SlashdotNews for nerds, stuff that matters
May 7th 2026, 03:30 by BeauHD
Sam Altman's management style came under scrutiny on the seventh day of Elon Musk's high-stakes OpenAI trial, as former OpenAI figures Mira Murati, Shivon Zilis, and Helen Toner took the stand to testify about their experiences working with him. Their testimony resurfaced many of the criticisms that first emerged during Altman's brief ouster as CEO in 2023. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: The first witness was Mira Murati, OpenAI's former chief technology officer and now founder of her own AI shop, Thinking Machines Lab. Jurors watched a recorded video deposition of Murati, who was also OpenAI's interim CEO after the board briefly ousted Sam Altman. Murati's testimony focused on her concerns about Altman's "difficult and chaotic" management style. She said Altman had trouble "making decisions on big controversial things." He also had a habit of telling people what they wanted to hear. "My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and a completely different thing to another person, and that makes it a very difficult and chaotic environment to work with," said Murati. Murati said that her issue with Altman was not about safety, "it is about Sam creating chaos." She said she supported Altman's return to OpenAI because the company "was at catastrophic risk of falling apart" at the time of his ousting. "I was concerned about the company completely blowing up." Zilis said she was upset that Altman rolled out ChatGPT without involving the board. "It wasn't just me but the entire board raised concern about that whole thing happening without any board communication," she said. Zilis said she was also concerned about a potential OpenAI deal with a nuclear energy startup called Helion Energy because both Altman and Greg Brockman were investors. Although the executives had disclosed the investment to the board, Zilis said the deal talk made her uneasy. It "felt super out of left field," she said. "How is it the case that we want to place a major bet on a speculative technology?" In a video deposition, Helen Toner, a former member of OpenAI's board who resigned in 2023, said she first became aware of ChatGPT's release when an OpenAI employee asked another board member whether the board was aware of the development. [...] Toner also elaborated on why the board, including herself, voted to remove Altman as CEO in 2023. "There were a number of things -- the pattern of behavior related to his honesty and candor, his resistance of board oversight, as well as the concerns that two os his inner management team raised to the board about his management practices, his manipulation of board processes," said Toner. Recap: Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six) OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five) Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four) Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three) Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two) Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)
 
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May 6th 2026, 23:00 by BeauHD
Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Security researcher Tom Joran Sonstebyseter Ronning has found that Microsoft Edge stores passwords in plaintext in RAM. After creating a password and storing it using Edge's password manager, Ronning found that he could dump the RAM and recover his password which was stored in plaintext. Part of the issue is Edge loads all passwords to all sites upon a single verification check, even if the user was not visiting a specific site. This is very different from Chrome, which only loads passwords for specific websites when challenged for the site's password. Also, Chrome will delete the password from memory once the password has been filled. Edge does not delete the passwords from memory once they are used. Microsoft downplayed the risk noting access would require control over a user's PC like a malware infection: "Access to browser data as described in the reported scenario would require the device to already be compromised," Microsoft said. Ronning countered that it was possible to dump passwords for multiple users using administrative privileges for one user to view the passwords for other logged-on users. "Design choices in this area involve balancing performance, usability, and security, and we continue to review it against evolving threats," Microsoft said. "Browsers access password data in memory to help users sign in quickly and securely -- this is an expected feature of the application. We recommend users install the latest security updates and antivirus software to help protect against security threats."
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May 6th 2026, 22:00 by BeauHD
Google is updating AI Overviews and AI Mode to more prominently surface "Expert Advice" from public discussions, social platforms, forums, blogs, and Reddit. Engadget reports: Via a new "Expert Advice" section that can appear in AI responses, Google will display "a preview of perspectives from public online discussions, social media and other firsthand sources." In the sample screenshot the company provided, quotes from forums, WordPress blogs and Reddit were arranged above links to their respective sources. Google plans to add more context to these links, too, showing "a creator's name, handle or community name," so you can judge what you might want to click through and read from a glance. Google will also start recommending in-depth articles at the end of AI responses for further exploration of a given topic, and link to more sources directly in its generated answers rather than just at the end. If you subscribe to any publications, AI responses will also highlight sources from the subscriptions you link to your Google account.
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May 6th 2026, 21:00 by BeauHD
Valve has released CAD files for the new Steam Controller and its Puck under a Creative Commons license. "The idea is to let enterprising modders create their own Steam Controller add-ons, like skins, charging stands, grip extenders or smartphone mounts," reports Digital Foundry. From the report: The Valve release includes files for the external shell ("surface topology") of the Controller and Puck, with a .STP, .STL and engineering diagram of each device, with the latter showing areas that must remain uncovered to let the device maintain its signal strength and otherwise function as designed. Valve has previously released CAD files for its Steam Deck handheld, Valve Index VR suite and even the original Steam Controller a decade ago, so this release is welcomed but not unexpected. The release is under a fairly restrictive Creative Commons license which allows for non-commercial use and requires attribution and sharing of designs back to the community. However, the license also suggests that commercial entities interested in making accessories for the Steam Controller or its Puck can contact Valve directly to discuss terms. You can find the files here.
