Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes: FireFox 153 was released today. The most important user-facing changes are improvements to PDF handling (you can now merge PDFs and add images to them), and HDR video playback (on Windows, provided HDR is active systemwide). Other under-the-hood changes include browser-wide containers and QWAC support. The full list is in the change notes.

But the most important feature is that this version is an ESR and, therefore, defines the ESR feature set for the next year. Why is being an ESR so important, you ask?

1.) ESR, rather than "normal" (a.k.a. Rapid Release), Firefox is the out-of-the-box browser for many important distros, including Debian, RHEL, Kali, Tails, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Slackware, and others.

2.) Many organizations, large and small, standardize on Firefox ESR as their default browser, regardless of the default browser included with their OS.

3.) Firefox ESR is the basis for many downstream projects, such as Waterfox and KaiOS. All these projects will inherit, for a year, whatever ESR brings to the table today.

4.) Many ISVs and SaaS providers, if they certify their wares for Firefox at all, certify for the ESR version only.

Please note that ESR 153 will not be offered as an automatic update until two months from now (ESR 140 will still be supported). If you want it now, you will need to download and install it manually.

Also of note, ESR 115 will be supported until March 2027. If you use an unsupported version of macOS or Windows (like Windows 7 or 8.x), this is the version to get. However, even Mozilla cautions against running a supported browser on an unsupported OS: "Note that Microsoft ended official support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 in January 2023. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and have known vulnerabilities. Without official support from Microsoft, maintaining Firefox for outdated operating systems becomes costly for Mozilla and risky for users."

BrianFagioli writes: Canonical has launched the Enterprise Store as part of Ubuntu Pro, giving organizations a way to manage Ubuntu software distribution in restricted networks, behind firewalls, and in air gapped environments. The on premises proxy sits between devices and Canonical software stores, allowing companies to cache downloads, control software revisions, and manage snaps and charms without requiring every system to connect directly to the internet. The Enterprise Store is designed for organizations with strict security requirements, including regulated industries and environments where predictable software updates and audit controls are important.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Hackers are breaking into websites that run vulnerable versions of the popular blogging software WordPress, according to several cybersecurity firms. One estimate puts the number of vulnerable WordPress websites at tens of millions as of Monday. Last week, WordPress patched two critical security flaws, urging people who run its software on their websites to update it "immediately." The vulnerabilities are so severe that WordPress enabled forced updates where possible. Since then, cybersecurity companies Patchstack, Hexastrike, and WatchTowr have all warned that hackers are exploiting the vulnerabilities in the wild, meaning they are taking over websites that are still running susceptible versions of WordPress.

It's unclear how many WordPress-powered websites on the internet are at risk, but it's possible to make some educated guesses. The vulnerable versions of WordPress are 6.9.0 through 6.9.4, and 7.0.0 to 7.0.1. According to WordPress' official stats, there are more than 400 million websites that run those flawed versions, although these statistics likely don't reflect websites that have recently been patched. Cybersecurity consultant Daniel Card, who told TechCrunch that he looked at a sample of around 3,500 WordPress websites, estimates that less than 15% are vulnerable. Applying Card's projection across the total population of WordPress websites on the internet, the total figure would still be around 90 million. [...] One of the critical WordPress bugs was found and reported by Adam Kues of cybersecurity firm Searchlight Cyber, which dubbed it WP2Shell. Paired with the other bug, hackers can take full remote control of vulnerable websites.

A hacker reportedly wiped Romania's entire land registry database after a failed extortion attempt, halting property transactions across the country and preventing notaries from issuing land extracts, authenticating sales, or registering mortgages. "On the dark web, the hacker also boasted to have begun backup copies of stolen data in an attempt to prevent it from being restored," reports Cybernews. "However, Romanian officials have managed to at least restore the ANCPI's website and post a message saying they were rebuilding the agency's entire network from scratch. It appears that the agency has an offline copy of the wiped data." From the report: First, the hacker breached Romania's cadastre agency, the National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Advertising (ANCPI), posting on a hacking forum: "[RO] Thy arss shall be spanked, Romania! [ANCPI]." "In addition to the data of Romanian citizens, from various databases collected through ANCPI networks, there is also a copy of the GitLab servers containing the source code of all their systems, such as Eterra, RENNS, as well as a version of my little ransomware program," the announcement continued.

