An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple rejected overtures by Meta Platforms to integrate the social networking company's AI chatbot into the iPhone months ago, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The two companies aren't in discussions about using Meta's Llama chatbot in an AI partnership and only held brief talks in March, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. The dialogue about a partnership didn't reach any formal stage, and Apple has no active plans to integrate Llama.

[...] Apple decided not to move forward with formal Meta discussions in part because it doesn't see that company's privacy practices as stringent enough, according to the people. Apple has spent years criticizing Meta's technology, and integrating Llama into the iPhone would have been a stark about-face.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A 911 vendor's malfunctioning firewall caused a statewide outage in the emergency calling system in Massachusetts on Tuesday afternoon, the state government said. A Massachusetts government press release issued yesterday said the state's 911 vendor, Comtech, "has advised State 911 that they have applied a technical solution to ensure that this does not happen again." "A preliminary investigation conducted by the State 911 Department and Comtech determined that the outage was the result of a firewall, a safety feature that provides protection against cyberattacks and hacking," the announcement said. "The firewall prevented calls from getting to the 911 dispatch centers, also known as Public Safety Answer Points (PSAPs)."

Comtech's initial review "confirmed that the interruption was not the result of a cyberattack or hack," but "the exact reason the firewall stopped calls from reaching dispatch centers remains under review," the state said. A full review is continuing. The 911 outage lasted two hours. Shortly after it began, the State 911 Department alerted local law enforcement and issued a statewide emergency alert to residents advising them to call their local public safety business line directly if they had an emergency. "Although some calls may not have gone through, the system allows dispatch centers to identify the phone number of callers and return those calls. The Department has not received any reports of emergencies impacted during the interruption," the Massachusetts announcement said. State 911 Department Executive Director Frank Pozniak promised that the department "will take all necessary steps to prevent a future occurrence." Massachusetts has 204 Public Safety Answering Points that received an average of 8,800 calls, combined, per day in 2023. In case of a 911 outage, an internet user recommends everyone save their local dispatch number in their contacts. You can also use these methods to reach emergency services:

- Call the non-emergency police line in your area.
- Use alternative numbers to reach first responders, such as the direct line to the local police or county sheriff's office.
- Use a landline, Wi-Fi calling or another cell carrier if a cellular service issue is responsible for the 911 outage.
- Send a text to 911, if the service is available in your area. The Federal Trade Commission (FCC) provides a list of areas currently supporting Text-to-911 on its website.

If calls from landlines to 911 and their non-emergency hotline are not working, police departments can still see the numbers of those who called from cell phones and call them back as soon as possible, notes WTOL.

Nvidia has become the U.S.'s most valuable listed company, riding the wave of the AI revolution that brings back memories of one from earlier this century. The last time a big provider of computing infrastructure was the most valuable U.S. company was in March 2000, when networking-equipment company Cisco took that spot at the height of the dot-com boom.

Former Cisco CEO John Chambers, who led the company during the dot-com boom, said the implications of AI are larger than the internet and cloud computing combined, but the dynamics differ. "The implications in terms of the size of the market opportunity is that of the internet and cloud computing combined," he told WSJ. "The speed of change is different, the size of the market is different, the stage when the most valuable company was reached is different." The story adds: Chambers said [Nvidia CEO] Huang was working from a different playbook than Cisco but was facing some similar challenges. Nvidia has a dominant market share, much like Cisco did with its products as the internet grew, and is also fending off rising competition. Also like Nvidia, Cisco benefited from investments before the industry became profitable. "We were absolutely in the right spot at the right time, and we knew it, and we went for it," Chambers said.

A Zillow listing for a $2.4 million house in a Dallas suburb is grabbing attention for its 5,786-square-foot data center with immersion cooling tanks, massive server racks, and two separate power grids. Tom's Hardware reports: With a brick exterior, cute paving, and mini-McMansion arch stylings, the building certainly looks to be a residential home for the archetypal Texas family. Prospective home-buyers will thus be disappointed by the 0 bedroom, 1 bathroom setup, which becomes a warehouse-feeling office from the first step inside where you are met with a glass-shielded reception desk in a white-brick corridor. The "Crypto Collective" branding betrays the former life of the unit, which served admirably as a crypto mining base.

