geek

09 May 2026

Slashdot

Cisco Releases Open-Source 'DNA Test for AI Models'

Cisco has released an open-source tool "to trace the origins of AI models," reports SC World, "and compare model similarities for great visibility into the AI supply chain." [Cisco's Model Provenance Kit] is a Python toolkit and command-line interface (CLI) that looks at signals such as metadata and weights to create a "fingerprint" for AI models that can then be compared to other model fingerprints to determine potential shared origins. "Think of Model Provenance Kit as a DNA test for AI models," Cisco researchers wrote. "[...] Much like a DNA test reveals biological origins, the Model Provenance Kit examines both metadata and the actual learned parameters of a model (like a unique genome that comprises a model), to assess whether models share a common origin and identify signs of modification." The tool aims to address gaps in visibility into the AI model supply chain. For example, many organizations utilize open-source models from repositories like HuggingFace, where models could potentially be uploaded with incomplete or deceptive documentation. The Model Provenance Kit provides a way for organizations to verify claims about a model's origins, such as claims that a model is trained from scratch, when in reality it may be copied from another model, Cisco said. This may put organizations at risk of using models with unknown biases, vulnerabilities or manipulations and make it more difficult to resolve any incidents that arise from these risks. Thanks to Slashdot reader spatwei for sharing the news.

Social Media Sites Got Information from Ad Trackers on US State Health Insurance Sites

All 20 of America's state-run healthcare marketplace sites "include advertising trackers that share information with Big Tech companies," reports Gizmodo, citing a report from Bloomberg: Per the report, seven million Americans bought their health insurance through state exchanges in 2026, and many of them may have had personal information shared with companies, including Meta, TikTok, Snap, Google, Nextdoor, and LinkedIn, among others. Some of the data collected and shared with those companies included ZIP codes, a person's sex and citizenship status, and race. In addition to potentially sensitive biographical details about a person, the trackers also may reveal additional details about their life based on the sites they visit. For instance, Bloomberg found trackers on Medicaid-related web pages in Rhode Island, which could reveal information about a person's financial status and need for assistance. In Maryland, a Spanish-language page titled "Good News for Noncitizen Pregnant Marylanders" and a page designed to help DACA recipients navigate their healthcare options were found to be transmitting data to Big Tech firms... Per Bloomberg, several states have already removed some trackers from their exchange websites following the report. Thanks to Slashdot reader JoeyRox for sharing the news.

10 People Called Police to Report Bigfoot Sighting in Ohio

CNN reports on a "sudden surge of claimed sightings" of "unidentified figures averaging 8 feet tall in wooded areas" along Ohio's Mahoning River. "And it stopped just as quickly as it started," says Jeremiah Byron, host of the Bigfoot Society Podcast, which collected and mapped the reports .... Byron doesn't take every report at face value, making sure he talks to people directly before publicizing their claims. Once word got out about the reports in Ohio, so did the obvious fakes. "I started to get a lot of AI-generated reports in my email. It got up to the point where I was probably getting about 1,000 emails a day," he says. But when Byron spoke by phone with people who made the initial reports, they convinced him they weren't making anything up. "It was obvious they weren't just wanting to get their name out there," says Byron. "They were just freaked out by what they experienced, and they didn't want anything else to do with it." [...] Local law enforcement in Ohio also seem to be enjoying the publicity. Portage County Sheriff Bruce D. Zuchowski made a series of gag posts purporting to show the arrest of Bigfoot and his detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, only for the creature to escape from custody at the Canadian border... Despite the levity, the sheriff's office really did get some calls from concerned residents, Zuchowski says. "Ten individual people were like, 'Yeah I was walking my dog at 4 a.m. and I saw this hairy figure and I smelled this musty odor and there was this big thing and all of a sudden it ran,'" the sheriff told CNN affiliate WOIO in March.

Ars Technica

The new Wild West of AI kids’ toys

These connected companions could disrupt everything from make-believe to bedtime stories. No wonder some lawmakers want them banned.

