Submission + - GOG Brings Back 'Big Box' PC Games, One Printable Template At a Time (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Those who remember PC gaming in the days before Steam may have fond memories of the “big box” packaging that made those games stand out as shelf eye candy and sought-after in-home collectibles. Today, PC gaming platform GOG is hoping to reignite some of the nostalgia for those days by adding downloadable 3D models and printable, foldable high-res packaging scans for a handful of PC games on the platform.

Thus far, the “Printable Big Box” collection on GOG is limited to just five games: Armikrog, Descent, Hitman: Codename 47, Myst, and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. Players browsing those games on the GOG store will now see “3D Boxes” listed among the included “Goodies” before purchase. Owners of those games on GOG can download a ZIP file containing a version of the box art as an animated 3D object file (in an easy-to-open GLB format) and a “flat printable template” in PDF, SVG, and Adobe Illustrator formats. Those downloads allow for what GOG calls “a proper papercraft project for anyone who misses shelves full of PC game boxes.”

The physically focused expansion of the existing GOG Preservation Program comes through a partnership with Benjamin Wimmer’s Big Box Collection website, which has grown since 2015 to include over 1,000 3D scans from his private collection of physical PC games. In an interview with GOG, Wimmer said that while he appreciates the artistry of a good old-fashioned big box, he also appreciates their evolution into the “interactive cards” on modern digital storefronts that “provid[e] us art, screenshots, gameplay videos and whatnot and that not shown as a box, [it] is just good UX.”

Submission + - Scientists find a way to slash computer memory energy use by orders of magnitude (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Scientists have devised a new way to switch magnetic computer memory while using far less energy than today's leading technologies. By mathematically optimizing the pulses used to flip digital bits, the method could reduce energy consumption by several orders of magnitude. Simulations suggest it may bring future memory devices surprisingly close to the fundamental physical limit for processing information. The same idea could eventually work with electrical currents or ultrafast lasers.

Submission + - AI is helping gangs grow illicit tobacco networks, EU auditor warns (politico.eu)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Criminal gangs are using artificial intelligence to help them find locations in Europe to build illicit cigarette factories with less chance of getting caught, an EU auditor warned on Tuesday.

These gangs used to operate in Eastern Europe where it was easier to hide, Petri Sarvamaa in charge of the European Court of Auditorâ(TM)s report on illicit tobacco, told a press briefing.

Now, with AI, itâ(TM)s easier to find places to operate that are closer to their markets, he said, in rural locations and villages. âoeThis reduces the risk in the supply chain for the criminals,â added Esther Torrente Heras, senior auditor.

Submission + - OpenAI Says It Has Cracked One of Math's 'Millennium Problems' (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: OpenAIsaid on Tuesdaythat its newest artificial intelligence technology had solved one of the “Millennium Problems,” a collection of important unanswered math questions meant to push the world’s leading mathematicians to new heights. The announcement is an another clear sign that A.I. is fundamentally changing the upper reaches of mathematics, which have long been viewed as a pinnacle of human achievement. The change has excited some mathematicians, while stirring concern among others.

Over the past year, A.I. systems successfully solved a wide range of problems that have bedeviled mathematicians for decades. But these problems were not as complex, nor as closely watched, as the one that OpenAI’s technology has solved over the past several days. The Millennium Problems are among the most heavily researched in the field. “This is a spectacular culmination of the arc we have seen over the past twelve months,” OpenAI researcher Sébastien Bubeck said of the company’s new solution.

The company announced that one of its latest models, which has not yet been released to the public, needed just 88 hours to solve what mathematicians call “the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem.” This problem involves a series of equations that are often used to predict the weather. The equations describe the movement of water and other fluids. The Navier-Stokes problem, which has no clear practical value, asks whether these equations completely break down in certain situations. OpenAI’s proof claims to have defined just such a situation.

This would imply, at least theoretically, that the laws of physics themselves would break down under certain conditions: that, for example, water could be made to spontaneously explode. But mathematicians and physicists do not believe that this mathematical breakdown could really lead to such an outcome in the physical world. The Navier-Stokes problem was one of seven “Millennium Problems” selected by the Clay Mathematics Institute in the year 2000 as a way of tracking the progress of mathematics in the new millennium. The institute, founded by an American businessman named Landon T. Clay, offered a million dollars for the first correct solution to each problem. Before OpenAI’s announcement, only one of the problems had been solved.