The purchase of the "upgraded turnkey Tier 2 Data Center" will include all of its cooling and power infrastructure. Three Engineered Fluids "SLICTanks," single-phase liquid immersion cooling tanks for use with dielectric coolant, will come with pumps and a 500kW dry cooler. The tanks are currently filled with at least 80 mining computers visible from the photos, though the SLICTanks can be configured to fit more machines. Also visible in proximity to the cooling array is a deep row of classic server racks and a staggering amount of networking.

The listing advertises a host of potential uses for future customers, from "AI services, cloud hosting, traditional data center, servers or even Bitcoin Mining". Also packed into the 5,786 square feet of real estate is two separate power grids, 5 HVAC units, a hefty amount of four levels of warehouse-style storage aisles, a lounge/office space, and a fully-paved backyard. In other good news, its future corporate residents will not have an HOA to deal with, and will only be 20 minutes outside of the heart of Dallas, sitting just out of earshot of two major highways.

A report from BleepingComputer notes that ASUS "has released a new firmware update that addresses a vulnerability impacting seven router models that allow remote attackers to log in to devices." But there's more bad news: Taiwan's CERT has also informed the public about CVE-2024-3912 in a post yesterday, which is a critical (9.8) arbitrary firmware upload vulnerability allowing unauthenticated, remote attackers to execute system commands on the device. The flaw impacts multiple ASUS router models, but not all will be getting security updates due to them having reached their end-of-life (EoL).

Finally, ASUS announced an update to Download Master, a utility used on ASUS routers that enables users to manage and download files directly to a connected USB storage device via torrent, HTTP, or FTP. The newly released Download Master version 3.1.0.114 addresses five medium to high-severity issues concerning arbitrary file upload, OS command injection, buffer overflow, reflected XSS, and stored XSS problems.

Liam Proven reports via The Register: The latest version of the systemd init system is out, with the openly confrontational tag line: "Available soon in your nearest distro, now with 42 percent less Unix philosophy." As Lennart Poettering's announcement points out, this is the first version of systemd whose version number is a nine-bit value. Version 256, as usual, brings in a broad assortment of new features, but also turns off some older features that are now considered deprecated. For instance, it won't run under cgroups version 1 unless forced.

Around since 2008, cgroups is a Linux kernel containerization mechanism originally donated by Google, as The Reg noted a decade ago. Cgroups v2 was merged in 2016 so this isn't a radical change. System V service scripts are now deprecated too, as is the SystemdOptions EFI variable. Additionally, there are some new commands and options. Some are relatively minor, such as the new systemd-vpick binary, which can automatically select the latest member of versioned directories. Before any OpenVMS admirers get excited, no, Linux does not now support versions on files or directories. Instead, this is a fresh option that uses a formalized versioning system involving: "... paths whose trailing components have the .v/ suffix, pointing to a directory. These components will then automatically look for suitable files inside the directory, do a version comparison and open the newest file found (by version)."

The latest function, which The Reg FOSS desk suspects will ruffle some feathers, is a whole new command, run0, which effectively replaces the sudo command as used in Apple's macOS and in Ubuntu ever since the first release. Agent P introduced the new command in a Mastodon thread. He says that the key benefit is that run0 doesn't need setuid, a basic POSIX function, which, to quote its Linux manual page, "sets the effective user ID of the calling process." [...] Another new command is importctl, which handles importing and exporting both block-level and file-system-level disk images. And there's a new type of system service called a capsule, and "a small new service manager" called systemd-ssh-generator, which lets VMs and containers accept SSH connections so long as systemd can find the sshd binary -- even if no networking is available. The release notes are available here.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports via ZDNet: While Linux and open-source software (OSS) are no longer constantly under intellectual property (IP) attacks, the Open Invention Network (OIN) patent consortium still stands guard over its patents. Now, OIN, the largest patent non-aggression community, has expanded its protection once again by updating its Linux System definition. Covering more than just Linux, the Linux System definition also protects adjacent open-source technologies. In the past, protection was expanded to Android, Kubernetes, and OpenStack. The OIN accomplishes this by providing a shared defensive patent pool of over 3 million patents from over 3,900 community members. OIN members include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and essentially all Linux-based companies.