"The official government website announced a shutdown of IT systems due to 'technical problems,' but this is a bit of an understatement. An offer of assistance was made, but without insistence or pressure." Indeed, the ANCPI initially claimed technical issues but had to admit it was facing a cyberattack. Today, no one can really access the institution's systems. And since the extortion didn't work, the hacker -- who seems to have entered the database using valid credentials -- deleted all data they had stolen, including internal documents, employee credentials, and, of course, land registry data.

The Washington Post describes a mid-tier executive at Meta as one of Silicon Valley's "winners" whose financial security suddenly "evaporated" as their workforce "pushed headlong into AI and heavy job cuts," creating a transformed job market. "Her ex-husband, a designer at Meta who was laid off in 2020, eventually gave up looking for jobs in his profession. He now lifts boxes at a warehouse." Layoffs.fyi, which tracks announced job cuts, counts more than 800,000 tech workers laid off since 2022, including large staff reductions in recent months at Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon... "There's this whole tranche of people who've been quite used to being among the most upwardly mobile in society who are all of a sudden saying, 'Now I'm the guy on the streetâs'" said Oliver Raskin, who founded Silicon Valley market research consultancy Signalcraft Insights and has surveyed attitudes in the tech labor force... "The rise of AI, especially, is bound to change the workplace radically," [said Georgetown University historian Joseph McCartin]. "But the way it's going to happen is similar to how technology transformed the auto industry." Ruth Milkman, a labor sociologist at the City University of New York, said that technology workers are getting a dose of what workers in other industries have long complained about: jobs that feel unsteady or rob them of autonomy. "Low-wage workers are used to it," she said...

Many layoffs at technology companies are probably a hangover effect from over-hiring in prior years, experts say. And they don't account for a spotty recent increase in hiring in the information industry, which includes employment of software developers and jobs in media and entertainment. Digging deeper, though, some economists say there are signs that Silicon Valley and other technology-reliant parts of the American economy have reached a turning point where they are growing without needing as many people. The notion was encapsulated in a recent talk that ricocheted through group chats across the tech industry: In it, a partner at the start-up incubator Y Combinator heralded a new generation of AI-first companies that will only need human labor for "novel situations," "ethical considerations" and "high-stakes moments."

Gad Levanon, chief economist at the labor research nonprofit Burning Glass Institute, said that the number of hours worked in the information sector has dipped since 2022, while the sector's economic output has increased by about 8 percent a year — more than three times the overall growth rate of the U.S. economy. He says the data reveals a sea change in industries, including technology and finance, toward doing more work with the same or fewer people — one that is spreading to other professional classes. "That's the new reality for white-collar and tech-exposed work: output up, headcount flat or down," Levanon said...

Raskin, who has worked in the tech world since the late '90s, said that even though the current moment feels unsettling to many, he's hopeful that it's an early chapter in an evolving story. "It's happened many times before," he said, "that something implodes and all these people lose jobs, but then that talent gets cycled into whatever the next thing is — into a new wave of prosperity."
In the article tech entrepreneur Anil Dash quips that Silicon Valley techies are "are guinea pigs for what tech dudes want to do to everyone."

Windows 10 still runs on 16.9% of the Windows devices monitored by asset-tracking service Lansweeper. That's more than one in six, The Register points out. A year ago, the operating system accounted for about half of the machines in its dataset, falling to the low-to-mid 40% range by the time Microsoft ended standard support. The decline continued after that, reaching 18.6% in June, but Lansweeper says migration has now slowed to a crawl... Small and medium-sized businesses are particularly exposed. Lansweeper reckons that 21.4% of machines at small and medium-sized business still run Windows 10, with cost usually being the constraint that keeps the legacy operating system running. The exposure is greater in some sectors, with 23% of healthcare and pharmaceutical systems sticking with Windows 10, while consumer and retail devices hover at 22.7%.

