WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - De website van ShinyHunters, de groep die de verantwoordelijkheid heeft opgeëist voor een recente hack waarbij persoonlijke en gevoelige gegevens van duizenden FBI-agenten zijn buitgemaakt, is woensdag offline gegaan.

Dat gebeurde een dag nadat de deadline was verstreken die de groep aan het Amerikaanse Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had gesteld om een verklaring over de tactieken en staat van dienst van de groep in te trekken of aan te passen. Het is onduidelijk waarom de website offline is gegaan. ShinyHunters was niet bereikbaar voor commentaar.

Volgens de FBI heeft ShinyHunters sinds vorig jaar ruim 140 organisaties gehackt en minstens 70 miljoen dollar (61,7 miljoen euro) aan afpersingsgeld geïnd.

De Nederlandse politie liet deze week weten een Nederlander te hebben opgepakt die verdachte is in het onderzoek naar ShinyHunters. Ook wordt hij verdacht van het geven van twee moordopdrachten in het buitenland. De FBI bedankte Nederland daar publiekelijk voor op X. De hackersgroep vertelde Reuters echter dat de man "geen banden" met hen had en bespotte de Nederlandse politie als "incompetent".

VIRGINIA (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - De Amerikaanse minister van Defensie Pete Hegseth heeft diverse nieuwe militaire commando's en projecten aangekondigd, waaronder een initiatief dat onder leiding zal komen te staan van Elon Musk. Het gaat om een project dat gericht is op onderzoek naar de toekomst van oorlogsvoering.

Hegseth zei tijdens zijn toespraak "State of the Force" op een marinebasis dat "Project Meridian gericht is op het ontdekken, ontwikkelen en inzetten van de wapens en systemen die onze kinderen en kleinkinderen tijdens hun leven nodig zullen hebben". Naast Elon Musk wordt dit initiatief geleid door Palmer Luckey (oprichter van Anduril Industries) en voormalig voorzitter van het Huis van Afgevaardigden Newt Gingrich.

Het onderzoek zal gebruikmaken van "de beste voorspellers van toekomstige conflicten" die "niet uitsluitend binnen het Pentagon te vinden zijn", aldus Hegseth. "Het doel ervan is om op creatieve wijze naar de toekomst te kijken en vast te stellen welke gebieden we moeten veroveren en welke vaardigheden we onder de knie moeten krijgen", zei hij.

RHENEN (ANP) - Bij het gemeentehuis in het Utrechtse Rhenen zijn rond 23.15 uur twee ruiten vernield door vuurwerk. Dat meldt de politie Midden-Nederland in een bericht. Bij het gemeentehuis had zich een grote groep mensen verzameld omdat de gemeenteraad daar vergaderde over de opvang van asielzoekers.

Volgens de politie was een groot deel van de mensen die zich bij het gemeentehuis hadden verzameld rond 22.00 uur weg. Een klein groepje bleef echter "zonder duidelijk doel" rondhangen, waarna één persoon werd aangehouden voor het verstoren van de openbare orde en openbare dronkenschap. Het gaat om een 25-jarige man uit Veenendaal.

Nadat de politie was vertrokken, werden de ruiten vernield. Daarop kwam de ME in actie om in te grijpen. De verdachten konden niet worden gepakt, meldt de politie. Er wordt momenteel onderzoek gedaan naar de vernieling.

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Some experts fear AI could be weaponised in south-east Asia, home to nations with predominately young and hyper-connected populations

Years ago it would have been an elaborate operation involving any army of cyber troops creating fake news websites, social media accounts and forged dossiers, all deployed to spread disinformation en masse.

Now, all you need is AI.

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Emergency power cuts imposed in Kyiv for first time since spring after airstrikes across at least 10 regions ahead of winter. What we know on day 1,681

Russia has unleashed a widely anticipated air campaign against Ukraine’s energy grid, hitting power facilities and infrastructure ⁠around Kyiv and other regions in the ⁠heaviest combined attack on energy sites in ​months. The strikes on Wednesday, in which Ukrainian officials said seven people were killed, came after days of intensifying drone barrages primarily on the capital, a prelude to what many Ukrainians expect to be a winter of attacks intended to plunge cities into cold and darkness while Ukraine is short ⁠of air defences. State power grid operator Ukrenergo said it had imposed emergency power cuts as a result of the attack in Kyiv and three surrounding regions – the first time such a measure had been imposed in the capital since the spring.

“Russia has escalated to massive ‌strikes on energy infrastructure,” the prime minister, Sergii Koretskyi, said ‌on X after the overnight attacks. A child was among the seven dead across Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, with critical infrastructure coming under attack in five regions. Further damage was reported in another five regions, the Ukrainian president added. Forecasters say they expect freezing temperatures at night in Kyiv in coming days.