This latest update extends OIN's existing patent risk mitigation efforts to cloud-native computing and enterprise software. In the cloud computing realm, OIN has added patent coverage for projects such as Istio, Falco, Argo, Grafana, and Spire. For enterprise computing, packages such as Apache Atlas and Apache Solr -- used for data management and search at scale, respectively -- are now protected. The update also enhances patent protection for the Internet of Things (IoT), networking, and automotive technologies. OpenThread and packages such as agl-compositor and kukusa.val have been added to the Linux System definition. In the embedded systems space, OIN has supplemented its coverage of technologies like OpenEmbedded by adding the OpenAMP and Matter, the home IoT standard. OIN has included open hardware development tools such as Edalize, cocotb, Amaranth, and Migen, building upon its existing coverage of hardware design tools like Verilator and FuseSoc.

Keith Bergelt, OIN's CEO, emphasized the importance of this update, stating, "Linux and other open-source software projects continue to accelerate the pace of innovation across a growing number of industries. By design, periodic expansion of OIN's Linux System definition enables OIN to keep pace with OSS's growth." [...] Looking ahead, Bergelt said, "We made this conscious decision not to include AI. It's so dynamic. We wait until we see what AI programs have significant usage and adoption levels." This is how the OIN has always worked. The consortium takes its time to ensure it extends its protection to projects that will be around for the long haul. The OIN practices patent non-aggression in core Linux and adjacent open-source technologies by cross-licensing their Linux System patents to one another on a royalty-free basis. When OIN signees are attacked because of their patents, the OIN can spring into action.

Some artists are jumping ship for the anti-AI portfolio app Cara after Meta began using Instagram content to train its AI models. Fast Company explains: The portfolio app bills itself as a platform that protects artists' images from being used to train AI, and only allowing AI content to be posted if it's clearly labeled. Based on the number of new users the Cara app has garnered over the past few days, there seems to be a need. Between May 31 and June 2, Cara's user base tripled from less than 100,000 to more than 300,000 profiles, skyrocketing to the top of the app store. [...] Cara is a social networking app for creatives, in which users can post images of their artwork, memes, or just their own text-based musings. It shares similarities with major social platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram on a few fronts. Users can access Cara through a mobile app or on a browser. Both options are free to use. The UI itself is like an arts-centric combination of X and Instagram. In fact, some UI elements seem like they were pulled directly from other social media sites. (It's not the most innovative approach, but it is strategic: as a new app, any barriers to potential adoption need to be low).

Cara doesn't train any AI models on its content, nor does it allow third parties to do so. According to Cara's FAQ page, the app aims to protect its users from AI scraping by automatically implementing "NoAI" tags on all of its posts. The website says these tags "are intended to tell AI scrapers not to scrape from Cara." Ultimately, they appear to be html metadata tags that politely ask bad actors not to get up to any funny business, and it's pretty unlikely that they hold any actual legal weight. Cara admits as much, too, warning its users that the tags aren't a "fully comprehensive solution and won't completely prevent dedicated scrapers." With that in mind, Cara assesses the "NoAI" tagging system as a "a necessary first step in building a space that is actually welcoming to artists -- one that respects them as creators and doesn't opt their work into unethical AI scraping without their consent."

In December, Cara launched another tool called Cara Glaze to defend its artists' work against scrapers. (Users can only use it a select number of times.) Glaze, developed by the SAND Lab at University of Chicago, makes it much more difficult for AI models to accurately understand and mimic an artist's personal style. The tool works by learning how AI bots perceive artwork, and then making a set of minimal changes that are invisible to the human eye but confusing to the AI model. The AI bot then has trouble "translating" the art style and generates warped recreations. In the future, Cara also plans to implement Nightshade, another University of Chicago software that helps protect artwork against AI scapers. Nightshade "poisons" AI training data by adding invisible pixels to artwork that can cause AI software to completely misunderstand the image. Beyond establishing shields against data mining, Cara also uses a third party service to detect and moderate any AI artwork that's posted to the site. Non-human artwork is forbidden, unless it's been properly labeled by the poster.

