SlashdotNews for nerds, stuff that matters
7 Oct 2026, 03:30 by BeauHD
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung says there are signs AI models may have been used in recent cyberattacks against several major banks. "In some hacking incidents, signs have emerged of AI being used, causing considerable public concern and anxiety," Lee said during a cabinet meeting. "Please establish the circumstances swiftly and clearly, and concentrate personnel and resources on minimizing the damage." Reuters reports: South Korea's police have launched a full-scale investigation into the hacking attacks against commercial banks that led to a breach of customers' personal information, the Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday. Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and others had reported cyberattacks, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said on Friday, while Yonhap reported that Hana Bank and Woori Bank also suffered breaches. Authorities have not yet disclosed details on what kind of AI tools were used in the hacking incidents or the full scale of the breaches. On Sunday, FSC Chairman Lee Eog-weon convened an emergency meeting with financial industry associations, regulators and executives from affected institutions, warning that the sector must respond with the highest level of vigilance. Financial watchdog the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and the Financial Security Institute shared data about 28 unique IP addresses and some country information linked to the recent hacking attempts with the financial sector, the FSS said on Tuesday.
 
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6 Oct 2026, 23:00 by BeauHD
"With the push to eliminate the twice yearly clock change, Permanent Daylight Savings Time has emerged as the favorite for most states and provinces," writes longtime Slashdot reader kbahey, sharing the findings from a recent analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Sci.News reports: "Ending the clock change solves one problem, but it creates another decision: which time should we live on year-round?" said University of British Columbia's Professor Raymond Lam, lead author of the study. "The health evidence points to standard time, largely because morning light matters for our body clocks, sleep, and mood." Professor Lam and colleagues examined the health consequences of the two possible permanent systems rather than the broader question of whether seasonal clock changes should be abolished. They concluded that the accumulated evidence favors permanent standard time, which keeps the clock more closely aligned with human circadian biology. This distinction, according to the team, becomes particularly important during winter. Permanent daylight saving time would push sunrise an hour later. In cities such as Toronto, for example, the latest winter sunrise would occur at 8:51 a.m., compared with 7:51 a.m. under permanent standard time. In Calgary, the corresponding times would be 9:40 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. The extra hour of morning darkness could leave people traveling to work or school before sunrise, while shifting more daylight into the evening. The change could have consequences for sleep, mood, learning and productivity, particularly among people who already have difficulty sleeping or who must follow early schedules. The reason is rooted in the body's internal clock. "Our biological clocks need morning light to stay synchronized with the 24-hour day," said Simon Fraser University's Professor Ralph Mistlberger, co-author of the study. "Permanent daylight saving time moves that light an hour later just when winter mornings are already darkest." The analysis also highlights concerns about seasonal depression. [...] By delaying natural morning light, permanent daylight saving time would act in the opposite direction, potentially weakening an important circadian signal.
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6 Oct 2026, 22:00 by BeauHD
HubSpot is cutting about 7% of its workforce, or roughly 660 employees, as it restructures into what CEO Yamini Rangan described as a "flatter organization" with fewer management layers. Rangan said the layoffs were "not driven by AI-related efficiencies," though AI remains central to HubSpot's strategy as the company adjusts its organization around AI-driven customer outcomes. Fast Company reports: The layoffs come as investors have spent months questioning whether AI will reduce the need for businesses to pay for software like HubSpot's, a fear dubbed the "SaaSpocalypse." HubSpot's platform helps companies manage their customers, sales, and marketing. The company was removed from the FTSE All-World Index (USD) last month after a decline in its stock price, a report from Simply Wall St noted. The stock is down more than 43% this year as of this writing. Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, explicitly told employees in a memo that the layoffs were "not driven by AI-related efficiencies." Rather, the aim was to focus on "aligning our organization with our strategy and how we need to operate going forward," Rangan wrote. She added that the goal is to "build a flatter organization with fewer layers" by cutting back on management. Still, artificial intelligence has been central to the company's concerns. In August, Rangan blamed AI for why the company "got off to a slow start" in April as HubSpot was trying to adjust its product and pricing. "We're in the middle of a real transition to AI, and we are making deliberate choices to lead in it," she said on an earnings call. The restructuring is estimated to cost between $65 and $75 million, mostly in severance packages. The company said that laid-off employees will receive 20 weeks of base pay, one week per year of service (capped at 30 weeks), five months of COBRA and Modern Health healthcare benefits, and they will be allowed to keep their laptops.
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6 Oct 2026, 21:00 by BeauHD
Amazon has removed Alexa voice control for the 3.5mm aux input on several older Echo speakers, meaning users can no longer ask Alexa to play or pause audio coming through the wired connection. It's unclear why the feature was removed. The Verge reports: Ars Technica points to this Reddit poster claiming they received a message from Amazon and says an unnamed spokesperson confirmed the change. When contacted by The Verge, Amazon did not provide an on-the-record statement. The message does not include any explanation for why the feature was removed. It also doesn't mention any changes to audio output functionality like connecting an external speaker to an Echo Dot, and it appears that control of the port from within the app's settings menu still works.