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May 6th 2026, 20:00 by BeauHD
Morgan Stanley is adding crypto trading to E*Trade, with a pilot now underway and a broader rollout planned for the platform's 8.6 million customers later this year. The bank is reportedly undercutting rivals with a 50-basis-point trading fee as it bets traditional finance and DeFi will converge. "By contrast, Robinhood Markets' (HOOD) fees start at 95 bps, Coinbase Global's (COIN) begins at 60 bps, and Charles Schwab (SCHW) will charge 75 bps," notes Seeking Alpha. Morgan Stanley's head of wealth management, Jed Finn, told Bloomberg: "This is much bigger than trading crypto at a cheaper rate. In a way, the strategy is disintermediating the disintermediators."
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May 6th 2026, 19:00 by BeauHD
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: At its Code with Claude developers' conference, Anthropic has introduced what it calls "dreaming" to Claude Managed Agents. Dreaming, in this case, is a process of going over recent events and identifying specific things that are worth storing in "memory" to inform future tasks and interactions. Dreaming is a feature that is currently in research preview and limited to Managed Agents on the Claude Platform. Managed Agents are a higher-level alternative to building directly on the Messages API that Anthropic describes as a "pre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructure." It's intended for situations where you want multiple agents working on a task or project to some end point over several minutes or hours. Anthropic describes dreaming as a scheduled process, in which sessions and memory stores are reviewed, and specific memories are curated. This is important because context windows are limited for LLMs, and important information can be lost over lengthy projects. On the chat side of things, many models use a process called compaction, whereby lengthy conversations are periodically analyzed, and the models attempt to remove irrelevant information from the context window while keeping what's actually important for the ongoing conversation, project, or task. However, that process, as I described it, is usually limited to a specific conversation with a single agent. "Dreaming" is a periodically recurring process in which past sessions and memory stores can be analyzed across agents, and important patterns are identified and saved to memory for the future. Users will be able to choose between an automatic process, or reviewing changes to memory directly.
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May 6th 2026, 18:00 by BeauHD
jeditobe writes: Developers of ReactOS told Phoronix that the project has introduced a unified BootCD, replacing its previously separate installation media and LiveCD images. The new image combines the traditional text-mode installer with a LiveCD mode in a single medium. Within this unified BootCD, the updated LiveCD mode now includes an option to launch a first-stage GUI installer. The graphical interface is intended to make installation more approachable for new users compared to the long-standing text-based setup process. In a separate development, the project has also merged a new ATA storage driver that has been in progress since early 2024. The plug-and-play aware storage stack supports SATA, PATA, ATAPI, AHCI, and even SCSI devices, potentially expanding the range of hardware on which ReactOS can successfully boot. Following recent improvements to graphics driver support, the project continues to make incremental progress across core subsystems, though its long development timeline remains a point of discussion. Will these usability and hardware compatibility improvements be enough to broaden ReactOS adoption beyond its current niche? Please note that all new features are not present in version 0.4.15 and are available for testing in the latest nightly test builds.
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May 6th 2026, 17:00 by BeauHD
Five major publishers and author Scott Turow have sued Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, alleging that Zuckerberg "personally authorized and actively encouraged" massive copyright infringement by using pirated books, journal articles, and web-scraped material to train Meta's Llama AI systems. Meta denies wrongdoing and says it will fight the case, arguing that courts have recognized AI training on copyrighted material as potentially fair use. Variety reports: "In their effort to win the AI 'arms race' and build a functional generative AI model, Defendants Meta and Zuckerberg followed their well-known motto: 'move fast and break things,'" the plaintiffs say in their lawsuit. "They first illegally torrented millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from notorious pirate sites and downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of virtually the entire internet. They then copied those stolen fruits many times over to train Meta's multibillion-dollar generative AI system called Llama. In doing so, Defendants engaged in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history." The suit was filed Tuesday (May 5) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by five publishers (Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage) and Turow individually. The proposed class-action suit seeks unspecific monetary damages for the alleged copyright infringement. A copy of the lawsuit is available at this link (PDF). [...] the latest lawsuit alleges that Meta and Zuckerberg deliberately circumvented copyright-protection mechanisms -- and had considered paying to license the works before abandoning that strategy at "Zuckerberg's personal instruction." The suit essentially argues that the conduct described falls outside protections afforded by fair-use provisions of the U.S. copyright code.
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