Microsoft is pushing users to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 ahead of the operating system's end of support in October 2025. The company's consumer chief marketing officer Yusuf Mehdi declared 2025 "the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh," positioning PC upgrades as more crucial than TV or phone purchases. The Verge adds: Mehdi believes that "Windows 11 is available at a time when the world needs it most" and that "the forefront of AI innovation will be realized on Windows."

"Millions of computers are heading towards a security crisis as Microsoft plans to end support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025," writes BetaNews: 32 million devices — roughly 65 percent of household computers in Germany — are still running the aging operating system. In the DACH region, including Austria and Switzerland, over 35 million systems rely on Windows 10, leaving millions of users exposed to potential cyberattacks once updates stop. By contrast, only about 33 percent of German devices have transitioned to Windows 11, and over a million are still running even older systems like Windows 8, 7, or XP.

Thorsten Urbanski, an IT security expert at ESET, is sounding the alarm. "It's five minutes to midnight to prevent a security fiasco in 2025. We strongly urge users not to wait until October. Upgrade to Windows 11 now or choose an alternative operating system if your device cannot support the latest version. Otherwise, users are exposing themselves to significant security risks, including dangerous cyberattacks and data breaches...."

Urbanski also points out that the current situation is worse than when Windows 7 support ended in 2020. By late 2019, over 70 percent of users had already switched to Windows 10, while only about 20 percent remained on Windows 7. Today, the transition to Windows 11 is far slower, creating a dangerous environment. "Cybercriminals know these numbers well and are waiting for the end-of-support date. Once that hits, vulnerabilities will be exploited en masse."
"Those unable to move to Windows 11 are being advised to consider Linux as a secure alternative, especially for older hardware."

Thanks to Slashdot reader BrianFagioli for sharing the news.

This week New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose published his annual "Good Tech" awards to "shine the spotlight on a few tech projects that I think contributed positively to humanity."

And high on the list is "Andres Freund, and every open-source software maintainer saving us from doom." The most fun column I wrote this past year was about a Microsoft database engineer, Andres Freund, who got some odd errors while doing routine maintenance on an obscure open-source software package called xz Utils. While investigating, Freund inadvertently discovered a huge security vulnerability in the Linux operating system, which could have allowed a hacker to take control of hundreds of millions of computers and bring the world to its knees.

It turns out that much of our digital infrastructure rests on similar acts of nerdy heroism. After writing about Freund's discovery, I received tips about other near disasters involving open-source software projects, many of which were averted by sharp-eyed volunteers catching bugs and fixing critical code just in time to foil the bad guys. I could not write about them all, but this award is to say: I see you, open-source maintainers, and I thank you for your service.
Roose also acknowledges the NASA engineers who kept Voyager 1 transmitting back to earth from interstellar space — and Bluesky, "for making my social media feeds interesting again."

Roose also notes it was a big year for AI. There's a shout-out to Epoch AI, a small nonprofit research group in Spain, "for giving us reliable data on the AI boom." ("The firm maintains public databases of AI models and AI hardware, and publishes research on AI trends, including an influential report last year about whether AI models can continue to grow at their current pace. Epoch AI concluded they most likely could until 2030.") And there's also a shout-out to groups "pushing AI forward" and positive uses "to improve health care, identify new drugs and treatments for debilitating diseases and accelerate important scientific research."

• The nonprofit Arc Institute released Evo, an AI model that "can predict and generate genomic sequences, using technology similar to the kind that allows systems like ChatGPT to predict the next words in a sequence."

• A Harvard University lab led by Dr. Jeffrey Lichtman teamed with researchers from Google for "the most detailed map of a human brain sample ever created. The team used AI to map more than 150 million synapses in a tiny sample of brain tissue at nanometer-level resolution..."

• Researchers at Stanford and McMaster universities developed SyntheMol, "a generative AI model that can design new antibiotics from scratch."