Apple has quietly added a Thread radio to nearly all of its newest iPads, MacBooks, and iMacs. The Verge reports: While the company doesn't list Thread on the specs of any of these products, FCC reports indicate that many of Apple's latest devices have had Thread radios tested for compliance. Generally, you don't test a radio that's not there. We found evidence of Thread testing in the following models: iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) (Wi-Fi + Cellular), iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) (Wi-Fi + Cellular), iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) (Wi-Fi), iPad Air 11-inch (M2) (Wi-Fi + Cellular), iPad Air 13-inch (M2) Wi-Fi, MacBook Air 15-inch (M3), MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3), MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3 Pro or M3 Max), MacBook Pro 16-inch (M3 Pro or M3 Max), iMac (M3, two ports), and iMac (M3, four ports).

The FCC requires manufacturers to list every radio contained in a device and to test them in every possible scenario to make sure they comply with its transmission regulations. Tom Sciorilli, director of certification for Thread Group, told The Verge that the FCC reports reference FCC 15.247, "which confirms the device will essentially 'stay in its lane' and not interfere with other radios when operating." The reports we found are tests of the IEEE 802.15.4 transmitter functionality -- 802.15.4 is the radio standard Thread runs on. While it supports a number of technologies, the reports mention Thread explicitly.

Thread is the primary wireless protocol for the new smart home standard Matter, which Apple helped develop and that is now the underlying architecture for its Apple Home smart home platform. A low-power, low-bandwidth, mesh networking protocol specifically designed for IoT devices, Thread is shown to be faster than Bluetooth and offers better range, making it ideal for connecting products like smart lights, locks, thermostats, and sensors. [...] So why is it there? The Apple Home app runs on Macs and iPads, and Thread radios could allow them to communicate directly with smart home devices and act as Thread border routers. It's possible Apple is planning to turn your Mac or iPad into a home hub, but iPads used to be home hubs, and the company discontinued that capability for its new Apple Home architecture. Those iPads didn't have Thread radios, though.

Meta Platforms withheld information from federal regulators during their original reviews of the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, the US Federal Trade Commission said in a court filing as part of a lawsuit seeking to break up the social networking giant. From a report: In its filing Tuesday, however, the FTC said the case involves "information Meta had in its files and did not provide" during the original reviews. "At Meta's request the FTC undertook only a limited review" of the deals, the agency said. "The FTC now has available vastly more evidence, including pre-acquisition documents Meta did not provide in 2012 and 2014."

Meta said that it met all of its legal obligations during the Instagram and WhatsApp merger reviews. The FTC has failed to provide evidence to support its claims, a spokesperson said. "The evidence instead shows that Meta faces fierce competition and that Meta's significant investment of time and resources in Instagram and WhatsApp has benefited consumers by making the apps into the services millions of users enjoy today for free," spokesperson Chris Sgro said in a statement. "The FTC has done nothing to build its case over the past four years, while Meta has invested billions to build quality products."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The U.S. Department of the Treasury today unveiled sanctions against three Chinese nationals for allegedly operating 911 S5, an online anonymity service that for many years was the easiest and cheapest way to route one's Web traffic through malware-infected computers around the globe. KrebsOnSecurity identified one of the three men in a July 2022 investigation into 911 S5, which was massively hacked and then closed ten days later.

From 2015 to July 2022, 911 S5 sold access to hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Windows computers daily, as "proxies" that allowed customers to route their Internet traffic through PCs in virtually any country or city around the globe -- but predominantly in the United States. 911 built its proxy network mainly by offering "free" virtual private networking (VPN) services. 911's VPN performed largely as advertised for the user -- allowing them to surf the web anonymously -- but it also quietly turned the user's computer into a traffic relay for paying 911 S5 customers. 911 S5's reliability and extremely low prices quickly made it one of the most popular services among denizens of the cybercrime underground, and the service became almost shorthand for connecting to that "last mile" of cybercrime. Namely, the ability to route one's malicious traffic through a computer that is geographically close to the consumer whose stolen credit card is about to be used, or whose bank account is about to be emptied.

