanoid Robot Games that kicked off in Beijing on Saturday, the Tiangong Ultra humanoid robot completed the 100-meter dash in 9.39 seconds during a preliminary heat. Developed by Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, the record-holding robot overtook Honor's Lightning robot, which completed the sprint in 9.47 seconds.

Despite the impressive finish times, don't expect these humanoid robots [1:23 Really funny. --Ed] to be used for any commercial purposes yet. After their sprints, they slammed directly into pads and some even required human assistance to be stretchered off the course. However, it's still a major improvement from last year's inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games, where the Tiangong Ultra won the 100-meter dash in 21.5 seconds.

Aside from this Robot Olympics event, Beijing hosted a half-marathon for Chinese companies to show off the capabilities of their humanoid robots. The event had its fair share of crashes too, but Honor's Lightning robot managed to secure the gold medal with a finish time of 50 minutes and 26 seconds, which also surpassed another human record. The World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing kicked off August 22 and will run until the 26, hosting thousands of robot participants competing in more than just track and field events, including soccer, table tennis and boxing.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/openai-fights-to-keep-chatgpt-lawsuit-away-from-a-state-jury

Florida Seeks Court Ruling To Officially Classify Sam Altman And ChatGPT As A 'Public Nuisance' — OpenAI Fights To Keep Lawsuit Away From A State Jury

OpenAI's brief cites three cases in which states sued platforms under state law, defendants removed, and federal judges sent them back: New Mexico v. Meta, California v. TikTok, and New Jersey v. Discord. OpenAI cites them only to show the judges declined to award fees because removal wasn't "objectively unreasonable." Florida's remand motion asks for fees regardless, arguing OpenAI removed for one reason: "delay."

The complaint's remaining counts cover negligence, gross negligence, strict liability for design defect and failure to warn, fraudulent misrepresentation, and public nuisance. It alleges ChatGPT's memory feature was on by default, the free tier has no age gate, the September 2025 parental controls require a voluntary account link, and GPT-4o's safety evaluation was compressed to one week to beat a Google launch.

The State seeks a permanent injunction on under-13 data collection and a finding that distributing ChatGPT in Florida is a public nuisance, demanding civil penalties of up to $10,000 per willful violation, which is double New Mexico's $5,000 cap. New Mexico's jury found 75,000 violations.

A footnote in every federal filing states that Altman "is not making a general appearance" and reserves a personal-jurisdiction defense. That defense sets up a motion to dismiss the CEO individually, no matter which court hears the case. Much of the record that Florida's case relies on is against Altman, including Greg Brockman's diary and Tasha McCauley's testimony about a "toxic culture of lying," which came out at the Musk v. Altman trial in May. A coalition of 42 state attorneys general subpoenaed OpenAI in June; none has filed a complaint yet.

Original Submission

Tim Curry has died at age 80

The British actor was known for iconic roles like Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pennywise.

Curry earned three Tony nominations and a Daytime Emmy and released three musical albums in his career

The British star got his start on stage in the West End, starring in the original London production of Hair in 1968 after attending Birmingham University. But according to the actor, he fudged his own experience to get a part in the show. "When asked if he had professional experience and an Equity card, Tim lied about both," his website reads. "By the time the producers found out the truth, they were sufficiently impressed with his talent and presence to sponsor him for his union membership."

In 2012, Curry suffered a major stroke and has used a wheelchair since. Curry, who never married and has no children, mostly pulled back on his acting career then, focusing instead on voiceover projects.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/researchers-use-thunderquakes-to-study-structure-of-earths-surface/

Most of what we know about the Earth's interior comes from observing seismic waves. These travel at somewhat different speeds depending on the details of the rock they're moving through—whether it's solid or semi-molten, how much water is present, whether it's fractured or solid material, and so on. Get enough data from enough seismic events, and you can start piecing together a picture of what's present at different depths below the surface.

In many cases, we can get this data from naturally occurring events like earthquakes. In others, we intentionally create waves using things like explosives, providing the opportunity to do imaging in specific areas without needing to wait for an earthquake. Now, a team of scientists at Penn State suggests there's a potential option that sits between waiting for an earthquake and triggering your own seismic event: thunderstorms.

Some of the energy carried by thunder enters the Earth's upper crust, triggering what are termed "thunderquakes." But, for various physical reasons, the seismic signals are extremely complex, making it difficult to extract clear signals from them. The Penn State team says it has finally constructed a model that can help make sense of this complexity and used it to reconstruct the terrain under the local campus.

Why are thunderquakes so hideously complex? It starts with the phenomenon that creates thunder in the first place. Lightning creates thunder by forming superheated bubbles of plasma along its path, creating a structure that has been compared to a string of beads. Each of those beads has the potential to generate an acoustic shock wave, leading to a chain of expanding shock waves that trace the lightning's path through the area, which is anything but a straight line. These waves also have the potential to interfere with each other as they expand. And, while these shock waves first hit the Earth at a single point, they rapidly expand from there, albeit with decreasing power.

Things don't get less complex once the Earth gets involved. The acoustic shock waves may strike soft soil, hard rock, various forms of human infrastructure, and so on, each of which will affect how energy gets transmitted. Some of the energy gets converted into what are called Rayleigh waves, where the energy is transmitted as a wave that moves along the Earth's surface. The rest go deeper, forming waves that may move through some combination of loose material or the underlying bedrock.

To extract information about the Earth's structure, you have to understand what the seismic waves from a thunderclap would normally look like. Which, to an extent, requires modeling all of the above processes. Since each thunderquake is going to be unique due to the different locations and conditions, this model is going to be, at best, an approximation. The fear that any approximation wouldn't be good enough to generate usable data probably kept people from trying to analyze thunderquakes sooner.