A U.S. Appeals Court ruled this week that net neutrality couldn't be reinstated by America's Federal Communications Commission. But "Despite the dismantling of the FCC's efforts to regulate broadband internet service, state laws in California, New York and elsewhere remain intact," notes the Los Angeles Times: This week's decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, striking down the FCC's open internet rules, has little bearing on state laws enacted during the years-long tug-of-war over the government's power to regulate internet service providers, telecommunications experts said. In fact, some suggested that the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit's decision — along with other rulings and the U.S. Supreme Court's posture on a separate New York case — has effectively fortified state regulators' efforts to fill the gap. "Absent an act of Congress, the FCC has virtually no role in broadband any more," Ernesto Falcon, a program manager for the California Public Utilities Commission, said in an interview. "The result of this decision is that states like California, New York and others will have to govern and regulate broadband carriers on our own."

California has one of the nation's strongest laws on net neutrality, the principle that internet traffic must be treated equally to ensure a free and open network. Former Gov. Jerry Brown signed the measure into law in 2018, months after federal regulators in President elect-Donald Trump's first administration repealed the net neutrality rules put in place under President Obama. Colorado, Oregon and other states also adopted their own standards.

The Golden State's law has already survived legal challenges. It also prompted changes in the way internet service providers offered plans and services. "California's net neutrality law, which is seen as the gold standard by consumer advocates, carries national impact," Falcon said.... "The state's authority and role in broadband access has grown dramatically now," Falcon said.
California's net neutrality rules prohibit "throttling" data speeds, according to the article.

It "felt like a Disneyland ride," reports CBS News. A man took a Waymo takes to the airport — only to discover the car "wouldn't stop driving around a parking lot in circles." And because the car was in motion, he also couldn't get out.

Still stuck in the car, Michael Johns — a tech-industry worker — then phoned Waymo for help. ("Has this been hacked? What's going on? I feel like I'm in the movies. Is somebody playing a joke on me?") But he also filmed the incident... "Why is this thing going in a circle? I'm getting dizzy," Johns said in a video posted on social media that has since gone viral, garnering more than two million views and interactions....

The Waymo representative was finally able to get the car under control after a few minutes, allowing him to get to the airport just in time to catch his flight back to LA. He says that the lack of empathy from the representative who attempted to help him, on top of the point that he's unsure if he was talking to a human or AI, are major concerns. "Where's the empathy? Where's the human connection to this?" Johns said while speaking with CBS News Los Angeles. "It's just, again, a case of today's digital world. A half-baked product and nobody meeting the customer, the consumers, in the middle."

Johns, who ironically works in the tech industry himself, says he would love to see services like Waymo succeed, but he has no plans to hop in for a ride until he's sure that the kinks have been fixed. In the meantime, he's still waiting for someone from Waymo to contact him in regards to his concerns, which hasn't yet happened despite how much attention his video has attracted since last week.
"My Monday was fine till i got into one of Waymo 's 'humanless' cars," he posted on LinkedIn . "I get in, buckle up ( safety first) and the saga begins.... [T]he car just went around in circles, eight circles at that..."

A Waymo spokesperson admitted they'd added about five minutes to his travel time, but then "said the software glitch had since been resolved," reports the Los Angeles Times, "and that Johns was not charged for the ride."

One final irony? According to his LinkedIn profile, Johns is a CES Innovations Awards judge.

"It's fair to say that by 1995, OS/2 was dead software walking," remembers a new article from the Register (which begins with a 1995 Usenet post from Gordon Letwin, Microsoft's lead architect on the OS/2 project).

But the real question is why this Microsoft-IBM collaboration on a DOS-replacing operating system ultimately lost out to Windows...? If OS/2 1.0 had been an 80386 OS, and had been able to multitask DOS apps, we think it would have been a big hit.... OS/2's initial 1980s versions were 16-bit products, at IBM's insistence. That is when the war was lost. That is when OS/2 flopped. Because its initial versions were even more crippled than the Deskpro 386...