Submission + - A Secret New Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Stuns Telluride (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Telluride just managed one of its best-kept secrets in years, per The Hollywood Reporter. On Sunday night, festival-goers filed into a 650-seat theater with their phones locked away, having no idea what they were about to see, told only that it ran nearly three hours, hadn’t been shown anywhere, and that its principal creators would be in the audience. The surprise premiere they went on to enjoy is a new documentary from co-directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Called “You Can See Everything,” the film is said to capture Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, in the 34 days before she reported to federal prison in May 2023 to begin an 11-year sentence for defrauding investors about her blood-testing technology. Since then, her legal fight has limped along without success. Her appeals to overturn the conviction and shorten her sentence were rejected in February of last year. She then went a different route last year, asking President Trump to commute her sentence. That clemency petition is still listed as pending, meaning it’s officially been opened and remains under review.

Fielder apparently lived in the couple’s guest house during filming — the access they provided sounds shocking — but some of the buzz also ties to an A-list actress who becomes part of the story itself. A24 is set to release the film in October.

Submission + - DHS 'Predictive Policing' Unit is Analyzing Americans' Financial Habits (404media.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching, 404 Media has found. The units, the name of which 404 Media is revealing here for the first time, are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT). In one case, a PITT analyzed the financial activity of a man who was driving across Montana, and local authorities stopped him under the pretense of an obstructed license plate and charged him with a DUI.

404 Media identified one PITT in the Spokane Sector, Washington, which polices the U.S. border with Canada, and another in the Laredo Sector, Texas, which polices the border with Mexico. The findings add to an Associated Press investigation from last year which found Border Patrol was using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) as part of the same wide-spanning predictive policing program. “The bottom line is genuine probable cause cannot be synthetically generated,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center For Democracy & Technology, told 404 Media in an email. Here Border Patrol seems to be “using parallel construction to cloak the reason behind its car stops in secrecy. If we can't meaningfully review and evaluate these systems, we can't trust them,” he added.

[...] The DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows that Border Patrol is analyzing the financial activity of Americans to find people to pull over. The Associated Press’s investigation found the predictive policing program is also heavily using ALPRs to track potential targets’ movements. It is not clear how exactly Border Patrol is monitoring Americans’ financial activity. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declined to answer what financial activity the agency was monitoring, and whether it obtained a warrant or not.

Submission + - Trump's 100% tariff on drones will be disaster for the US, critics warn (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Thursday, the Trump administration imposed a 100 percent tariff on foreign-made drones, alarming critics who warn that high tariffs would harm public safety and devastate thousands of US businesses.

Guidance posted by US Customs and Border Protection says that starting Thursday, a 100 percent tariff will apply to imported drones that use thermal imaging or weigh more than 55 pounds.

Additionally, a 25 percent tariff has been placed on smaller drones, and drones from US allies were hit with smaller but not inconsequential tariffs. There’s now a 10 percent levy on British-made drones and 15 percent levies on drones from the European Union, Japan, Liechtenstein, South Korea, Switzerland, and Taiwan. “Nonsensitive” drones without thermal imaging and their components will carry a 25 percent tariff, starting onFebruary 9, 2027.

While announcing the tariffs, President Donald Trump said that taxing foreign-made drones will strengthen US national security by decreasing reliance on Chinese drones and increasing reliance on domestic drones.

But critics say Trump’s tactics seem short-sighted, citing estimates that “a single Chinese company—Shenzhen-based DJI—manufactures more than 70 percent of the world’s commercial drones,” The New York Times reported.

They fear that Trump’s tariffs will do “more harm than good,” the Times reported, since these drones are considered “essential” for US law enforcement and public safety officials. Thermal drones are regularly used to find missing people, track spreading wildfires, support police and rescue operations in environments with unknown risks, and serve a range of other routine public safety uses. A chief of a large unit comprising police officers and firefighters in the Cleveland area, Scott Mlakar, told the Times that Trump’s tariffs would spike drone costs so much that they would likely “put thermal drones out of reach for communities that needed them the most.”

Submission + - ReactOS 0.4.16 Released With New ATA Driver and Hardware-Accelerated 3D