According to Lansweeper's data, "a Windows 10 device carries an average of 1,903 active CVEs against 652 on Windows 11. That's a 2.9x gap." Esben Dochy, principal technical evangelist at the company, told The Register that "the Windows 10 average also includes devices that have Extended Security Update patches applied." [According to Lansweeper's figures, 14% of Windows 10 assets have applied Extended Security Update patches.] Part of the problem, according to Lansweeper, is "patch diffing," in which Windows 11 fixes can be reverse-engineered to find flaws in Windows 10. "The supported OS effectively hands attackers a map into the unsupported one," Lansweeper said...

Looking at other market share measures such as Statcounter, there was little change in the share of Windows 10 and its successor over the last few months after a surge following the end of support. As Lansweeper noted: "The easy migrations are done. What's left is the hard core: devices that haven't moved because they can't or won't."
Lansweeper's evangelist noted that in some cases there is no Windows 11-certified version yet for many medical devices and industrial or retail systems.

CNBC reports: The automotive industry's increasing use of over-the-air technology to update vehicle systems makes it more susceptible to cyberattacks, analysts say, urging more intervention in the sector... Its use represents "a unique national security concern," Gabriel Lim, senior analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told CNBC. "Aside from data privacy concerns, the potential of a foreign actor sabotaging the controls of a moving vehicle is a possibility that countries like Norway, Denmark, and Britain have expressed concerns about," Lim added.

In May, the American Enterprise Institute warned that safeguarding the automotive sector was crucial to limit foreign governments' espionage capabilities. "To protect against foreign espionage threats, the US should consider additional security reviews, implement restrictions on certain foreign-made hardware and software in vehicles, and mandate increased data-collection disclosures," the report said. The concerns come as real-life tests reveal vulnerabilities. Late last year, Norwegian bus company Ruter conducted tests on two buses and found that one had potential risks linked to OTA technology. "There is access to the control system for battery and power supply via mobile network through a Romanian SIM card. In theory, therefore, this bus can be stopped or rendered inoperable by the manufacturer," the company said. The investigation by Ruter then sparked the U.K. and Denmark to conduct their own investigations...

While these investigations were conducted on buses made by Chinese firm Yutong, [Siraj Ahmed Shaikh, systems security professor at the UK's Swansea University] said the issue goes beyond one manufacturer or country, as the technology becomes more pervasive. "Other sectors adopting OTA include other transport modes [such as] maritime and rail, aerospace (particularly drones), industrial machinery and robotics," he said.

Elon Musk confirmed SpaceX has open sourced the Grok Build CLI this week, reports The Register, "just days after researchers caught the AI tool scooping up users' entire repositories and uploading them to company-controlled cloud storage."

That discovery had "gathered so much negative attention that Elon Musk felt compelled to issue a public statement alongside SpaceX, and its technical staff, promising to delete all data that Grok Build has ever stored and give users more choice over how their data is handled." SpaceXAI's data grab was first publicized Sunday [July 12] by Cereblab, who probed Grok Build traffic and found that repos were being packaged up as Git Bundles and beamed to Google Cloud storage... [Elon Musk] said SpaceX would open-source Grok Build to sow greater trust in the product, after the codebase was audited for security vulnerabilities... ["Open-sourcing Grok Build allows anyone to support making a reliable and robust harness," SpaceX posted on X.com. "Check out our code, including the Git repo for the Grok Build CLI."]

In a separate statement accompanying the open source announcement, SpaceX said it has always respected Zero Data Retention (ZDR), which was applied to enterprise customers by default, and acknowledged that data retention was enabled by default for everyone else, which has now been corrected. It said: "In response to user questions about privacy: Since launch, Grok Build has fully respected zero data retention (ZDR). All users have always had the ability to disable data upload in the CLI. When data upload was disabled, this choice was respected. In the early beta, data retention was enabled by default for non-ZDR users. Based on your feedback, we changed this. We are now going further to protect privacy. With all retained data deleted, retention default off, and an open-source harness, we are offering complete user privacy. You can also run Grok Build fully open-sourced and local-first with your own inference.