Because OS/2 1.x flopped, Microsoft launched a product that fixed the key weakness of OS/2 1.x. That product was Windows 3, which worked perfectly acceptably on 286 machines, but if you ran the same installed copy on a 32-bit 386 PC, it worked better. Windows 3.0 could use the more sophisticated hardware of a 386 to give better multitasking of the market-dominating DOS apps...

IBM's poor planning shaped the PC industry of the 1990s more than Microsoft's successes. Windows 3.0 wasn't great, but it was good enough. It reversed people's perception of Windows after the failures of Windows 1 and Windows 2. Windows 3 achieved what OS/2 had intended to do. It transformed IBM PC compatibles from single-tasking text-only computers into graphical computers, with poor but just about usable multitasking...

Soon after Windows 3.0 turned out to be a hit, OS/2 NT was rebranded as Windows NT. Even the most ardent Linux enthusiast must c\oncede that Windows NT did quite well over three decades.
Back in 1995, the Register's author says they'd moved from OS/2 to Windows 95 "while it was still in beta.

"The UI was far superior, more hardware worked, and Doom ran much better."

In a potential U.S.-China conflict, cyberattackers are military weapons. That's the thrust of a new article from the Wall Street Journal: The message from President Biden's national security adviser was startling. Chinese hackers had gained the ability to shut down dozens of U.S. ports, power grids and other infrastructure targets at will, Jake Sullivan told telecommunications and technology executives at a secret meeting at the White House in the fall of 2023, according to people familiar with it. The attack could threaten lives, and the government needed the companies' help to root out the intruders.

What no one at the briefing knew, including Sullivan: China's hackers were already working their way deep inside U.S. telecom networks, too. The two massive hacking operations have upended the West's understanding of what Beijing wants, while revealing the astonishing skill level and stealth of its keyboard warriors — once seen as the cyber equivalent of noisy, drunken burglars. China's hackers were once thought to be interested chiefly in business secrets and huge sets of private consumer data. But the latest hacks make clear they are now soldiers on the front lines of potential geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and China, in which cyberwarfare tools are expected to be powerful weapons. U.S. computer networks are a "key battlefield in any future conflict" with China, said Brandon Wales, a former top U.S. cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, who closely tracked China's hacking operations against American infrastructure. He said prepositioning and intelligence collection by the hackers "are designed to ensure they prevail by keeping the U.S. from projecting power, and inducing chaos at home."

As China increasingly threatens Taiwan, working toward what Western intelligence officials see as a target of being ready to invade by 2027, the U.S. could be pulled into the fray as the island's most important backer... Top U.S. officials in both parties have warned that China is the greatest danger to American security.

In the infrastructure attacks, which began at least as early as 2019 and are still taking place, hackers connected to China's military embedded themselves in arenas that spies usually ignored, including a water utility in Hawaii, a port in Houston and an oil-and-gas processing facility. Investigators, both at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and in the private sector, found the hackers lurked, sometimes for years, periodically testing access. At a regional airport, investigators found the hackers had secured access, and then returned every six months to make sure they could still get in. Hackers spent at least nine months in the network of a water-treatment system, moving into an adjacent server to study the operations of the plant. At a utility in Los Angeles, the hackers searched for material about how the utility would respond in the event of an emergency or crisis. The precise location and other details of the infrastructure victims are closely guarded secrets, and couldn't be fully determined.

American security officials said they believe the infrastructure intrusions — carried out by a group dubbed Volt Typhoon — are at least in part aimed at disrupting Pacific military supply lines and otherwise impeding America's ability to respond to a future conflict with China, including over a potential invasion of Taiwan... The focus on Guam and West Coast targets suggested to many senior national-security officials across several Biden administration agencies that the hackers were focused on Taiwan, and doing everything they could to slow a U.S. response in a potential Chinese invasion, buying Beijing precious days to complete a takeover even before U.S. support could arrive.
The telecom breachers "were also able to swipe from Verizon and AT&T a list of individuals the U.S. government was surveilling in recent months under court order, which included suspected Chinese agents. The intruders used known software flaws that had been publicly warned about but hadn't been patched."

