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Hackers Targeted Municipal Water Systems In 7 States This Week, FBI Says

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Cyberattacks targeting municipal water systems have been reported in at least seven states this week, prompting the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency to warn utilities nationwide that hackers are trying to disrupt critical water infrastructure. In a public service announcement Thursday, the agencies said water and wastewater utilities have reported incidents to the FBI, with some malicious activity degrading water operations. The announcement does not name the states.

The warning comes after hackers targeted more than 30 municipal water facilities in Minnesota in an attack that had hallmarks of Iranian meddling, according to a law enforcement official. It is still under investigation. A spokesperson for Minnesota's information technology services agency said Thursday there was no indication the breaches contaminated any municipal water supplies. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a separate alert that some larger attacks on water infrastructure had "resulted in boil water notices and sustained manual operations," though it did not say where.

[...] The federal advisory said the malicious cyber actors, or MCAs, targeted specific brands of control systems used by municipal water utilities, though the FBI and the EPA urged operators of all systems to take precautions. [...] The agencies said the hackers remotely accessed internet-facing devices, changed IP addresses and passwords, and caused utilities to lose monitoring and control capabilities. The federal advisory calls on system operators to remove programmable logical controllers, or PLCs, from direct internet exposure by putting them behind secure gateways and firewalls; use strong passwords; and limit communications between authorized control system devices through access control lists.

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Sony Heard Backlash Over Dropping PlayStation Discs, Plans to Press Ahead

Sony says it will proceed with ending PlayStation disc sales in January 2028 despite petitions, boycott threats, and concerns about digital ownership and the disappearance of the secondhand market. PCMag reports: After Sony's recent earnings call, an investor Q&A session saw analysts ask about its controversial decision to end disc production across all of its consoles. The company hadn't publicly commented since its announcement and had reduced activity on social accounts and other marketing channels. Sony's chief financial officer, Lin Tao, broke that silence during the Q&A. "There are various reasons we made this decision," she said through an interpreter. "The biggest being that the digitalization of content overall has been progressing. That's the big factor. It's not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of content, digitalization is progressing. "And so when we think about the future, and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this, and we came to this conclusion, and we're going to cautiously move this forward," Tao said.

"We have received various opinions, and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us," said Tao. [...] Tao says Sony wants to "consider" the emotions of disgruntled customers, especially as titles are "connected to people's fond memories in many cases." Tao also alluded to the possibility of future measures to lessen the blow for anyone unhappy with the decision, but it appears Sony hasn't yet finalized what those may be. "In the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore," she said.

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New Google Earth AI Tool Could Fuel Misinformation, Experts Say

Google has integrated its Nano Banana 2 image generator into Google Earth, allowing users to place AI-generated events and objects onto real satellite imagery. The company says its AI-generated images contain invisible watermarks detectable through Gemini or Lens, but the BBC found those safeguards and some third-party detection tools can be fooled into labeling manipulated Google Earth images as real. From the report: A collapsed Eiffel Tower, a sinkhole swallowing the Great Pyramid of Giza and Russian tanks in Ukraine's capital were among the images BBC Verify was able to create when testing the feature, which was rolled out on Thursday. Google has not yet responded to questions based on BBC Verify's tests, but in a social media post the company said they "take misinformation seriously" and that "we prevent image creation on harmful topics and are continually updating our protections."

AI and misinformation expert Henk van Ess has highlighted the risks this feature poses, creating fake images of a non-existent nuclear power plant in Iran, a refugee camp on the US-Mexico border and a fake hospital in Gaza with a bomb crater next to it. He said Google was allowing "invented" imagery to be "welded to genuine coordinates, drawn on genuine imagery." "The forgery does not have to look convincing on its own. It inherits the credibility of the map it was born on," van Ess added.

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Publishers Are Losing Google Traffic As AI Answers Replace Links

alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Google has basically stopped sending people to websites (including our site) for answers and information. Instead, it's using AI to answer them on its platform, in its words. Chartbeat data shared with Axios shows Google Search traffic to publishers fell 34% over the past year. That pain is regressive. Over the past two years, small publishers lost 60% of referrals from search overall, medium publishers 47%, large publishers 22%.

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Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Weer protesten in Oekraïne om ontslag defensieminister

KYIV (ANP/AFP) - Duizenden mensen hebben vrijdag weer gedemonstreerd in de Oekraïense hoofdstad Kyiv. Ze eisen dat oud-defensieminister Mychajlo Fedorov weer wordt aangesteld. Hij is erg populair in het land, onder meer omdat hij vroeg in de oorlog tegen Rusland het gebruik van drones heeft omarmd.

Fedorov werd twee weken geleden ontslagen, na een conflict met topmilitair Oleksandr Syrsky. Dat leidde tot een golf van protesten. Demonstranten eisten dat juist Syrsky zou worden vervangen. Dat is inmiddels gebeurd.

