SlashdotNews for nerds, stuff that matters
Jun 3rd 2026, 03:30 by BeauHD
An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: A team inside Microsoft has been quietly building a platform for devices that run AI agents instead of apps, based on Android instead of Windows, with two working hardware designs so far, and an initial set of big-name companies lined up to run pilots. The platform, dubbed "Project Solara," is Microsoft's bet that AI will open up entirely new scenarios for computing -- using agents to avoid the constraints of traditional software, and off-the-shelf components to develop new devices quickly and inexpensively. [...] The company unveiled Solara on Tuesday at its Build conference in San Francisco, describing it as a new platform that spans from chip to cloud. GeekWire got a behind-the-scenes look at the project during a briefing last week in Redmond, including demos of the first two concept devices based on the platform: - A desktop hub that sits beside a PC and responds to voice commands, signs users in using facial recognition, and surfaces the day's most pressing items. With a monitor attached, it becomes a full Windows machine running in the cloud. - A wearable badge that reimagines the standard employee ID card. A fingerprint button wakes an agent in one press; a single tap records and transcribes a conversation; and a built-in camera lets the agent act on what the user sees. Microsoft says it won't ship these devices itself. Instead, it envisions hardware makers and other industry partners turning the reference designs into implementations of their own, each intended for a specific industry, company, or scenario. For example, in one demo shown by the company, the high-tech badge ran on agents designed for use by a health-care worker, including the ability to scan a patient's QR code, record and transcribe the visit, log vitals, and start a prescription. In another application of the same badge, the built-in camera scanned a brainstorm board with ideas for an office revamp, and made a suggestion: add some plants. The two devices are a starting point. The bigger opportunity, the company says, is all the tasks and workflows where a PC or phone gets in the way or isn't practical to use. [...] In the coming months, companies including AccuWeather, Best Buy, CVS Health, Levi's, and Target are expected to begin pilots of devices based on the reference designs. The operating system is the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform, or MDEP, an enterprise version of Android that Microsoft developed for devices including Teams meeting-room hardware. The company says it chose MDEP over Windows deliberately, to run on smaller, lower-power devices while keeping the management and security features IT departments expect: patch and over-the-air updates, device integrity, Microsoft Defender, Intune, and Entra ID sign-in. While the project is still in the early stages, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella encouraged the team to show it at Build sooner than the company would normally show its work in public. "That underscores just how competitive and fast-moving the AI world is right now, but it also illustrates the pace that the new technologies are enabling," reports GeekWire. The report notes that the business model for the platform still needs to be worked out. The devices run on Microsoft's Azure cloud, but beyond that, "the economics are still taking shape." Qualcomm and MediaTek have been chosen as the first chip partners. "The badge runs on a new Qualcomm wearable chip; the desk hub runs on MediaTek IoT silicon," reports GeekWire. "Both are off-the-shelf, not custom, which is central to how Microsoft plans to keep devices cheap and fast to build."
 
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Jun 2nd 2026, 23:00 by BeauHD
A new Leiden Declaration, endorsed by the International Mathematical Union and published on June 2, 2026, warns that AI could undermine mathematics by flooding the field with plausible but flawed proofs, weakening attribution, shifting incentives, and giving tech companies too much influence over research priorities. "Mathematicians should find it quite striking that tech companies are suddenly interested in their work," said Kevin Buzzard, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in a statement. "The Leiden Declaration is a well-thought-through response to what is currently happening, as AI continues to disrupt this space." Ars Technica reports: The Leiden Declaration, which has already drawn hundreds of signatories, warns that recent AI developments are threatening "characteristic values" of mathematical research, "often in ways that disproportionately affect students and early-career mathematicians, and hence the long term future of the discipline." First, it points out how AI models can "produce plausible but unreliable (or even incorrect) arguments which are difficult to distinguish from correct mathematical proofs." Such developments put reviewers under increasing pressure and are "jeopardizing our ability to implement traditional standards for the correctness, transparency, and independent verifiability of proof," the declaration warns. "Inaccurate AI-generated drafts are cheap to produce, and there is a risk of cluttering the literature with claimed results that are simply wrong," said