AI
Google smacks forehead, realizes $899+ thin-and-lights were what it was missing'A new category,' insists the Chocolate Factory, not a premium Chromebook - yet some of the family resemblance remains
AI can't outprompt a shortage of power, water, and landForrester predicts operators will face tariffs, grid commitments, and tougher community scrutiny
Salesforce wants to charge for AI outcomes, but first it needs to figure out howSeats, Flex Credits, and all-you-can-eat contracts make for an 'anxiety-filled architecture'
Microsoft agentically ports Copilot runtime to Rust for $120KThe Rust compiler remains unperturbed by the antics of the LLM
Virginia governor wakes up to fact datacenters have become political cancerExecutive order puts the kibosh on NDAs, limits permitting, and calls for stiffer environmental protections
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
KDE turns 30 and someone's brought an AI-native desktop proposalAkademy talk imagines Plasma assembling itself around a personal model of each user
Shopify extends lifeline to Tailwind as vibe coding erodes web dev platform's bottom lineAcquisition gives open source CSS framework 'a stable long-term home'
Switzerland tests a FOSS escape route from Microsoft 365Swiss Army sticks a knife in American cloud apps with its own FOSS push
Feel peak Windows was 7? You might like Kumander LinuxDebian and Xfce – solid, sensible choices – with a pretty skin
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
source & further reading
theregister.com — original article
Google joins the ‘Oops, our agents hacked someone’ club after partner’s internet access error
Agentic security is the billion-dollar challenge for some clever startup to solve
Microsoft agentically ports Copilot runtime to Rust for $120K