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6 Oct 2026, 20:00 by BeauHD
ASOS says hackers gained unauthorized access to third-party platforms it uses and sent an "ASOS HACKED" push notification directly to customers, apparently as part of an extortion attempt. The clothing and beauty store says some basic personal information may have been accessed but does not believe payment-card data or passwords were affected. The BBC reports: In an email to customers on Tuesday night, the company apologized and urged customers not to engage with the notification. And it said the website and app are "operating as usual" promising customers they can "shop with confidence" while it investigates the incident. The company has not as of yet informed the UK's data watchdog, the Information Commission's Office (ICO), about any breach. Exactly how many Asos customers received the notification on Tuesday remains unclear, but Google's Play store says the ASOS app has been downloaded to android devices more than 10 million times. The British retailer has a substantial global footprint -- serving around 17 million customers each year across more than 150 markets. Some Asos app users in Australia, France, Sweden and the Republic of Ireland had also received the notification, according to local reports on Tuesday. [...] Users of the Asos app appeared to have received the alarming notification at around 10:00 BST on Tuesday. Headlined "ASOS HACKED" and addressed to the company's data protection officer and IT teams, it said: "We have fully compromised the Snowflake instance." "Engage with us, or we will leak it," it added, before linking to a Telegram channel. The message left many ASOS customers confused. [...] Meanwhile Snowflake -- whose tools are used by dozens of firms to collect, analyze and store data -- told the BBC its investigation was ongoing, but it had so far found "no compromise" of its platform.
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6 Oct 2026, 19:00 by BeauHD
IBM and Red Hat say their AI-powered Lightwell initiative has identified and helped remediate more than 400 previously unknown vulnerabilities across widely used Java libraries. Phoronix reports: They announced this feat today as part of their promoting Lightwell Clearinghouse to GA, which is an enterprise service for their customers to submit open-source software dependencies for priority review and remediation. From today's announcement: "The milestone addresses a growing business risk. As autonomous AI agents become capable of combining several lower-risk software weaknesses into a more serious attack, companies need to do more than identify vulnerabilities. They need a practical way to develop, test and deploy fixes in the software that supports critical applications."
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6 Oct 2026, 18:00 by BeauHD
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: VMware customers face multiple obstacles as they rethink their virtualization strategy to reduce dependence on VMware. Today, Rimini Street published its "2026 IT Virtualization Survey -- What's Next for VMware Users." The survey examined 300 organizations worldwide that use VMware. Notably, Rimini sells third-party support for VMware and other software, including Oracle and SAP. That means there's an incentive for Rimini to portray VMware users as experiencing obstacles. However, the survey was also conducted by a third-party research company, Unisphere Research, and the results align with other recent reports about VMware customers. For example, 90 percent of participants in Rimini's survey said they're exploring VMware alternatives due to VMware's higher licensing costs, while 54 percent pointed to Broadcom killing support for perpetual license holders. Since Broadcom took over VMware, customers have said that their VMware costs increased by as much as 1,000 percent, with many more pointing to more modest price hikes of around 100 to 300 percent. In Rimini's survey, 73 percent of participants pointed to cost savings as a top priority in their virtualization roadmap decisions. In today's announcement, Rimini pointed to "significant barriers to progress" for organizations exploring virtualization options, with the most cited barriers being operational complexity (named by 40 percent of respondents), multi-vendor management challenges (38 percent), securing the increased attack surface (37 percent), and team skills requirements (37 percent). "These findings suggest that while organizations are actively pursuing change, they are also looking for ways to reduce risk and avoid unnecessary disruption," Rimini's announcement said. [...] Rimini reported that 60 percent of the organizations it surveyed are considering a multi-hypervisor strategy, which is indicative of "growing interest in more flexible, mixed environments that support both operational and financial goals." "In addition, 47 percent are favoring a hybrid IT virtualization environment consisting of hypervisors and containers for 'best of both worlds' workload placement," the announcement said. Rimini noted that 48 percent of respondents aren't planning to move any of their assets to VMware's hybrid cloud platform, Cloud Foundation.
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6 Oct 2026, 17:00 by BeauHD
Mistral has unveiled Mistral Large 4, or "le Chonk," a 1-trillion-parameter model that it says is the strongest open-weight AI model developed outside China by a wide margin. The model is entering preview for developers, cybersecurity teams and governments before a broader release later this month. CNBC reports: ML4 was trained on 4,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs over two months that were deployed in Mistral's own data centers in Europe. When its core parameters are released, ML4 will rank among the top open-weight models globally on aggregate benchmark performance, Mistral said in a statement. The company added that ML4 was the strongest open-weight model developed outside China by a "substantial margin." The new model still lags behind the frontier in areas such as coding. "The model capabilities will further improve as we scale up our training capacity, following our Series D fundraise," said Guillaume Lample, co-founder and chief scientist of Mistral. "Further, the cyber defense capabilities will enable enterprises and governments to defend themselves against threat actors that are jailbreaking closed models to perform cyber attacks," he added. Further reading: Mistral CEO Says US AI Safety Debate Masks Competitors' 'Negligence'
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