Leslie Ann Goldberg, head of computer science at the University of Oxford, in a statement. "Once that happens, the errors are likely to propagate as new results are built on faulty foundations." Second, the declaration highlights how "models trained on published works frequently return outputs that do not properly cite the human works they synthesize," while also pointing out that many current AI models were trained on data obtained through "exploiting licenses and access arrangements" or "simply violating copyright protections." Third, the declaration describes how the use of AI "may become incentivized for its own sake, disrupting our mechanisms for hiring, funding and recognition" while leaving out researchers who lack access or are "unwilling to use technologies controlled by organizations whose values they do not share." Fourth, the declaration warns against mathematics research "communicated through informal channels such as press releases or blog posts, often without any research paper or other disclosure of information necessary for scientific evaluation." Such communication strategies can lead to "oversimplification" in media reporting that overemphasizes AI tools' significance at the expense of prior human contributions, and "misleadingly uses specific mathematical tasks as metrics for the general reasoning capacities of commercial products." Fifth, the declaration describes "increasing involvement of technology companies in mathematical research" as threatening the "autonomy of mathematics," especially as university budgets are under pressure and researchers may feel greater professional incentive to collaborate with technology companies on "asymmetric terms." This also raises the risk that mathematics research questions amenable to AI-driven techniques may be prioritized. What can mathematicians do about this? The Leiden Declaration urges them to treat AI as a tool, not a substitute for human responsibility. Individual mathematicians should disclose AI use, remain accountable for the correctness of their work, continue crediting human authors, and use AI tools only when they align with the declaration's values. It also warns that mathematics can be applied to "warfare, oppression, mass surveillance, and the undermining of democracy," so mathematicians should weigh the ethics of tech-industry partnerships carefully. Professional organizations are encouraged to develop AI-use guidelines for publication and review, protect researchers from having their work used as training data without consent, support peer-reviewed publishing, and "actively prepare to become involved if major mathematical results are claimed using unconventional means." For policymakers, the recommendations are blunt: "protect the rights of authors," "regulate the artificial intelligence industry," and "invest in public computational infrastructure." The declaration also urges people to "don't believe the hype," warning that tech companies have "a strong commercial incentive... to overstate the capabilities of their products."
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Jun 2nd 2026, 22:00 by BeauHD
The European Parliament is replacing Google with French search engine Qwant as the default on in-house computers, citing digital sovereignty and privacy concerns. Politico reports: As of Thursday June 4, "Qwant will replace Google as default search engine on European Parliament computers," officials told lawmakers in an email seen by POLITICO. The change is being made "in line with the Parliament's commitment to digital sovereignty and the protection of users' personal data." The search-engine switch comes as Brussels doubles down on its push for âoetech sovereignty.â The European Commission will on Wednesday unveil its long-awaited tech sovereignty package aimed at reducing dependence on foreign technology providers and boosting European alternatives. The email described Qwant as a "privacy-focused European search engine" designed to avoid tracking users or collecting personal data. Founded in 2013, Qwant markets itself as a privacy-first alternative to Google. Searches conducted through the address bar in Firefox and Edge browsers will automatically be routed through Qwant, although lawmakers will remain free to use competing search engines or change their default settings.
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Jun 2nd 2026, 21:00 by BeauHD
Russia's FSB claims foreign intelligence services compromised smartphones belonging to senior Russian officials, allegedly turning them into surveillance devices capable of stealing data, recording conversations, and activating microphones or cameras. "This software is used to steal existing data, eavesdrop on ongoing conversations, and conduct covert acoustic and video monitoring of the environment near electronic devices, all aimed at obtaining sensitive information," the FSB said. The Register reports: The agency said it had opened a criminal investigation into illegal access to computer information and the distribution of malicious software. It did not identify the alleged intelligence service responsible, disclose how many officials were affected, name the malware involved, or provide any technical indicators that would allow independent verification of the claims. As things stand, the FSB has revealed the accusation but not the proof.
