AI
On-PREM #### AMD's Threadripper Halo is a local-AI workstation for researchers with deep pocketsAI workstation promises to put up to 576 GB of HBM3e and 16 TB/s of memory bandwidth on your desk #
ai and ml #### Hugging Face is too important to fall into Nvidia's hands$12.9 billion deal will inevitably cement Nvidia's market dominance and harm competition in the process. Regulators should take note #
ai and ml #### Zuck's Muse to Spark joy with open weights release 'soon'While you wait, Meta says it’s taught the model to stop wasting tokens and ask for help a bit more often #
ai and ml #### With Gemini 3.8 Flash, Google reminds everyone it's still in the raceAI model scores well, runs fast, and doesn't cost too much (yet) #
security #### AI agents carried out every step of this ransomware attack – then left the victim an 80-page security auditAdding insult to injury
Infosec
Security #### Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacksPLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more! #
Security #### Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attackPLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more #
Black Hat and DEF CON #### DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructureVoting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included #
Security #### EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz AcronisWent at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified #
Malware Month #### Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sightOn the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career
FOSS
Canonical shuttering some of its legacy chat channelsThe Ubuntu Pastebin went in June, IRC gets demoted next
Audacity audio-editing app no longer looks like it's from the early 2000sThe FOSS tool for audio editing has a fresh coat of paint, and new features to boot
Haiku OS rises / Beta 6 sails open web / Virtual winds fly fastA real alternative to running some kind of FOSS Unix clone
Offshoots of cancelled TrueNAS Core upgrade to FreeBSD 15Exeunt zVault stage right; enter FreeCORE and BSDnas
Debian votes to let contributors code with AIDisclosure optional, quality mandatory
LibreOffice 26.8 is out – local first, and with no AIIt looks a bit clunky, but it does the job – and on your own computer
source & further reading
theregister.com — original article
Anthropic lays groundwork for bots that shop for you
AMD's Threadripper Halo is a local-AI workstation for researchers with deep pockets
ASCII smuggling isn't just an AI security risk