"We disabled default retention for all Grok Build users starting on July 12th. Additionally, we are deleting all coding data that was previously retained, ensuring every user's preferences are respected. With these steps, Grok Build goes beyond other major coding products to protect user privacy."

SpaceX also invited researchers to probe Grok Build for security issues and report them to its bug bounty program, which offers rewards ranging from $100-$20,000, depending on the severity.
The article notes Simon Willison, creator of Datasette and co-creator of Django, wrote this week that the Grok Build codebase comprises 844,530 lines of Rust code. "There are still remnants of the code that used to upload everything to Google Cloud," Willison writes, "but they seem to have been disabled now."

Elon Musk also posted Wednesday that "Once we have completed our review for security vulnerabilities, we will make the entire codebase of X open source, with no exceptions. Moreover, we will invite third party reviewers to examine the system that is running to confirm that the open source code is what is running."

This week Slashdot reader joshuark found the story of exactly how in 2025 ProPublica reporter Renee Dudley confirmed Microsoft was running tech support for the U.S. Defense Department through China, America's biggest cybersecurity adversary — and how that investigation ultimately changed U.S. government policy.

The reporter first found an ad offering $18 to $28 to hire Americans as "digital escorts" for China-based tech support, then just searched LinkedIn for people who apparently had answered the ad. They discovered that at the time "Behind the scenes, unseen by the users at the U.S. government, it's not just one person who responds," explains ProPublica's podcast. "It's two people... The China-based engineer is the one who knows how to fix the problem. On their end, they produce a block of code to solve it and send it over to the digital escort in the U.S. The digital escort then just copy-pastes it... All of this so that they can follow the government's rule: that you have to be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to handle sensitive data."

But amazingly to confirm it, ProPublica's researcher just had to input "Microsoft" and "escort" into the U.S. Patent Office search bar, and actually found patents related to digital escorts — along with names of the current and former Microsoft employees listed as inventors. Had the government signed off on the practice? "I could see what Microsoft actually told the government," the reporter says on the podcast, "And there was no mention of foreign engineers being used, and definitely no mention of China."

ProPublica's story was published on a Tuesday, according to the podcast, and by Friday "Microsoft said it had stopped using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud systems." And America's Defense Department "also opened up an investigation, looking into whether any of Microsoft's China-based engineers had compromised the government's national security.

In a sign of our times, CNBC's Jim Cramer "said Wednesday that it's time for companies to prove artificial intelligence is paying off," reports CNBC: "I need cold hard return facts," the "Mad Money" host said. "Or, I, too, will grow more skeptical than I am now...." While Cramer said he remains optimistic about the long-term opportunity, he argued the market needs more evidence that those investments are translating into measurable financial returns for customers. Cramer said one of his biggest concerns this earnings season is that companies adopting AI have largely failed to point to meaningful revenue gains or cost savings from the technology. "We're still early in the earnings season but already we are not hearing anything material about the use of AI," he said...

While AI infrastructure companies continue to benefit from the spending boom, Cramer said the same cannot yet be said for many of the businesses buying the technology... Cramer said only a handful of companies, most notably fintech firm Block and web-security provider Cloudflare, have clearly attributed recent layoffs to AI adoption. Block did so in February, while Cloudflare's job cuts were disclosed in May. Plus, critics argue some companies may also cite AI as a buzzy excuse for cuts, leading to the creation of the term "AI washing." Ultimately, Cramer said that if more businesses do not begin reporting tangible returns, the AI skeptics will grow louder, with ramifications for the tech industry's big spenders.

Xi Jinping used his first appearance at China's World AI Conference to promote a vision of low-cost, broadly accessible AI and call for international cooperation rather than technological rivalry. "AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation," he said. Bloomberg reports: His presence at the gathering, attended by scores of tech and government leaders, conveys a potent signal of China's ambitions to dominate a technological sphere with the potential to revolutionize industry and economies -- an effort that's shot to the top of the nation's agenda. Chinese models are winning over companies worldwide, with their share of US firms' AI usage nearing a record 60% on the popular marketplace OpenRouter.