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Jun 2nd 2026, 20:00 by BeauHD
Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac will reportedly drop into "reduced functionality mode" on July 13, 2026, when a license-validation certificate expires, leaving perpetually licensed apps able to open files but not edit or save them. Slashdot reader joshuark shares a report from OSnews: "Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion (2026) is a scheduled remote degradation of perpetually-licensed Microsoft Office software for macOS and iOS, set for July 13, 2026 when a license-validation certificate used by the Office apps expires," reports the Consumer Rights Wiki. "After Office 2019 for Mac reached end of support in October 2023, Microsoft assured customers their installed apps would 'continue to function.' The July 13, 2026 conversion instead drops the apps into a Microsoft-defined 'reduced functionality mode,' in which files can be opened and viewed but not edited or saved. By May 30, 2026, the original 2023 end-of-support page had been re-dated and rewritten on Microsoft's site; the 'continue to function' clause was removed." Microsoft's advice to the users they're stealing from is to keep using the applications as mere viewers, switch to the free Office 365 web applications, pay for a 365 subscription, or buy a brand new regular copy of Office 2024. None of these make any sense, and clearly, all of this should be illegal, but it's not because the software industry is a clown show.
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Jun 2nd 2026, 19:00 by BeauHD
Microsoft has unveiled Scout, an experimental always-on AI "autopilot" agent for Microsoft 365 that can operate across Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, calendars, contacts, browsers, and external apps via MCP. "Autopilots stay active in the background, understand how work gets done across your apps and systems, and take action without needing to be prompted each time," said Omar Shahine, a Microsoft veteran who recently announced he is leading a new team to bring OpenClaw-based personal assistants to Microsoft 365 apps. Computerworld reports: Shahine said Scout can reduce mundane tasks that office workers face, such as coordinating and scheduling meeting times with colleagues, or blocking times in a user's calendar based on upcoming work commitments. "It can also spot risks, like stalled decisions, so you can address them before they become blockers," he said. It's available as an "experimental release" to customers of the company's Frontier program, Microsoft said, and will require Intune policy configuration and "opt-in attestation." [...] It's not clear whether Scout will be included in Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions or charged separately. Microsoft did not immediately provide additional details about pricing.
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Jun 2nd 2026, 18:00 by BeauHD
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order asking artificial intelligence companies to provide models to the federal government to assess their capabilities ahead of a full release. The order asks companies, on a voluntary basis, to participate in a benchmarking process to assess a model's "advanced cyber capabilities" and determine whether it should be considered a "covered frontier model." It then asks for access to those models up to 30 days before the companies plan to release them more broadly, and enables the government to help select the "trusted partners" that will receive early access. "Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models," the order said. Trump signed the order in private, just weeks after he postponed a signing ceremony with prominent tech CEOs because he "didn't like certain aspects of it," he told reporters at the time. [...] Trump's AI order outlines several timeframes to develop directives and other guidance, specifically calling on the Department of Defense to prioritize the cyber defense of its information systems.
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Jun 2nd 2026, 17:00 by BeauHD
Longtime Slashdot reader Matt_Bennett shares a blog post from Adafruit: Adafruit received at 10:38 p.m. ET on May 22, 2026 a letter from former FBI chief of staff, Jonathan F. Lenzner, and partner at Fenwick & West LLP, counsel for Flux, demanding, among other things, that Adafruit refrain from publishing an article addressing what the letter characterizes as false and potentially defamatory claims about Flux, including statements about Flux's intellectual property, commercial traction and user base. The letter further asserts claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Adafruit accessed only information that Flux's own systems made publicly available through a server misconfiguration. Adafruit's reporting concerns a matter of public security interest and was conducted in the ordinary course of responsible disclosure. Although Adafruit vigorously rejects the assertions made in Flux's May 22, 2026 demand letter, we have temporarily stopped publishing on the Adafruit blog while we consider our response and next steps. We will update the community as appropriate. For context, Adafruit is a major open-source hardware company and electronics retailer known for its maker-focused boards, components, tutorials, and community publishing. Flux.ai is relevant because it is building an AI-assisted circuit-board design platform aimed at changing how engineers create and collaborate on PCB designs. "Adafruit probably did a review of AI PCB tools," writes HN user karmicthreat. "I've used Flux.ai before; it was a pretty bad experience. After about 50-100$ in tokens a couple of times, I couldn't get more than a couple of simple components on the schematic. And not in sensible positions..." Redditor AlexTaradox adds: "Nothing was published as far as I know. I assume they did review of AI tools and likely contacted flux with some preliminary results, but flux saw where it is going and decided to block them from publishing any results. Flux is garbage and they obviously know it, but they need to hold for some time until some other scam acquires them. Doing anything with them is just asking to be screwed..." Further discussions are taking place on Reddit and Hacker News.
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