In July 2022, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive into 911 S5, which found the people operating this business had a history of encouraging the installation of their proxy malware by any means available. That included paying affiliates to distribute their proxy software by secretly bundling it with other software. That story named Yunhe Wang from Beijing as the apparent owner or manager of the 911 S5 proxy service. In today's Treasury action, Mr. Wang was named as the primary administrator of the botnet that powered 911 S5. Update, May 29, 12:26 p.m. ET: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) just announced they have arrested Wang in connection with the 911 S5 botnet. The DOJ says 911 S5 customers have stolen billions of dollars from financial institutions, credit card issuers, and federal lending programs. [...] The third man sanctioned is Yanni Zheng, a Chinese national the U.S. Treasury says acted as an attorney for Wang and his firm -- Spicy Code Company Limited -- and helped to launder proceeds from the business into real estate holdings. Spicy Code Company was also sanctioned, as well as Wang-controlled properties Tulip Biz Pattaya Group Company Limited, and Lily Suites Company Limited. "911 S5 customers allegedly targeted certain pandemic relief programs," a DOJ statement on the arrest reads. "For example, the United States estimates that 560,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims originated from compromised IP addresses, resulting in a confirmed fraudulent loss exceeding $5.9 billion. Additionally, in evaluating suspected fraud loss to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, the United States estimates that more than 47,000 EIDL applications originated from IP addresses compromised by 911 S5. Millions of dollars more were similarly identified by financial institutions in the United States as loss originating from IP addresses compromised by 911 S5."

"Jingping Liu assisted Yunhe Wang by laundering criminally derived proceeds through bank accounts held in her name that were then utilized to purchase luxury real estate properties for Yunhe Wang," the document continues. "These individuals leveraged their malicious botnet technology to compromise personal devices, enabling cybercriminals to fraudulently secure economic assistance intended for those in need and to terrorize our citizens with bomb threats."

Nvidia reported fiscal first-quarter earnings surpassing expectations with strong forecasts, indicating sustained demand for its AI chips. Following the news, the company's stock rose over 6% in extended trading. Nvidia also said it was splitting its stock 10 to 1. CNBC reports: Nvidia said it expected sales of $28 billion in the current quarter. Wall Street was expecting earnings per share of $5.95 on sales of $26.61 billion, according to LSEG. Nvidia reported net income for the quarter of $14.88 billion, or $5.98 per share, compared with $2.04 billion, or 82 cents, in the year-ago period. [...] Nvidia said its data center category rose 427% from the year-ago quarter to $22.6 billion in revenue. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said in a statement that it was due to shipments of the company's "Hopper" graphics processors, which include the company's H100 GPU.

Nvidia also highlighted strong sales of its networking parts, which are increasingly important as companies build clusters of tens of thousands of chips that need to be connected. Nvidia said that it had $3.2 billion in networking revenue, primarily its Infiniband products, which was over three times higher than last year's sales. Nvidia, before it became the top supplier to big companies building AI, was known primarily as a company making hardware for 3D gaming. The company's gaming revenue was up 18% during the quarter to $2.65 billion, which Nvidia attributed to strong demand.

The company also sells chips for cars and chips for advanced graphics workstations, which remain much smaller than its data center business. The company reported $427 million in professional visualization sales, and $329 million in automotive sales. Nvidia said it bought back $7.7 billion worth of its shares and paid $98 million in dividends during the quarter. Nvidia also said that it's increasing its quarterly cash dividend from 4 cents per share to 10 cents on a pre-split basis. After the split, the dividend will be a penny a share.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt, written by Mike Masnick: If you're a fan of chaos, well, the TikTok ban situation is providing plenty of chaos to follow. Ever since the US government made it clear it was seriously going to move forward with the obviously unconstitutional and counterproductive plan to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok or have the app effectively banned from the U.S., various rich people have been stepping up with promises to buy the app. There was former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin with plans to buy it. Then there was "mean TV investor, who wants you to forget his sketchy history" Kevin O'Leary with his own TikTok buyout plans. I'm sure there have been other rich dudes as well, though strikingly few stories of actual companies interested in purchasing TikTok.

But now there's another billionaire to add to the pile: billionaire real estate/property mogul Frank McCourt (who has had some scandals in his own history) has had an interesting second act over the last few years as a big believer in decentralized social media. He created and funded Project Liberty, which has become deeply involved in a number of efforts to create infrastructure for decentralized social media, including its own Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSTP).