And ultimately nine U.S. telecoms were breached, according to America's deputy national security adviser for cybersecurity — including what appears to have been a preventable breach at AT&T (according to "one personal familiar with the matter"): [T]hey took control of a high-level network management account that wasn't protected by multifactor authentication, a basic safeguard. That granted them access to more than 100,000 routers from which they could further their attack — a serious lapse that may have allowed the hackers to copy traffic back to China and delete their own digital tracks.
The details of the various breaches are stunning: Chinese hackers gained a foothold in the digital underpinnings of one of America's largest ports in just 31 seconds. At the Port of Houston, an intruder acting like an engineer from one of the port's software vendors entered a server designed to let employees reset their passwords from home. The hackers managed to download an encrypted set of passwords from all the port's staff before the port recognized the threat and cut off the password server from its network...

Developer/data journalist Josh Renaud is also long-time Slashdot reader Kirkman14 — and he's got a story to tell: How do you get people interested in an obscure Atari ST graphics format used on BBSes in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Recruit some folks to help you make an artpack full of images and animations showing it off! That's the idea behind IGNITE, a new artpack from Mistigris computer arts and Break Into Chat, featuring 18 images and animations created in "Instant Graphics and Sound" format.

I love telling unknown underdog computer stories, and IGS sucked me in. This fall, I published a six-part, 14,000-word history, introducing readers to a cast of characters that included Mears, the self-described "working man without a degree" who often downplayed his own coding ability; Kevin Moody and Anthony Rau, two Navy guys in Florida who bonded over their love of Atari and BBSing; Steve Turnbull, an artist and scenic designer working in Hollywood; and many others.

But IGS isn't just a thing of the past. Two years ago, on New Years Eve 2022, Mears made a surprise announcement — he was releasing a new version of IGS, thirty years after he had stopped working on the project.

Because I (inadvertently) had spurred Larry to action, I felt an obligation to make some art using his new tools. I completed my first piece — a drawing of a ship from the sci-fi game FTL — in early 2023. Over the subsequent months, I kept at it, and ended up creating a number of fun animations. I'm particularly proud of the [Star Trek-themed] animated Guardian of Forever login sequence, and a brand-new Calvin and Hobbes-themed animation I created just for this pack.

I had long wanted to release an all-IGS artpack as a way to honor Mears, highlight IGS, and maybe stir other people's interest in trying this format. To lower the barrier to entry, I created my own web-based drawing tool, JoshDraw, which supports a small subset of IGS's features. To my surprise, I successfully recruited seven other people to submit nine static images to include in the pack.

"My feet are already in the crosswalk," says Geoffrey A. Fowler, a San Francisco-based tech columnist for the Washington Post. In a video he takes one step from the curb, then stops to see if Waymo robotaxis will stop for him. And they often didn't.

Waymo's position? Their cars consider "signals of pedestrian intent" including forward motion when deciding whether to stop — as well as other vehicles' speed and proximity. ("Do they seem like they're about to cross or are they just sort of milling around waiting for someone?") And Waymo "also said its car might decide not to stop if adjacent cars don't yield."

Fowler counters that California law says cars must always stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk. ("It's classic Silicon Valley hubris to assume Waymo's ability to predict my behavior supersedes a law designed to protect me.") And Phil Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who conducts research on autonomous-vehicle safety, agrees that the Waymos should be stopping. "Instead of arguing that they shouldn't stop if human drivers are not going to stop, they could conspicuously stop for pedestrians who are standing on road pavement on a marked crosswalk. That might improve things for everyone by encouraging other drivers to do the same."

From Fowler's video: I tried crossing in front of Waymos here more than 20 times. About three in ten times the Waymo would stop for me, but I couldn't figure out what made it change its mind. Heavy traffic vs light, crossing with two people, sticking one foot out — all would cause it to stop only sometimes. I could make it stop by darting out into the street — but that's not how my mama taught me to use a crosswalk...