Duizenden mensen scandeerden de naam van Fedorov en riepen "breng hem terug!". President Volodymyr Zelensky zei vorige week dat hij de populaire oud-minister meerdere functies heeft aangeboden om voor de regering te blijven werken. Fedorov heeft herhaaldelijk aangegeven alleen als minister van Defensie in de regering terug te willen keren.


Apple verliest fors aan beurswaarde, Amazon juist hard omhoog

NEW YORK (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - Apple heeft vrijdag honderden miljarden dollars aan beurswaarde verloren. Beleggers straften de iPhone-maker voor een tegenvallende prognose, hoewel het concern in het laatste volledige kwartaal van topman Tim Cook wel een hogere omzet en winst in de boeken zette. Amazon werd daarentegen meer dan 15 procent hoger gezet en kende zijn beste dag op Wall Street in jaren.

Het aandeel Apple kelderde ruim 7 procent. Kenners denken dat de tegenvallende prognose aantoont dat Apple moeite heeft om voldoende onderdelen te bemachtigen, nu de door kunstmatige intelligentie gedreven boom in datacenters de wereldwijde toeleveringsketens onder druk zet. Tim Cook, die per 1 september wordt opgevolgd door John Ternus, noemde de tekorten van onderdelen "zeer significant". Hij zei dat Apple weinig mogelijkheden heeft om dit op te lossen.

Amazon wist beleggers wel tevreden te stellen. Vooral de clouddivisie van het tech- en webwinkelconcern blijft sterk groeien door de grote vraag naar rekenkracht die nodig is voor AI. Het optimisme over de cijfers van Amazon trok een brede groep bedrijven mee die profiteren van de opmars van AI. Zo won chipconcern Nvidia bijna 3 procent. De vrees dat alle verwachtingen rond AI overtrokken zijn, verdween verder naar de achtergrond.

AI-gerelateerde aandelen

Het algehele sentiment op Wall Street was eveneens positief. De Dow-Jonesindex sloot 0,5 procent hoger op 52.485,03 punten. De brede S&P 500-index steeg 0,7 procent, tot 7489,72 punten, en techgraadmeter Nasdaq kreeg er 1 procent bij op 25.373,86 punten. De olieprijzen gingen verder ruim 1 procent omhoog.

Ondanks het sterke herstel in de tech- en chipsector deze week noteerden de Amerikaanse beurzen wel een maandverlies door de grote uitverkoop van AI-gerelateerde aandelen in juli. De Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, de belangrijke graadmeter voor chipaandelen, is in juli zelfs zo'n 20 procent gezakt. Dat is de grootste maandelijkse daling sinds de financiële crisis van 2008.

Apple was niet de enige grote verliezer op de beurs. Internetplatform Reddit ging 21 procent onderuit. Het socialemediabedrijf maakte bij zijn kwartaalcijfers geen nieuwe licentieovereenkomsten voor data bekend, wat beleggers teleurstelde. De advertentietak is nog steeds de belangrijkste bron van inkomsten voor Reddit, maar beleggers hopen dat de inkomstenmix verschuift naar datadeals voor het trainen van AI.


The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Will the US midterm elections be free and fair? – Stateside with Kai and Carter

With Republicans' chances in the midterms looking shaky, Donald Trump is increasingly trying to rewrite the rules that govern US elections. Voting rights groups say he's really laying the groundwork to suppress voters. Trump has already moved to change mail-in voting, but he now wants Congress to pass the Save America Act, which includes strict voter ID restrictions. He's also accused China of interfering in the 2020 election. (Trump didn't back up that claim with evidence.) Host Kai Wright speaks with Garrett Epps, legal affairs editor at Washington Monthly, about the threat to US elections and what voters can do to protect them.

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Opnieuw duizenden Oekraïners de straat op uit protest tegen ontslag defensieminister Fedorov

xiffy

Public posts from @xiffy@mastodon.nl

Ik zocht de 'developer options' op mijn Samsung tablet. Onvindbaar.
Internet raadplegen, oh ja, die moest je eerst activeren. De geheime truc dit keer was dat ik in settings, software, andrioid, build. Drie keer moest aantikken et voila.
What the actual fuck. En dat wordt straks allemaal nog erger als we ook niet meer apps mogen installeren van niet door Google geaccepteerde ontwikkelaars.
In dit geval wilde ik alleen maar de zogenaamde WiFi-throttle uitschakelen, vinkje zetten 1 seconde, vinkje vinden 3 fucking uur.

MetaFilter

The past 24 hours of MetaFilter

"Oh my gosh, that rancidity."

Take capelin, a small silvery fish in the smelt family. Now add salt. Then throw those two ingredients in 110 vats, each of them about 10 feet tall, and let them sit in a defunct factory for over two decades. The resulting stench might haunt an entire community, as it has the people of St. Mary's, a coastal town of about 300 people in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

An interview with food scientist Bryan Quoc Le about a fish sauce decades in the making. Don't miss his article, For The Love Of Fish Sauce, mentioned in the interview.