Over the past few years, I've had a few conversations with people involved in Project Liberty and related projects. Their hearts are in the right place in wanting to rethink the internet in a manner that empowers users over big companies, even if I don't always agree with their approach (he also frequently seems to surround himself with all sorts of tech haters, who have somewhat unrealistic visions of the world). Either way, McCourt and Project Liberty have now announced a plan to bid on TikTok. They plan to merge it into his decentralization plans. "Frank McCourt, Founder of Project Liberty and Executive Chairman of McCourt Global, today announced that Project Liberty is organizing a bid to acquire the popular social media platform TikTok in the U.S., with the goal of placing people and data empowerment at the center of the platform's design and purpose," reads a press release from Project Liberty.

"Working in consultation with Guggenheim Securities, the investment banking and capital markets business of Guggenheim Partners, and Kirkland & Ellis, one of the world's largest law firms, as well as world-renowned technologists, academics, community leaders, parents and engaged citizens, this bid for TikTok offers an innovative, alternative vision for the platform's infrastructure -- one that allows people to reclaim agency over their digital identities and data by proposing to migrate the platform to a new digital open-source protocol. In launching the bid, McCourt and his partners are seizing this opportunity to return control and value back into the hands of individuals and provide Americans with a meaningful voice, choice, and stake in the future of the web."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Imagine this: you've "dated" 600 people in San Fransisco without having typed a word to any of them. Instead, a busy little bot has completed the mindless 'getting-to-know-you' chatter on your behalf, and has told you which people you should actually get off the couch to meet. That's the future of dating, according to Whitney Wolfe Herd -- and she'd know. Wolfe Herd is the founder and executive chair of Bumble, a meeting and networking platform that prompted women to make the first move. While the platform has now changed this aspect of its algorithm, Wolfe Herd said the company would always keep its "North Star" in mind: "A safer, kinder digital platform for more healthy and more equitable relationships. "Always putting women in the driver's seat -- not to put men down -- but to actually recalibrate the way we all treat each other."

Like any platform, Bumble is now navigating itself in a world of AI -- which means rethinking how humans will interact with each other in an increasing age of chatbots. Wolfe Herd toldBloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco this week it could streamline the matching process. "If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your [AI] dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge," she told host Emily Chang. "Truly. And then you don't have to talk to 600 people. It will scan all of San Fransisco for you and say: 'These are the three people you really outta meet.'" And forget catch-ups with friends, swapping notes on your love life -- AI can be that metaphorical shoulder to cry on.

Artificial intelligence -- which has seen massive amounts of investment since OpenAI disrupted the market with its ChatGPT large language model -- can help coach individuals on how to date and present themselves in the best light to potential partners. "So, for example, you could in the near future be talking to your AI dating concierge and you could share your insecurities,"Wolfe Herd explained. "'I've just come out of a break-up, I've got commitment issues,' and it could help you train yourself into a better way of thinking about yourself." "Then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people," she added. If these features do indeed come to Bumble in the future, they will impact the experience of millions.

The Register provides a retrospective look at how Microsoft "absorbed the handset division of Nokia" ten years ago, only to kill the unit two years later and write it off as a tax loss. What went wrong? "It was a fatal combination of bad management, a market evolving in ways hidebound people didn't predict, and some really (with a few superb exceptions) terrible products," reports The Register. From the report: Like Nokia, Windows Mobile's popularity peaked in 2007, then started to drop away. The iPhone was the tech item of choice for fashionistas, Blackberry was seen as essential for serious business, and Android -- with Google as its new owner -- was gaining traction. Microsoft by that time had a new CEO in Steve Ballmer, who completely and famously failed to see the shifting sands in the mobile market. He dismissed the iPhone as a threat to what he thought was Windows Mobile's unassailable market position, and was roundly mocked for it. So the scene was set for a mobile standards war, and Steve Ballmer staked his professional pride on winning it. Microsoft recruited Nokia to help out. [...]