Look, I know many human drivers don't stop for pedestrians either. But isn't the whole point of having artificial intelligence robot drivers that they're safer because they actually follow the laws?
Waymo would not admit breaking any laws, but acknowledged "opportunity for continued improvement in how it interacts with pedestrians."

In an article accompanying the video, Fowler calls it "a cautionary tale about how AI, intended to make us more safe, also needs to learn how to coexist with us." Waymo cars don't behave this way at all intersections. Some friends report that the cars are too careful on quiet streets, while others say the vehicles are too aggressive around schools... No Waymo car has hit me, or any other person walking in a San Francisco crosswalk — at least so far. (It did strike a cyclist earlier this year.) The company touts that, as of October, its cars have 57 percent fewer police-reported crashes compared with a human driving the same distance in the cities where it operates.
Other interesting details from the article:

• Fowler suggests a way his crosswalk could be made safer: "a flashing light beacon there could let me flag my intent to both humans and robots."

• The article points out that Waymo is also under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration "for driving in an unexpected and disruptive manner, including around traffic control devices (which includes road markings)."

At the same time, Fowler also acknowledges that "I generally find riding in a Waymo to be smooth and relaxing, and I have long assumed its self-driving technology is a net benefit for the city." His conclusion? "The experience has taught my family that the safest place around an autonomous vehicle is inside it, not walking around it."

And he says living in San Francisco lately puts him "in a game of chicken with cars driven by nothing but artificial intelligence."

"Electric vehicles are expected to outsell cars with internal combustion engines in China for the first time next year," reports the Financial Times, calling it "a historic inflection point that puts the world's biggest car market years ahead of western rivals." China is set to smash international forecasts and Beijing's official targets with domestic EV sales — including pure battery and plug-in hybrids — growing about 20 per cent year on year to more than 12mn cars in 2025, according to the latest estimates supplied to the Financial Times by four investment banks and research groups. The figure would be more than double the 5.9mn sold in 2022. At the same time, sales of traditionally powered cars are expected to fall by more than 10 per cent next year to less than 11 million, reflecting a near 30 per cent plunge from 14.8 million in 2022...

Robert Liew, director of Asia-Pacific renewables research at Wood Mackenzie, said China's EV milestone signalled its success in domestic technology development and securing global supply chains for critical resources needed for EVs and their batteries. The industry's scale meant steep manufacturing cost reductions and lower prices for consumers. "They want to electrify everything," said Liew. "No other country comes close to China." While the pace of Chinese EV sales growth has eased from a post-pandemic frenzy, the forecasts suggest Beijing's official target, set in 2020, for EVs to account for 50 per cent of car sales by 2035, will be achieved 10 years in advance of schedule...

As China's EV market tracked towards year-on-year growth of near 40 per cent in 2024, the market share of foreign-branded cars fell to a record low of 37 per cent — a sharp decline from 64 per cent in 2020, according to data from Automobility, a Shanghai-based consultancy. In this month alone, GM wrote down more than $5 billion (€4.8 billion) of its business value in China; the holding company behind Porsche warned of a writedown in its Volkswagen stake of up to €20 billion; and arch rivals Nissan and Honda said they were responding to a "drastically changing business environment" with a merger.
"Meanwhile, EV sales growth has slowed in Europe and the US, reflecting the legacy car industry's slow embrace of new technology, uncertainty over government subsidies and rising protectionism against imports from China..."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

It's "what some experts consider the most advanced military AI initiative ever to be deployed," reports the Washington Post.

