Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the PSA department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Education giant Pearson suffered a cyberattack, allowing threat actors to steal corporate data and customer information, BleepingComputer has learned. Pearson is a UK-based education company and one of the world's largest providers of academic publishing, digital learning tools, and standardized assessments. The company works with schools, universities, and individuals in over 70 countries through its print and online services. In a statement to BleepingComputer, Pearson confirmed they suffered a cyberattack and that data was stolen, but stated it was mostly "legacy data."
"We recently discovered that an unauthorized actor gained access to a portion of our systems," a Pearson representative confirmed to BleepingComputer. "Once we identified the activity, we took steps to stop it and investigate what happened and what data was affected with forensics experts. We also supported law enforcement's investigation. We have taken steps to deploy additional safeguards onto our systems, including enhancing security monitoring and authentication. We are continuing to investigate, but at this time we believe the actor downloaded largely legacy data. We will be sharing additional information directly with customers and partners as appropriate." Pearson also confirmed that the stolen data did not include employee information. The education company previously disclosed in January that they were investigating a breach of one of their subsidiaries, PDRI, which is believed to be related to this attack.
BleepingComputer also notes that threat actors breached Pearson's developer environment in January 2025 using an exposed GitLab access token, gaining access to source code and hard-coded credentials. Terabytes of sensitive data was stolen from cloud platforms and internal systems.
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the full-speed-ahead-on-AI department: Facing deep staffing cuts, the IRS plans to lean heavily on AI to maintain tax collection efforts, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stating that smarter IT and the "AI boom" will offset reductions in revenue enforcement staff. The Register reports: When asked by Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MD) whether proposed reductions in the IRS's IT budget, along with plans to cut additional staff, would affect the agencies ability to collect tax revenue, Bessent said it wouldn't, thanks to the current "AI boom." "I believe through smarter IT, through this AI boom, that we can use that to enhance collections," Bessent told Hoyer and the Committee (24:29 into the video linked [here]). "I expect collections would continue to be very robust as they were this year."
Bessent's comments didn't explain how the IRS intends to deploy AI. Given how much it has slashed its enforcement staff since Trump took office, the agency definitely needs to do something. [...] Bessent's comments didn't explain how the IRS intends to deploy AI. Given how much it has slashed its enforcement staff since Trump took office, the agency definitely needs to do something. "There is nothing that shows historically that bringing in unseasoned collections agents will result in more collections," Bessent told the Committee. "IRS already uses AI for business functions including operational efficiency, compliance and fraud detection, and taxpayer services," the agency told The Register. "AI use cases must follow all relevant IRS privacy and security policies."
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the red-light-green-light department: schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black: Almost immediately after India's government issued this week new tightened regulations for allowing private satellite constellations to sell their services in India, it also apparently completed negotiations with SpaceX to allow it to sell Starlink in India based on these rules. Business Today reports: "According to sources, the DoT [Department of Transportation] granted the LoI [Letter of Intent] after Starlink accepted 29 strict security conditions, including requirements for real-time terminal tracking, mandatory local data processing, legal interception capabilities, and localisation of at least 20% of its ground segment infrastructure within the first few years of operation.
Starlink's nod came amid heightened national security sensitivities, coinciding with India's pre-dawn Operation Sindoor strikes on terror camps across the border in response to the Pahalgam massacre. However, DoT officials clarified that the decision to approve Starlink was independent of these military developments." At the moment SpaceX's chief competitors, OneWeb and Amazon's Kuiper constellation, have not yet obtained the same permissions. This allows SpaceX to grab a large portion of the market share in India before either of these other companies.
Posted by from MMO Champion
WoW Hotfixes - May 8, 2025
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Classes
Hunter
Survival
Fixed an issue where Aspect of the Eagle variants of Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite were dealing less damage than intended.
Fixed an issue where casting Coordinated Assault at greater than 30 yards away could grant Howl of the Pack Leader twice.
Fixed an issue where Aspect of the Eagle was not correctly extending the range of Spirit Bond.
Dungeons and Raids
Liberation of Undermine
Mug’zee
Fixed an issue where placing Hot Mess on the stairs of the encounter would cause it to sometimes not reach the arena floor.
Player versus Player
Hunter
Master's Call now applies its effect to you and your pet when targeting your own pet.
Master's Call now correctly applies to you and your pet if you are targeting an enemy.
Master's Call now correctly applies to you and your pet if you are targeting nothing.
Command Pet will now maintain its overridden spell when entering arenas and other instances.
Survival
Fixed an issue causing Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite to not deal damage when cast onto targets in breakable crowd control.
Flanking Strike will now correctly fail to cast and not go on cooldown if your pet is rooted or crowd-controlled.
User Interface and Accessibility
Players in Random Battleground matches can no longer see the names of opposing members until the match begins.
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the value-exchange department: In a recent interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned that AI is breaking the economic model of the web by decoupling content creation from value, with platforms like Google and OpenAI increasingly providing answers without driving traffic to original sources. He argued that unless AI companies start compensating creators, the web's content ecosystem will collapse -- calling most current AI investment a "money fire" with only a small fraction holding long-term value. Search Engine Land reports: Google's value exchange with content creators has collapsed, Prince said: "Ten years ago... for every two pages of a website that Google scraped, they would send you one visitor. ... That was the trade. ... Now, it takes six pages scraped to get one visitor." That drop reflects the rise of zero-click searches, which happen when searchers get answers directly on Google's search page. "Today, 75 percent of the queries... get answered without you leaving Google." This trend, long criticized by publishers and SEOs, is part of a broader concern: AI companies are using original content to generate answers that rarely/never drive traffic back to creators.