Under [Executive VP of Microsoft Stephen Elop's] leadership, a closer working relationship with Microsoft was a given -- but in 2013 Redmond announced it was going the whole hog and buying Nokia's handset business outright for $7.2 billion. The deal was done in April 2014, a decade ago from today. Microsoft also got a ten-year license on Nokia's patents and the option to renew in perpetuity. It also got Elop back, as executive vice president of the Microsoft Devices Group. That meant stepping down as CEO of Nokia, for which he trousered an 18.8 million bonus package -- a payoff the Finnish prime minister at the time called "outrageous." Nokia retained its networking business in Finland. It purchased Siemens' half of the Nokia Siemens Networks joint venture and renamed in Nokia Networks. The Nokia board rolled the dice again on hiring another non-Suomi manager, Rajeev Suri, and this time hit a double D20 in D&D terms.

When Ballmer stepped down from the helm at Microsoft in 2014 -- shortly before the Nokia deal completion -- he left a hot mess to deal with. His plan had been to develop the mobile operating system in conjunction with Windows 10, and Windows Mobile 10 was supposed to be a part of a unified code environment. While Windows 10 on the desktop wasn't a bad operating system, Windows Mobile 10 really was. The promised synergy just didn't happen -- it was power-hungry, clunky, and about as popular as a rattlesnake in a pinata. It was this mess that Satya Nadella faced when he took over the reins. Nadella was never very keen on the phone platform and spent more time in press conferences talking about cricket or the cloud than Microsoft's mobile ambitions. It was clear to all that this really wasn't working. Elop was laid off by Redmond a year later.

It was clear that Windows Mobile wasn't going to work. Android and iOS were drinking Microsoft's milkshake, and Redmond realized the game was up. Microsoft started shedding mobile jobs -- both in Finland and Redmond. While mobile was still publicly touted as the way forward for Microsoft with Ballmer gone, the impetus wasn't there and support for the mobile OS shriveled. In 2015 Microsoft declared it was writing off $7.6 billion on the Phone Hardware division as "goodwill and asset impairment charges" -- $400 million more than it had originally paid for the Finnish firm. Nokia bought European networking giant Alcatel-Lucent in a $16.7 billion deal in 2015. Around the same time, Suri announced a move into tablets, since it had a non-compete agreement with Microsoft on mobiles. Meanwhile a bunch of former Nokia execs who'd fled Elop and Microsoft had started a mobile biz of their own: HMD. It was Finnish, but outsourced production to Foxconn in China, and was planning to make cheapish Android devices. In 2016 Microsoft sold its mobile hardware arm to HMD for an undisclosed -- but probably not large -- sum. Nadella clearly wanted out of the whole business and the Finnish startup concentrated on selling good-enough Android smartphones to Nokia's traditional cheap markets.

A Miami-based CEO will serve over six years in prison for selling counterfeit Cisco equipment to numerous buyers on Amazon and eBay, with some of the shoddy hardware ending up in sensitive US government systems. From a report: On Wednesday, 40-year-old Onur Aksoy was sentenced to six years and six months in prison for raking in at least $100 million from the counterfeit sales. Aksoy committed the fraud from at least 2013 to 2022 -- the year he was arrested -- by buying the fake Cisco equipment from suppliers in China. The counterfeits were then resold as legitimate Cisco products for an estimated retail value of over $1 billion.

"Aksoy sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of counterfeit computer networking equipment that ended up in US hospitals, schools, and highly sensitive military and other governmental systems, including platforms supporting sophisticated US fighter jets and military aircraft," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said in a statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Network security appliances like firewalls are meant to keep hackers out. Instead, digital intruders are increasingly targeting them as the weak link that lets them pillage the very systems those devices are meant to protect. In the case of one hacking campaign over recent months, Cisco is now revealing that its firewalls served as beachheads for sophisticated hackers penetrating multiple government networks around the world. On Wednesday, Cisco warned that its so-called Adaptive Security Appliances -- devices that integrate a firewall and VPN with other security features -- had been targeted by state-sponsored spies who exploited two zero-day vulnerabilities in the networking giant's gear to compromise government targets globally in a hacking campaign it's calling ArcaneDoor.