But the Israeli military's AI-powered intelligence practices are also "under scrutiny. Genocide charges against Israel brought to The Hague by South Africa question whether crucial decisions about bombing targets in Gaza were made by software, an investigation that could hasten a global debate about the role of AI technology in warfare." After the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces deluged Gaza with bombs, drawing on a database painstakingly compiled through the years that detailed home addresses, tunnels and other infrastructure critical to the militant group. But then the target bank ran low. To maintain the war's breakneck pace, the IDF turned to an elaborate artificial intelligence tool called Habsora — or "the Gospel" — which could quickly generate hundreds of additional targets. The use of AI to rapidly refill IDF's target bank allowed the military to continue its campaign uninterrupted, according to two people familiar with the operation. It is an example of how the decade-long program to place advanced AI tools at the center of IDF's intelligence operations has contributed to the violence of Israel's 14-month war in Gaza... People familiar with the IDF's practices, including soldiers who have served in the war, say Israel's military has significantly expanded the number of acceptable civilian casualties from historic norms. Some argue this shift is enabled by automation, which has made it easier to speedily generate large quantities of targets, including of low-level militants who participated in the Oct. 7 attacks.
In a statement to The Post, the IDF argued that "If anything, these tools have minimized collateral damage and raised the accuracy of the human-led process." The IDF requires an officer to sign off on any recommendations from its "big data processing" systems, according to an intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Israel does not release division leaders' names. The Gospel and other AI tools do not make decisions autonomously, the person added...Recommendations that survive vetting by an intelligence analyst are placed in the target bank by a senior officer...

Another machine learning tool, called Lavender, uses a percentage score to predict how likely a Palestinian is to be a member of a militant group, allowing the IDF to quickly generate a large volume of potential human targets... The rule mandating two pieces of human-derived intelligence to validate a prediction from Lavender was dropped to one at the outset of the war, according to two people familiar with the efforts. In some cases in the Gaza division, soldiers who were poorly trained in using the technology attacked human targets without corroborating Lavender's predictions at all, the soldier said.
The article includes an ominous quote from Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who researches the use of AI in war. Feldstein acknowledges questions of accuracy, but also notes the accelerated speed of the systems, and the ultimate higher death count. His conclusion?

"What's happening in Gaza is a forerunner of a broader shift in how war is being fought."

It's weighs less than 15 pounds. It's 17 inches wide. And in June Elon Musk said it was "easily carried in a backpack. This product will change the world."

And now, CNET reports: Calling all digital nomads and van-lifers: SpaceX's Starlink Mini is now available everywhere in the US. The small antenna costs $599 and requires a monthly subscription of either $50 or $165, depending on which plan you choose. Thanks to thousands of low Earth orbit satellites, Starlink has the unique ability to send high-speed internet just about anywhere. Standard service is great for home internet in rural areas, while the provider's Roam service and new portable dish are ideal for staying connected on the go...

The Mini is a satellite dish and Wi-Fi router all in one that's about the size of a laptop. According to Starlink's website, it uses approximately half the power of Starlink's standard dish. It can be powered with a portable USB battery and can "melt snow and withstand sleet, heavy rain and harsh winds."
The article adds that users "can connect up to 128 devices, and it promises low latency... According to Starlink's broadband labels, your download speeds typically range from 30 to 100Mbps and 5 to 25Mbps in upload."

In 2024, Americans spent 23% less on streaming subscriptions compared to 2023, driven by rising costs, streaming fatigue, and increased password-sharing restrictions. The findings have been reported in Review's annual State of Consumer Media Spending Report. TechSpot reports: Of those surveyed, 27.8 percent said they are experiencing streaming fatigue - or the feeling of being overwhelmed by the growing number of streaming apps on the market. And with the cost of goods and services at an all-time high, it's hitting folks in the wallet as well. The report additionally found that the average American has two streaming subscriptions, and watches three hours and 49 minutes of content each day. More than a quarter of subscribers - 26.5 percent - share subscriptions with others to save on cost although with recent crackdowns on password sharing, that might not be an option for much longer.