Behind the rhetoric, Beijing is grappling with the balance between openness and national security as models grow more capable. Chinese officials recently discussed with companies including Alibaba -- developer of the popular Qwen models -- how to mitigate the security risks posed by their increasingly powerful models, people familiar with the matter said. The talks are early, with no enforcement planned, but restricting foreign access to top models was among the options raised, the people said. Reuters previously reported that Beijing was weighing curbs on overseas access. Earlier today, the Beijing-based AI company "Moonshot" released a massive new model that reset the AI race overnight, immediately vaulting into the top tier of global AI, beating Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol in front-end coding tests.

The EU is imposing new rules requiring Google to share anonymized search data and open up Android to rival AI companies. "Thanks to these measures, we hope to see emerging alternatives to Google Search and Google's AI services, such as Gemini, and that users in the EU can enjoy greater choice of services," Henna Virkkunen, an executive vice president at the European Commission overseeing tech, said. The Associated Press reports: In issuing the two new rules, the commission said it found that AI agents not made by Google were unable to function on Android phones at the same level as Google's Gemini. Google must now allow voice-activation of these alternative AI agents and enable them to run background tasks like booking restaurants via third-party apps. By January 2027, Google must also begin sharing anonymized search data with some rivals. The commission said the move is meant to level the playing field since Google controls a vast trove of user data that no competitor can match. Google argues the measures could weaken privacy and security by exposing user searches and reducing safeguards around third-party AI assistants. "Europeans' private searches would be exposed to unfamiliar companies, without adequate anonymization of the data and without user knowledge or consent," said Kent Walker, president of global affairs for Google and Alphabet. "This would weaken citizens' privacy, risk business trade secrets, and endanger national security."

OnePlus has confirmed that it will exit the North American and European markets, consolidating its operations under parent company Oppo. Existing customers will continue to receive "software updates, security patches, and applicable support," but OxygenOS will be replaced by Oppo's ColorOS. 9to5Google reports: As a part of its shutdown in global regions, OnePlus has confirmed that its flavor of Android, OxygenOS, is going away. Instead, all active OnePlus devices will be moving over to Oppo's ColorOS starting with their Android 17 updates. This includes in India, where OnePlus is adamant it will continue operations -- reliable reporting disagrees.

OnePlus explains: "As part of an operational adjustment to our software strategy, following the official release of ColorOS 17, users globally with existing OnePlus devices that fall within the eligible upgrade scope will have the option to voluntarily update to the latest ColorOS. This enables us to streamline software development, accelerate update delivery, improve software quality, and make better use of our shared engineering and R&D capabilities."

[...] OnePlus will continue "maintenance support" for OxygenOS versions on older models not included in the Android 17 update scope, but newer devices will likely need to make the switch to ColorOS for all forms of continued support. OnePlus does explain that rollback versions to OxygenOS will be available for those who prefer the prior experience: "OnePlus devices will be able to choose whether to update to the latest ColorOS system. Older models that are not included in the update scope will also continue to receive version maintenance support. If users update to ColorOS, they will be able to roll back to OxygenOS. The specific rollback versions available will be subject to future official announcements."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Big changes are coming to Android apps, but they're not the changes Google wanted. The settlement between Google and Epic that aimed to put to rest the companies' long-running antitrust battle is being withdrawn, and that means third-party app stores are coming to the Play Store. Google has confirmed that it will begin distributing rival app stores next week, setting the stage for competing platforms to take a bite out of Google's Android revenue stream. [...] Google and Epic were set to return to court on July 16 to argue in favor of the settlement. However, the writing may have been on the wall. In a recent expert analysis provided to the court, MIT economics professor Nancy Rose noted that the settlement was "unlikely to enable Google Play's potential competitors to overcome their long-standing network-effect disadvantage in a timely manner."