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Tapes made in the 90s, including candid conversations between Noel and Liam Gallagher, which were expected to sell for up to £1.6m

A collection of unheard Oasis recordings, including 63 live shows, hours of rehearsals and candid conversations between Noel and Liam Gallagher, has been pulled from auction after legal action taken by the band.

In September Littleton Auctions in Worcestershire, England, listed the collection made by the band’s former sound engineer, Huw Richards, with a guide price of between £1.2m and £1.6m.

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Estonian will navigate narrow ribbon, 160 metres long and 120 metres high, near the city’s famous Gwanghwamun palace on Thursday

Estonian aerial athlete Jaan Roose will attempt to cross a 160-metre long highline suspended 120 metres above central Seoul on Thursday.

Roose, a three-time slackline world champion, will step out on to a narrow polyester ribbon between the Koreana hotel and the Dong-A Media Center, near the capital city’s famous Gwanghwamun palace and square.

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Pike, sentenced to death over 1995 murder, set to be executed Wednesday night after justices lift lower-court ruling

Tennessee is set to execute a woman for the first time in 200 years on Wednesday, after the US supreme court lifted a lower-court ruling that put her execution on pause earlier in the day.

Christa Pike, who was convicted of murder 30 years ago, was initially scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday morning until her execution was halted hours earlier by a federal appeals court.

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Google has unveiled Gemini 4 Argon, a new frontier AI model that it says leads or ties rivals on 13 of 18 disclosed benchmarks. The model is initially being released only to trusted cyber defenders and select pre-release testers, with broader availability planned later. VentureBeat reports: Google is not claiming that Gemini 4 Argon wins every benchmark. But across the benchmark table disclosed in the company's embargoed materials, Argon posts the highest score, or ties for the highest score, in more categories than GPT-6 Astra or Claude Opus 5.5. Across the 18 benchmarks Google disclosed, Argon leads outright on 12 and ties for first on one. GPT-6 Astra leads outright on three and ties Argon on one. Claude Opus 5.5 leads outright on two. That makes Argon the leading frontier model by total number of benchmark leads or top scores in Google's comparison set, even though the results show a still-close race in which OpenAI and Anthropic retain advantages in several important technical categories.

[...] The result is a more nuanced claim than "best model across the board." Argon appears to have the broadest top-score profile among the three frontier models in Google's disclosed comparison, but GPT-6 Astra remains ahead in several software, science-terminal and computer-use tasks, while Claude Opus 5.5 remains ahead in terminal-agent and post-training workflows. For enterprise buyers, that means model choice is still workload-dependent, even if Argon now gives Google its strongest claim yet to overall frontier leadership by benchmark count. [...] Argon also expands Google's output ceiling. The company says the model supports an industry-leading 1 million output tokens, up from a previous 64,000-token limit. That is a notable distinction for agentic software engineering, audit, migration and legal-review workloads where the value of a model often depends on how long it can sustain a chain of work before handing control back to a human.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says Microsoft has no plans to sell the gaming business, telling The New York Times that "Xbox is not for sale" and that the company intends to take a long-term view. Windows Central reports: Microsoft's vast layoffs across the summer have hit Xbox in their thousands, with studios like Ninja Theory on the path to being closed, and others like Double Fine being divested completely. Microsoft has effectively shut down Halo Studios itself and handed off the franchise to Call of Duty showrunners instead, as Xbox aggressively seeks to restructure for its next decade.

[...] The NYT interviewed (paywall) Sharma recently covering the Xbox layoffs generally. The outlet said that Asha "did not stall" in declaring Xbox not-for-sale. "Xbox is not for sale. [...] We will do whatever it takes to set the company up for success, and we will look at the right partnerships, the right operating model and everything needed to achieve that. [...] We've got a long way to go with Microsoft and we're going to take the long-term view."

The NYT quite patronizingly called the comment a "bob and weave" seemingly unwilling to let go of the idea of divestiture. It's great shareholder bait; Xbox has long been an aspirational type of product, and it has been a loss leader in some regards. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has remarked in the past about how, despite the fact Xbox isn't a huge profit generator, fandom of the brand has led to lucrative deals for Azure on the business side of things. Yet, shareholders would love nothing more than for Microsoft to quit the difficult and risky game industry to dive all-in on AI psychosis products instead...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Death Don't Have No Mercy performed by the Grateful Dead, with vocals by Alvin Chipmunk.

You can destroy kottke.org if you want. Or any other site!

lioil has added a photo to the pool:

Urakami Catholic church, Nagasaki, Japan