As such, Reviews recommends downsizing the number of subscriptions you pay for each month or spending more time using free services if you're looking to cut down on costs in the New Year. For example, you could stagger subscriptions by signing up for a service temporarily to watch a specific show or movie and canceling when you are finished. It's also wise to keep an eye out for free trials, discounts, and limited-time streaming deals like those occasionally offered from Internet and mobile providers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China's commerce ministry has proposed export restrictions on some technology used to make battery components and process critical minerals lithium and gallium, a document, opens new tab issued on Thursday showed. If implemented, they would be the latest in a series of export restrictions and bans targeting critical minerals and the technology used to process them, areas in which Beijing is globally dominant. Their announcement precedes the inauguration later this month of Donald Trump for a second term during which he is expected to use tariffs and various trade restrictions against other countries, in particular China. [...]

The proposed expansion and revisions of restrictions on technology used to extract and process lithium or prepare battery components could also hinder the overseas expansion plans of major Chinese battery makers, including CATL, Gotion, and EVE Energy. Some technologies to extract gallium would also be restricted. Thursday's announcement does not say when the proposed changes, which are open for public comment until Feb. 1, could come into force. Adam Webb, head of battery raw materials at consultancy Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, notes that China retains a 70% grip on the global processing of lithium into the material needed to make EV batteries. "These proposed measures would be a move to maintain this high market share and to secure lithium chemical production for China's domestic battery supply chains," he said. "Depending on the level of export restrictions imposed, this could pose challenges for Western lithium producers hoping to use Chinese technology to produce lithium chemicals."

Windows 11 24H2 continues to experience issues with multifunction devices using the eSCL scan protocol, despite Microsoft marking the problem as resolved. According to a Register reader, "It works on a Windows 10 machine, but not on Windows 11, unless both the computer and the scanner are on wired Ethernet." From the report: Microsoft issued a compatibility safeguard hold on USB-connected devices using the Scanner Communication Language (eSCL) protocol in November after users who installed the Windows update experienced glitches with device discovery. The issue was reported resolved by Microsoft in December. However, it seems that KB5048667 might not have fixed all the problems for Canon owners. According to our reader: "Canon support tells me that the 24H2 eSCL issue still is not fixed." We asked Microsoft about the situation, but despite telling us it was looking into the problem on Friday, December 20, the company has yet to provide any further details. Canon was more forthcoming. A spokesperson told The Register it was aware of a problem impacting devices using ScanGear MF.

ScanGear MF is a scanner driver provided by Canon and allows customers to configure advanced settings for scanning. Canon does not appear to be changing its code to rectify whatever problems had been brought on by the Windows 11 update. The spokesperson said: "Microsoft is currently working on an OS amendment to resolve this and we are keeping in close contact with them. The timing for resolving this is yet to be confirmed by Microsoft, however we expect to receive the plan to fix in January 2025." Customers affected by the issue, which manifests itself with a communications error message, according to Canon's support forum, are advised to use either native Microsoft software solutions or go fully wired via USB.

Samsung and Google are introducing Eclipsa Audio, an open-source 3D audio standard set to debut on select YouTube videos and Samsung's 2025 TVs and soundbars. The new format "could eventually serve as a free alternative to Dolby Atmos, the dominant 3D audio format that hardware makers like Samsung pay to license for TVs and other equipment," reports The Verge. "Samsung says that similar to Atmos, this audio format supports adjusting 'audio data such as the location and intensity of sounds, along with spatial reflections' to create a 3D experience." From the report: The two companies first announced a partnership to develop spatial audio technology in 2023, initially calling it Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF). At the time, Samsung spatial audio head WooHyun Nam said the format would provide "a complete open-source framework for 3D audio, from creation to delivery and playback."

The IAMF spec has also been adopted by the Alliance for Open Media, a group that has been pushing for royalty-free codec support since 2015 and counts companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Netflix -- along with Samsung and Google -- among its members. If they also add support for this audio format, it could help it catch on, although it's already taken years for their AV1 video codec to see more use. Samsung and Google are also creating a certification program with the Telecommunications Technology Association "to ensure consistent audio quality" across devices using the format, which also sounds similar to the way companies like Dolby and THX manage the labeling for their specs.