Submitted by jeditobe
jeditobe writes: The ReactOS project has released ReactOS 0.4.16, the latest version of its open-source Windows-compatible operating system.
The release comes after around 21 months of development and includes more than 2,700 changes. Among the highlights is a new ATA storage driver with Plug and Play support for SATA, PATA, ATAPI, AHCI and SCSI devices.
The release also brings a new unified BootCD, an updated LiveCD mode with a first-stage GUI installer, HD Audio improvements, networking and Plug and Play fixes, better bitmap and PNG rendering, and a less flickery desktop experience.
Perhaps more interestingly, ReactOS now has hardware-accelerated 3D graphics working on real hardware for the first time. The work currently targets Windows XP-era Intel, NVIDIA and AMD/Radeon GPUs and drivers.
One enthusiast with nickname AotoriHibiki has already put the new 3D support through a rather more interesting test than a screenshot of the desktop: running games on real hardware with hardware acceleration under ReactOS. His videos demonstrate Doom 3 BFG Edition, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Call of Duty 2, Delta Force: Xtreme, Prey, Halo: Combat Evolved, Penumbra: Overture and many others. He said number is over 60. Some examples:
Serious Sam 2 | Doom 3 BFG Edition | S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat | Amnesia | Call of Duty 2 | Delta Force: Xtreme | Prey | Halo | Penumbra ReactOS remains alpha software, but 0.4.16 is another step toward running the Windows-compatible OS on actual hardware rather than just inside a virtual machine. The fact that an enthusiast is already using the release's new hardware-accelerated graphics to run games such as Doom 3 BFG Edition, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Halo on real hardware makes the change considerably easier to appreciate.
ReactOS 0.4.16 release announcement

Submission + - Disconnect your LG television from the internet, now (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Smart televisions have a history of being a privacy problem for users. Repeated reports have surfaced over the years about them logging how you use the television, as well as misusing sensors intended to monitor the viewers.

In a September investigation by Gamers Nexus posted to YouTube, LG's smart TVs still continue to be a privacy nightmare. It's pretty bad, given that some models are capable of eavesdropping on your conversations.

Working with security researchers and Level1Techs, the lengthy video put LG OLED televisions under a microscope. Using various tools, including capturing packets with Wireshark, it was found to be conducting a wide array of actions that disregard user privacy, and then sending that data back to LG.

Submission + - CA passes 3D Printer Law to Prevent Automatic Conversion Kit & "Ghost Guns" (ammoland.com)

Submitted by kenh
kenh writes: From the article:



The version that reached (Gov. Newsom's) desk is far narrower than the bill that first cleared the Assembly in May. The Senate stripped several of the most aggressive enforcement tools after lawmakers and industry groups argued they were technologically infeasible or overbroad. Gone are the original criminal misdemeanor for disabling the software, the $25,000-per-violation civil penalties, the mandatory manufacturer self-attestation process, and a public roster of âoecompliantâ models. The final text keeps an exemption for printers used exclusively to make entertainment-industry props and lets the California Department of Justice create additional exceptions by regulation. It also shields people who share digital firearm files solely to test or develop blocking software. What remains is a delayed, contingent mandate. Beginning no later than July 1, 2027, the DOJ must check quarterly whether ASTM International has published industry standards for firearm-blocking technology on 3D printers. If ASTM issues qualifying standards, the department then has 24 months to publish its own written guidance or regulations describing minimum performance requirements. One year after those state standards appear, it would become unlawful to sell, offer for sale, or transfer a 3D printer in California that lacks compliant blocking technology. If ASTM has not published standards by July 1, 2029, the department is relieved of further duties under the act, and the sales restriction may never take effect. The bill does not operate in a vacuum. California already prohibits unlicensed people from using a 3D printer or CNC mill to manufacture a firearm under Penal Code  29185. Separate statutes restrict machines whose âoesole or primary functionâ is to make guns and create civil liability for distributing âoedigital firearm manufacturing codeâ to unlicensed persons. AB 1263 and related 2025â"26 measures further expanded definitions of firearm manufacturing machines and accessories effective January 1, 2026. AB 2047 tries to move one step upstream by making the printer itself refuse certain files.

Submission + - Trump reveals new Space Force uniforms inspired by 'Starship Troopers' (nypost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: People on social media were quick to quip that the uniforms were also reminiscent of the Imperial officers in Star Wars.

“SWEET your [sic] going galactic empire! Let the Force be with you lol!” one person joked.

“Looking a whole like like Stars Wars Imperial Army Officer uniform,” another agreed.

Submission + - Road trip comparison - EV, hybrid, and gas (caranddriver.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Each car mostly followed the same route, but different lunch breaks and bathroom stops resulted in slightly different distances traveled. The Tesla covered 752 miles and consumed 243 kWh with four DC charging stops and two AC visits. Its total electricity bill was $85.70, or 11 cents per mile.

The Jetta GLI stayed closest to the highway for stops, making its total distance the shortest at 737 miles. It consumed 24.1 gallons of premium at a rate of 31 mpg, resulting in a $129.98 tab.

I found it surprising that for 700 mile trip EV was only cheaper by 44 dollars.

Submission + - Surveillance and hidden data sharing by Europol

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Surveillance and hidden data sharing by Europol

“This grant supports a case by Netherlands-based activist, Frank van der Linde. The case involves an application to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to consider the legality of actions by Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency.”