With settlement approval looking increasingly unlikely, Epic and Google agreed this week to call the whole thing off. Here's how Google Trust and Reputation Communications Lead Dan Jackson explains the company's decision: "We've agreed with Epic to withdraw our motion to modify the US Court's injunction rather than prolonging this process which creates uncertainty for the ecosystem. This allows us to focus on executing our recently announced global business model evolution to deliver greater app store choice, lower prices, and more opportunities for developers and users. We remain committed to maintaining Android's industry-leading security and fostering a competitive ecosystem where every app store and developer has the freedom to compete. In parallel, we continue to comply with the US Court's injunction."

In a brief filing (PDF), Google's legal team informs the court that Google is prepared to begin distributing third-party app stores in Google Play on July 22. Under the terms of Judge Donato's original injunction, these stores will have access to the full catalog of Google Play apps by default. Developers will have the option to opt out of distribution in these stores, and Google has a support page explaining how to do so. Google also has documentation on how app stores can get access to the Google Play catalog. It won't be mirroring those apps in any shady storefront that asks. The court has allowed Google to charge reasonable fees to cover its security and compliance review of third-party stores, which will be $5,000 per year.

Google will also require approved stores to block malware, respect intellectual property, and include mechanisms to update and uninstall apps. App stores can be removed from the program if more than 1 percent of attempted app installs appear to be malware or unwanted software. It's unclear if there will be separate, possibly more stringent requirements for storefront distribution in the Play Store. However, Google is prohibited from unreasonably blocking third-party store clients uploaded to Google Play. The changes Google has announced under the Epic agreement will proceed for now. That means Registered App Stores will happen globally, but they will probably only appear in the Play Store for US users. Google hasn't specified if there will be any differences in the features available to the stores downloaded from Play versus registered stores.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs on Security: Microsoft today released software updates to plug at least 570 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, almost triple the number of vulnerabilities the software giant fixed in its record-smashing Patch Tuesday release last month. Microsoft attributed the burgeoning patch counts to vulnerability discoveries aided by artificial intelligence. Nearly 60 of the bugs quashed in July's Patch Tuesday earned a "critical" severity rating, meaning miscreants or malware could use them to seize remote control over a Windows device with little or no help from the user. Microsoft also addressed three zero-day flaws, including two that are already being exploited in the wild.

Two of the zero-day weaknesses allow an attacker to elevate their user rights on a Windows system, as do approximately 250 other elevation of privilege flaws fixed this month; they include CVE-2026-56155 - an Active Directory Federation Services bug -- and CVE-2026-56164, a Microsoft Sharepoint vulnerability. CVE-2026-50661 is a security feature bypass in Windows BitLocker that could allow attackers to gain access to encrypted data if they have physical access to the device. Microsoft said this bug has been detailed publicly, but that it is not aware of any active exploitation.

In a blog post on July 9, Microsoft Executive Vice President Pavan Davuluri wrote that Windows users will notice "a higher volume of security updates included in each security release" as a result of AI aiding in the discovery of vulnerabilities. "The pace of vulnerability discovery is changing with advances in AI making it possible to find more issues, faster, across more code, with new mechanisms that can accelerate both discovery and analysis," Davuluri wrote.

Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis is calling for a U.S.-led AI standards body to review frontier models for national security risks such as cybersecurity and biological threats. His proposal would create a federally overseen public-private organization, initially voluntary and eventually mandatory for U.S. deployment. CNBC reports: Google DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis, a Nobel laureate, said in an article posted on X on Tuesday that "urgent action" was needed to address risks associated with artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- the point at which AI matches or surpasses human intelligence. "We've already seen the challenges frontier models pose for cybersecurity, and other threats including nuclear and bio risks may soon emerge as capabilities continue to advance," he said.

[...] Hassabis said the U.S. was well positioned to lead in developing an AI framework "given its economic and technical standing." "It could establish a new Standards Body modelled on a federally overseen public-private partnership or self-regulatory organisation, much like the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), with a board that includes independent leading technical experts and open-source representatives," he added. FINRA regulates brokerage firms and exchange markets in the U.S.