The Register's Jude Karabus reports: IBM and semiconductor maker GlobalFoundries have settled all of their litigation against each other, including breach of contract, patent, and trade secret suits, the pair say. The details of the settlement are confidential. All that both companies were prepared to say in yesterday's statements was that the deal they'd agreed would resolve "all litigation matters, inclusive of breach of contract, trade secrets, and intellectual property claims between the two companies." They added that the settlement would allow the companies to "explore new opportunities for collaboration in areas of mutual interest." In 2021, IBM sued GlobalFoundries for $2.5 billion, accusing it of failing to deliver on 10nm and 7nm chip production commitments, which disrupted IBM's hardware roadmap. GlobalFoundries poaching engineers countersued in 2023, alleging IBM misused trade secrets and poached engineers to support partnerships with Intel and Rapidus, potentially compromising proprietary technologies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A U.S. online gift card store has secured an online storage server that was publicly exposing hundreds of thousands of customer government-issued identity documents to the internet. A security researcher, who goes by the online handle JayeLTee, found the publicly exposed storage server late last year containing driving licenses, passports, and other identity documents belonging to MyGiftCardSupply, a company that sells digital gift cards for customers to redeem at popular brands and online services.

MyGiftCardSupply's website says it requires customers to upload a copy of their identity documents as part of its compliance efforts with U.S. anti-money laundering rules, often known as "know your customer" checks, or KYC. But the storage server containing the files had no password, allowing anyone on the internet to access the data stored inside. JayeLTee alerted TechCrunch to the exposure last week after MyGiftCardSupply did not respond to the researcher's email about the exposed data. [...]

According to JayeLTee, the exposed data -- hosted on Microsoft's Azure cloud -- contained over 600,000 front and back images of identity documents and selfie photos of around 200,000 customers. It's not uncommon for companies subject to KYC checks to ask their customers to take a selfie while holding a copy of their identity documents to verify that the customer is who they say they are, and to weed out forgeries. MyGiftCardSupply founder Sam Gastro told TechCrunch: "The files are now secure, and we are doing a full audit of the KYC verification procedure. Going forward, we are going to delete the files promptly after doing the identity verification." It's not known how long the data was exposed or if the company would commit to notifying affected individuals.

Meta's AI-generated social media profiles, which sparked controversy this week following comments by executive Connor Hayes about plans to expand AI characters across Facebook and Instagram, have largely failed to gain user engagement since their 2023 launch, 404 Media reported Friday.

The profiles, introduced at Meta's Connect event in September 2023, stopped posting content in April 2024 after widespread user disinterest, with 15 of the original 28 accounts already deleted, Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney told 404 Media. The AI characters, including personas like "Liv," a Black queer mother, and "Grandpa Brian," a retired businessman, generated minimal engagement and were criticized for posting stereotypical content.

Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah reported that one AI profile admitted its purpose was "data collection and ad targeting." Meta is now removing these accounts after identifying a bug preventing users from blocking them, Sweeney said, adding that Hayes' recent Financial Times interview discussed future AI character plans rather than announcing new features.

Boeing is conducting more surprise inspections at its factories as part of a broader plan to prevent manufacturing snafus like the one that led to a jet-panel blowout on an Alaska Air flight a year ago. From a report: The jet maker outlined on Friday more than a dozen steps it has taken in recent months to tackle a manufacturing quality crisis that has forced Boeing to slow production and has put it under the microscope of federal regulators. Some of the steps have been previously reported.

Boeing restarted production at its 737 factory in December after a machinists strike stopped work for several months. The company is still producing far fewer 737 MAXs per month than it was in the months before the Alaska Airlines accident. Among the new procedures are another layer of random quality checks where plane parts are commonly removed and then put back. In the case of the MAX involved in last January's incident, workers failed to replace bolts needed to hold a door-plug in place. The plug had been opened to repair faulty rivets.