AI makes the problem worse. Large language models (LLMs) are accelerating the crisis, Prince said. AI companies scrape far more content per user interaction than Google ever has -- with even less return to creators. "What do you think it is for OpenAI? 250 to one. What do you think it is for Anthropic? Six thousand to one." "More and more the answers... won't lead you to the original source, it will be some derivative of that source." This situation threatens the sustainability of the web as we know it, Prince said: "If content creators can't derive value... then they're not going to create original content."
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the no-longer-supported department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: RIP, 486 processor. You've had a long run since Intel released you back in 1989. While Microsoft stopped supporting you with the release of Windows XP in 2001, Linux kept you alive and well for another 20+ years. But all good things must come to an end, and with the forthcoming release of the Linux 6.15 kernel, the 486 and the first Pentium processors will be sunsetted.
Why? Linus Torvalds wrote recently on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), "I really get the feeling that it's time to leave i486 support behind. There's zero real reason for anybody to waste one second of development effort on this kind of issue." Senior Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar put Torvalds' remark into context, writing, "In the x86 architecture, we have various complicated hardware emulation facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very very few people are using with modern kernels. This compatibility glue is sometimes even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could be spent on other things." "This will be the first time Linux has dropped support for a major chip family since 2012, when Linux stopped supporting the 386 family," notes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. "Moving forward, the minimum supported x86 CPU will now be the original Pentium (P5) or newer, requiring the presence of the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) and the CMPXCHG8B (CX8) instruction. These features are absent in the older 486 and early 586 processors, such as the IDT WinChip and AMD Elan families."
That said, you can continue running Linux on Pentium CPUs, but you'll have to "run museum kernels," as Torvalds pointed out in 2022 when he first floated the idea of ending support for 486.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the please-fasten-your-seatbelts department: A federal judge has allowed key parts of a class action lawsuit against Delta Air Lines to proceed, stemming from massive flight disruptions caused by CrowdStrike's faulty Windows update in July 2024. The Register reports: Delta blamed its reliance on Microsoft software and the CrowdStrike incident for its woes. However, according to the plaintiffs in the action (PDF), both companies offered the airline assistance, which Delta turned down. Customers of the Atlanta-based carrier affected by the delays and cancellations claim they struggled to secure refunds and compensation from the airline. The plaintiffs allege that "although Delta offered reimbursement of eligible expenses through their website and app, Delta failed to clarify that the customer would only be receiving a partial reimbursement."
"Furthermore, Delta did not disclose to its customers that acceptance of the partial reimbursement would release any legal claims the customer may have against Delta until after the customer 'click[ed] on the button to accept the partial reimbursement.'" The action concerns both US domestic and international travel. The former is covered by US Department of Transportation rules, which require airline agents to "inform customers of their right to a refund ... before making an offer for alternative transportation, travel credits, vouchers, or other compensation in lieu of refunds."
The latter claims come under the Montreal Convention, which is designed to be a single, universal treaty to govern airline liability. Delta, which estimated its operational losses at around half a billion dollars due to the outage, sought to dismiss the complaint. While the US District Judge, Mark H. Cohen, granted the airline's motion to dismiss some of the claims, he permitted others to proceed. These were Count I (breach of contract based on failure to refund) and Count XII (violation of the Montreal Convention).
Posted by from MMO Champion
Patch 11.1.7 PTR - Build 60672
Build 60672 has been deployed to the Public Test Realms.
Legacy of Arathor 11.1.7 PTR Development Notes - May 8, 2025
Blizzard has posted the Development Notes for Build 60672.
Achievement Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Mounts
Collections
Anu'relos, Flame's Guidance (New) Account Wide.
The War Within
Delves
Overcharged Delver (New) Complete 4 out of the 6 Overcharged Delves. Toy: Redeployment Module. Account Wide.
Titan Console Overcharged Name changed from "Console Overcharged" to "Titan Console Overcharged".
Collect enough Titan Discs to fully upgrade the Titan Console. Account Wide. Purchase enough Titan Discs to unlock all of the skills in the Overcharged Titan Console. Mount: OC91 Chariot. Account Wide.
Visions of N'Zoth Revisited
Expansion Features
Faceless Mask of Multitudes Obtain the Faceless Mask of Multitudes in a Revisited Vision.
Account Wide.
Faceless Mask of the Burned Bridge Obtain the Faceless Mask of the Burned Bridge in a Revisited Vision.
Account Wide.
Faceless Mask of the Daredevil Obtain the Faceless Mask of the Daredevil in a Revisited Vision.
Account Wide.
< This article continues on their website >
John Cena vs. Randy Orton isn’t just a rivalry. It is the rivalry of a generation, and it will be rekindled again—perhaps for the final time—at WWE Backlash.
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Fallout’s highly anticipated Season 2 is done filming as confirmed by some of the stars of the show, including The Ghoul himself, Walton Goggins, who is now free to rip off all those prosthetics and smile. And that’s nice. I’m happy for you, Mr. Goggins.