09 May 2026 11:00am GMT

08 May 2026

OSnews

Google is tying reCAPTCHA to Google Play Services, screwing over de-Googled Android users

The ways in which Google can lock you into their ecosystem are often obvious, but sometimes, they're incredibly sneaky and easily missed. CAPTCHA tests are annoying, but at the same time, they can help protect websites from bots. While these tests are already the bane of our internet existence, they are going to get worse for some Android users. A requirement for Google's next-generation reCAPTCHA system will make it a lot harder for de-Googled phones to browse the web. A Reddit user has highlighted a seemingly innocuous support page for Google's reCAPTCHA system. The page in question relates to troubleshooting reCAPTCHA verification on mobile. In the document, it says that you'll need to use a compatible mobile device to complete verification. If you have an Android phone, then that means you'll need to be running Google Play Services version 25.41.30 or higher. ↫ Ryan McNeal at Android Authority When was the last time you actively thought about reCAPTCHA being a Google property? Even then, when was the last time you imagined something as annoying but ultimately basic as a captcha prompt could be used to tie people to Google Play Services, and thus to "blessed" Android? Every time we manage to work around one of these asinine ties to Google Play Services, another one pops up to ruin our day. We're so stupidly tied down to and entirely dependent on two very mid - at best - mobile operating systems, and it's such a stupid own goal for especially everyone outside of the US to just sit there and do nothing about it. Worse yet, it seems we're only tying ourselves down further, while paying for the privilege. At the very least we should be categorising certain services - government ID services, payment services, popular messaging platforms, and a few more - as vital infrastructure, and legally mandate these services have clearly defined and well-documented APIs so anyone is free to make alternative clients. The fact that many people are tied to either iOS or "blessed" Android because of something as stupid as what bank they use or the level of incompetency of their government ID service should be a major crisis in any country that isn't the US. I don't want to use iOS or Android, but nobody is leaving me any choice. It's infuriating.

08 May 2026 11:36pm GMT

Ars Technica

Manufacturing qubits that can move

It's hard to mix electronic manufacturing and flexible geometry.

08 May 2026 11:13pm GMT

Trump reportedly plans to fire FDA Commissioner Marty Makary

The plan isn't final and could change, but his ouster would be no surprise.

08 May 2026 10:10pm GMT

OSnews

Why don’t lowercase letters come right after uppercase letters in ASCII?

With that context, I always found it strange that the designers of ASCII included 6 characters after uppercase Z before starting the lowercase letters. Then it hit me: we have 26 letters in the English alphabet, plus 6 additional characters before lowercase starts: 26 + 6 = 32. If you know anything about computers, powers of 2 tend to stick out. Let's take a look at the binary representations of some characters compared to their lowercase counterparts. ↫ Tyler Hillery I only have a middling understanding of the rest of the article and thus the ultimate reason why ASCII includes those six characters between Z and a, but I think it comes down to making certain operations on uppercase and lowercase letters specifically more elegant. In some deep crevices of my brain all of this makes sense, but I find it very difficult to truly understand and explain as someone who knows little about programming.

08 May 2026 8:52pm GMT

Detecting (or not) the use of -l and -c together in Bourne shells

Many Bourne shells go slightly beyond the POSIX sh specification to also support a '-l' option that makes the shell act as a 'login shell'. POSIX's omission of -l isn't only because it doesn't really talk about login shells at all, it's also because Unix has a special way of marking login shells that goes back very far in its history. The -l option isn't necessarily what login and sshd and so on use, it's something that you can use if you specifically want to get a login shell in an unusual circumstance. Bourne shells also have a '-c <command string>' option that causes the shell to execute the command string rather than be interactive (this is a long standing option that is in POSIX). It may surprise you to hear that most or all Bourne shells that support -l also allow you to use -l and -c together. Basically all Bourne shells interpret this as first executing your .profile and so on, then executing the command string instead of going interactive. One use for this is to non-interactively run a command line in the context of your fully set up shell, with $PATH and other environment variables ready for use. ↫ Chris Siebenmann Now, what if you want to detect the use of these two options combined, for instance to make it so certain parts of your .profile are ignored? It turns out very few Bourne shells actually support this, and that's what Siebenmann's latest post is about.

08 May 2026 8:42pm GMT