The proposed body would need "substantial" funding "in order to attract world-class technical talent and provide the necessary compute resources for large-scale testing," Hassabis said. Funding would "likely" come from industry, he added. Frontier labs would initially voluntarily share models with the body for review up to 30 days before release, before becoming mandatory for deployment in the U.S. market after being shown to be "effective." "Specific agentic AI tests could look for attempts to bypass safety guardrails or signs of deception, and ensure best practices, such as digitally watermarking AI-generated images and generating human-readable output tokens to understand model reasoning," Hassabis said. Further reading: Over 200 Economists Say 'We Must Act Now' On AI's Economic Impact

CISA and allied governments are warning users to secure their routers as Russian state-backed hackers continue compromising the devices and turning them into proxy nodes to disguise attacks against critical infrastructure. The advisory urges users to disable outdated SNMP versions, use strong passwords, update firmware, and turn off unnecessary router services to reduce the risk of being swept into these botnets. Ars Technica reports: "Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Center 16 cyber actors continue to exploit poorly configured and vulnerable networking devices worldwide, opportunistically compromising multiple critical infrastructure sector networks," the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Monday. The hacking groups are tracked under various names, including Berserk Bear, Energetic Bear, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, Ghost Blizzard, and Static Tundra. The advisory was co-issued by governments from around the world, including Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, and the UK.

The primary means of compromise the agency warned about was hackers scanning IP ranges with active Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agents that accept common or default authentication credentials. These scans are run by the very sorts of router botnets the actors are trying to enroll the targeted device in. By sending malicious traffic from spoofed addresses, the hackers can use the SNMP agent on poorly configured routers to run malware. SNMP allows users to collect and organize information about managed networking devices or to modify that information to change device behavior.

With control of a device, the hackers then use it as an exit node when probing or attacking targets in the communications, defense, energy, financial services, and government sectors. By funneling the malicious traffic through a benign-appearing device on a trustworthy IP address, the attackers are able to lower the chances of getting blocked by firewalls and other security defenses. Monday's advisory made no mention of identical operations carried out in recent years by China. So-called residential proxies are also a go-to tool used by financially motivated criminal hackers to obscure their true IP address. In many cases, these sorts of proxies are made up of millions of streaming devices that are sold with preloaded malware.

A new Incogni survey suggests Americans are pulling back from social media, with more than half saying "maintaining an online presence feels like work" and 55% reporting they post less than they did five years ago. "The full study concludes that there's been a significant shift in public attitudes toward social media," reports PCMag. "Where it was once fun and relaxing, it's now growing dark and angsty..." From the report: As the chart shows, there's also a clear correlation with age. A full 60% of Gen Z respondents feel the pain of maintaining a social presence. Perhaps they have a niggling hope that they might still be discovered as an influencer? Those of us in the Boomer category are clearly more relaxed about it, with just 38% saying that maintaining a social presence feels like work. The survey quizzed respondents about how they feel when they don't keep up with checking their socials and, by extension, how they'd feel if they just plain quit. They were given choices, both positive (peace, relaxation, and relief) and negative (anxiety, fear of missing out, and discomfort).

Overall, positive reactions held slightly greater sway, with an average of about 21% compared with 19% for negative reactions. The Gen Y contingent accentuated that split, with 25% positive and 21% negative, while Gen X went even further, with 20% positive and just 13% negative. But the Gen Z group flipped the results, identifying 27% negative and 26% positive reactions to going without social media.

There's another force pushing folks away from the socials: increasing politicization. Of the survey's respondents, 44% agreed that political content is driving people away from social media, and only 20% disagreed. Among Gen Z respondents, the impetus was stronger: 48% agreed, and just 13% disagreed. These negative feelings associated with politics only serve to highlight the positive reactions to deleting your social media.

Are you posting less on social media than you did five years ago, and are you being more selective about who can see what you post? Then you're with the majority. More than half of the respondents answered yes to each of those questions. But would you ever parlay fewer posts into no posts (aka quit posting entirely)? When asked what it would take to finally get them to terminate a social media account, a die-hard group of one in six respondents said there's nothing that could make them quit. But more than half could picture quitting due to security concerns, and almost half accepted the possibility that harassment or hate speech could send them packing. Others cited the amount of time wasted on scrolling through social media and the mental health threats of doomscrolling.