The hackers behind the intrusions, which Cisco's security division Talos is calling UAT4356 and which Microsoft researchers who contributed to the investigation have named STORM-1849, couldn't be clearly tied to any previous intrusion incidents the companies had tracked. Based on the group's espionage focus and sophistication, however, Cisco says the hacking appeared to be state-sponsored. "This actor utilized bespoke tooling that demonstrated a clear focus on espionage and an in-depth knowledge of the devices that they targeted, hallmarks of a sophisticated state-sponsored actor," a blog post from Cisco's Talos researchers reads. Cisco declined to say which country it believed to be responsible for the intrusions, but sources familiar with the investigation tell WIRED the campaign appears to be aligned with China's state interests.

Cisco says the hacking campaign began as early as November 2023, with the majority of intrusions taking place between December and early January of this year, when it learned of the first victim. "The investigation that followed identified additional victims, all of which involved government networks globally," the company's report reads. In those intrusions, the hackers exploited two newly discovered vulnerabilities in Cisco's ASA products. One, which it's calling Line Dancer, let the hackers run their own malicious code in the memory of the network appliances, allowing them to issue commands to the devices, including the ability to spy on network traffic and steal data. A second vulnerability, which Cisco is calling Line Runner, would allow the hackers' malware to maintain its access to the target devices even when they were rebooted or updated. It's not yet clear if the vulnerabilities served as the initial access points to the victim networks, or how the hackers might have otherwise gained access before exploiting the Cisco appliances. Cisco advises that customers apply its new software updates to patch both vulnerabilities.

A separate advisory (PDF) from the UK's National Cybersecurity Center notes that physically unplugging an ASA device does disrupt the hackers' access. "A hard reboot by pulling the power plug from the Cisco ASA has been confirmed to prevent Line Runner from re-installing itself," the advisory reads.

Longtime Slashdot reader sfraggle writes: Biplane shoot-'em up, Sopwith, is celebrating 40 years today since its first release back in 1984. The game is one of the oldest PC games still in active development today, originating as an MS-DOS game for the original IBM PC. The 40th anniversary site has a detailed history of how the game was written as a tech demo for the now-defunct Imaginet networking system. There is also a video interview with its original authors. "The game involves piloting a Sopwith biplane, attempting to bomb enemy buildings while avoiding fire from enemy planes and various other obstacles," reads the Wiki page. "Sopwith uses four-color CGA graphics and music and sound effects use the PC speaker. A sequel with the same name, but often referred to as Sopwith 2, was released in 1985."

You can play Sopwith in your browser here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: iPerf is a fairly popular cross-platform tool that is used by many to measure network performance and diagnose any potential issues in this area. The open-source utility is maintained by an organization called Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and officially supports Linux, Unix, and Windows. However, Microsoft has now published a detailed blog post explaining why you should not use the latest version, iPerf3, on Windows installations.

Microsoft has highlighted three key reasons to discourage the use of iPerf3 on Windows. The first is that ESnet does not support this version on Windows, and recommends iPerf2 instead. On its website, ESnet has emphasized that CentOS 7 Linux, FreeBSD 11, and macOS 10.12 are the only supported platforms. Another very important reason not to use iPerf3 on Windows is that it does not make native OS calls. Instead, it leverages Cygwin as an emulation layer, which obviously comes with a performance penalty. This alone means that iPerf3 on Windows isn't really an ideal candidate for benchmarking your network. While Microsoft has praised the maintainers who are trying to get iPerf3 to run on Windows via emulation, another flaw with this approach is that some advanced networking options simply aren't available on Windows or may behave in unexpected ways.

At Amazon's annual cloud conference in 2016, the company captured the crowd's attention by driving an 18-wheeler onstage. Andy Jassy, now Amazon's CEO, called it the Snowmobile, and said the company would be using the truck to help customers speedily transfer data to Amazon Web Services facilities. Less than eight years later, the semi is out of commission. From a report: As of March, AWS had removed Snowmobile from its website, and the Amazon unit has stopped offering the service, CNBC has confirmed. The webpage devoted to AWS' "Snow family" of products now directs users to its other data transport services, including the Snowball Edge, a 50-pound suitcase-sized device that can be equipped with fast solid-state drives, and the smaller Snowcone.

An AWS spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company has introduced more cost-effective options for moving data. Clients had to deal with power, cooling, networking, parking and security when they used the Snowmobile service, the spokesperson said.