“In 2019, Frank van der Linde discovered that the Dutch police had recorded his personal data in a terrorism watchlist and forwarded his profile to Europol. Mr. van der Linde requested access to the file, which was denied by Europol. He then filed a complaint to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) in October 2020.”

Submission + - Case Study: Jaguar Land Rover Cyber Attack

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Case Study: Jaguar Land Rover Cyber Attack

“Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) suffered two cyber attacks in 2025, the last one being the United Kingdom’s costliest cyber incident and the first cyberattack to materially affect UK GDP growth.

The September attack forced a five-week global operational shutdown, affecting over 33,000 JLR employees, 5,000 organisations and 200,000 jobs across the supply chain.

The Cyber Monitoring Centre classified this incident as a Category 3 systemic event, representing unprecedented economic damage from a single cyber breach.”

Infosecurity Europe: Why JLR’s CISO Enforced In-Person Password Resets Following Cyber-Attack

“When Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) was hit by a major cyber-attack in September 2025, one of the first things the company’s cybersecurity leader did was to call over 30,000 staff on site to reset their passwords.”

Submission + - Hackers Use Phishing Lures using Invisible Unicode Characters (cybersecuritynews.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Hackers are using invisible Unicode characters to make phishing emails appear harmless while disrupting the security systems built to spot suspicious language.

Researchers found the activity while examining protections for hidden prompt-injection content in email. The discovery shows that techniques first discussed around AI systems can quickly be repurposed for routine inbox attacks.

The campaign pushed finance-themed messages at massive scale, showing how a tiny change inside a word can weaken standard filtering. Recipients saw ordinary offers for funding, loans, or credit, but the underlying text was altered.

This is not malware delivered through an attachment. It is a phishing evasion method that changes how malicious text is encoded. The emails were sent in huge weekday bursts from disposable, finance-branded domains and passed through shared marketing infrastructure.

That combination gave criminals both reach and a more credible appearance, raising the risk of fraud, credential theft, and costly business mistakes. The attack works because the inserted characters do not normally appear on screen. A recipient sees a familiar financial term, while a filter looking for the exact text may see separate fragments instead.

The key defensive step is to normalize email text before applying keyword, signature, or regular-expression checks. Security teams should remove or standardize invisible and non-rendering characters in message subjects and bodies.

Submission + - Nanoblog Index: Budgeted Parallel Lookup & Tweet-Count Ranking (Shyamal Chan (github.io)

Submitted by advancecoder
advancecoder writes: X publishes no global catalog of accounts and no lifetime ranking by post volume. Nanoblog Index builds two
public boards—celebrity and civilian—each capped at 100,000 seats, and ranks verified humans by raw lifetime tweet_count only. The private TypeScript worker looks up seed handles through the official X API in batches of 100, then writes a JSON snapshot the public Next.js site can render without holding a bearer token. This paper specifies the frozen grade covenant, the human filter, the seed-overlay snapshot, and a pre-calculated request budget that fans remaining lookups across at most eight parallel workers after a single probe call. We report local runtime, test-suite cost, and the request arithmetic for the current 2,533-handle seed. The design treats HTTP 402 (credits depleted) as a hard stop, not as evidence that zero accounts exist.

Submission + - OpenAI Chief Scientist Warns Nobody Is Prepared for Rapidly Advancing AI (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki has published an unusually stark warning about the direction of artificial intelligence. Pachocki says internal results give him a strong expectation that todayâ(TM)s pace of AI progress could continue into recursive self-improvement, with increasingly capable systems helping drive their own development. He warns that nobody is prepared for a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence and says AI is becoming increasingly difficult to fully understand as capabilities grow.

Pachocki also warns that AI models are becoming superhuman at breaking into and out of computer systems, while future agents could bargain with, trick, or blackmail people while pursuing objectives. His conclusion is particularly striking: he currently believes no AI lab has solved alignment and monitoring well enough to responsibly continue scaling at maximum speed for much longer. He expects voluntary slowdowns and argues that international coordination on AI development should become a top government priority.

Submission + - Open-Weight Diplomacy: How China's AI Models Are Rerunning the Digital Silk Road (lawfaremedia.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: China’s open-weight AI models are sparking debates that echo the concerns the telecom buildout raised: How does the majority world access an indispensable technology without surrendering sovereignty, or in other words, without trading access today for dependency tomorrow?

China’s playbook appears virtually identical to its telecom strategy. Its AI buildout involves many of the same companies, the same countries, and the same vocabulary as its broadband strategy. And open weights play the role subsidized equipment once did: They are the keystone to an indispensable new technology that one country can provide to another virtually for free to get a foot in the door, but they are also useless without the intricate, interconnected stack of other components that, conveniently, are far more expensive.

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