America "is facing what's projected to become the largest labor shortage in its history," according to experts interviewed by the Washington Post: Economists warn that the worsening labor problem, due in part to a skills shortage and population shifts, will be vast and reach beyond tech. It "could hobble the American economy for years to come," predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Lightcast, a labor market data company, calls it "the largest labor shortage the country has ever seen." JPMorgan Chase warns of a national security risk from "a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation's capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests." There will be shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction worker and airplane mechanics — jobs AI generally can't do...

Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in health care fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance. "We have pumped so many young people into business and finance" when what's really in demand are graduates in other fields, [said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast's principal economist]. "It's like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, 'We really don't need them.' And the factory just keeps pumping them out." But the principal reason for the looming workforce shortages is much more basic. A protracted decline in birth rates is coinciding with a record wave of retirements, data shows.

From 2024 to 2032, when the last baby boomers sign up for Social Security payments, more than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force while fewer than 14 million enter it, according to the Georgetown center. Meanwhile, even as the number of people with associate and bachelor's degrees falls, the number of jobs requiring them will grow, the center forecasts. That will leave a gap of 4.6 million workers. Lightcast puts the deficit at an even higher 6 million... The effect of population shifts on the supply of talent, with or without degrees, has been compounded by a drop in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to go to college, a sharply reduced rate of immigration, and a growing number of Americans leaving the workforce altogether because of such issues as lack of child care, early retirement, incarceration and substance addiction, according to the Chamber of Commerce.
Three interesting statistics from the article:

• U.S. college/university enrollment in 2023 was down by nearly 2 million students since its peak in 2010, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Education Department.

• America's low birth rate since 2010 "means the number of college-age Americans is forecast to decline by another 13 percent through 2041."

• South Dakota has just 41 workers for every 100 open jobs... while California and nine other states have more workers than jobs, the Chamber of Commerce found.

Linus Torvalds once said LLMs might bring a 10X increase to programmer productivity. But speaking at Open Source Summit India 2026, he now says that number was "not scientific," reports ZDNet. "That was pulled out of my ass number, obviously." Today, he continued, "we're at the point where hopefully it creates more productivity than it takes away," but "we certainly saw more junk being generated by LLMs than we saw useful code up until the like early this year.... it can actually be a huge drain on resources when it takes humans a lot of effort to figure out that, hey, this machine-generated report was not true." Even now, he said, "most of the good ones require more than just the LLM," because "we've had to push back quite a bit... if you find a bug with an LLM, it's not enough to just ask the LLM to make a bug report and then throw it over the fence to us. We want to see a suggested patch; we want to see the human who ran the LLM act as a kind of back-and-forth."

Torvalds described many AI-generated patches as "mindless band-aid kind of patches... they may fix the immediate problem, but the kind of bug remains, and it just is waiting in the hallway to hit you in another place." For his own toy projects, he uses LLMs as prototypers: "I use them as a way to prototype things... quite often the code is not usable in that form, but it's a great way to try something out," while insisting that for kernel-level fixes, "LLMs, in my experience, have not been at that level yet."

Torvalds acknowledged that some AI-found issues have been "absolutely, stunningly, I mean, interesting in a painful kind of way," especially security problems that "show up in the technology press two days later." Despite the embarrassment, he said, "I'm very much not a shoot-the-messenger kind of person. I think we're much better off with LLMs finding bugs, even when they are embarrassing, and they are things that we should probably have found two decades ago."
Torvalds also said he's using AI "for my own toy projects... Every time I travel to some new place, and this is the first time I've been to India, I send the kids pictures of where I am, and for some strange reason, Godzilla seems to follow me around and gets added to those pictures."

ZDNet notes that Torvalds concluded, "There are many useful and less useful uses for AI," and "I think Godzilla is a great place to stop."

Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the article.