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For the "foreseeable future," Sony says it has stopped accepting new orders for most of its CFexpress and SD memory card lines due to the an ongoing memory supply shortage. "Due to the global shortage of semiconductors (memory) and other factors, it is anticipated that supply will not be able to meet demand for CFexpress memory cards and SD memory cards for the foreseeable future," the company said in a notice. "Therefore, we have decided to temporarily suspend the acceptance of orders from our authorized dealers and from customers at the Sony Store from March 27, 2026 onwards. PetaPixel reports: The suspension includes all of Sony's memory card lines, including CFexpress Type A, CFexpress Type B, and SD cards. The 240GB, 480GB, 960GB, and 1920GB capacity Type A cards have been suspended, as have the 480GB and 240GB Type B cards. The full gamut of Sony's high-end SD cards has also been suspended, including the 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB TOUGH-branded cards and the lower-end 512GB, 256GB, 128GB, and 256GB plainly-branded Sony cards, which cap out at V60 speeds. Even Sony's lower-end, V30 128GB and 64GB SD cards have been suspended, showcasing that the SSD shortage affects all types of solid state, not just the high-end ones. It appears that only the 960GB CFexpress Type B card and the lowest-end SF-UZ series SD cards remain in production. However, those UHS-I SD cards are discontinued in the United States outside of a scant few retailers and resellers. "We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers," Sony concludes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Mar 2026 4:00pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Sweeping job cuts at Big Tech companies have become an annual tradition. How executives explain those decisions, however, has changed. Out are buzzwords like efficiency, over-hiring, and too many management layers. Today, all explanations stem from artificial intelligence (AI). In recent weeks, giants including Google, Amazon, Meta, as well as smaller firms such as Pinterest and Atlassian, have all announced or warned of plans to shrink their workforce, pointing to developments in AI that they say are allowing their firms to do more with fewer people. [...] But explaining cuts by pointing to advances in AI sounds better than citing cost pressures or a desire to please shareholders, says tech investor Terrence Rohan, who has had a seat on many company boards. "Pointing to AI makes a better blog post," Rohan says. "Or it at least doesn't make you seem as much the bad guy who just wants to cut people for cost-effectiveness." That does not mean there is no substance behind the words, Rohan added. Some of the companies he's backing are using code that is 25% to 75% AI-generated. That is a sign of the real threat that AI tools for writing code represent to jobs such as software developer, computer engineer and programmer, posts once considered a near-guarantee of highly paid, stable careers. "Some of it is that the narrative is changing, some of it is that we really are starting to see step changes in productivity," Anne Hoecker, a partner at Bain who leads the consultancy's technology practice, says of the recent job cuts. "Leaders more recently are seeing these tools are good enough that you really can do the same amount of work with fundamentally less people." There is another way that AI is driving job cuts -- and it has nothing to do with the technical abilities of coding tools and chatbots. Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft are collectively planning to pour $650 billion into AI in the coming year. As executives hunt for ways to try to ease investor shock at those costs, many are landing on payroll, typically tech firms' single biggest expense. [...] Although the expense of, for example, 30,000 corporate Amazon employees is dwarfed by that company's AI spending plans, firms of this size will now take any opportunity to cut costs, Rohan says. "They're playing a game of inches," Rohan says of cuts at Big Tech firms. "If you can even slightly tune the machine, that is helpful." Hoecker says cutting jobs also signals to stock market investors worried about the "real and huge" cost of AI development that executives are not blithely writing blank cheques. "It shows some discipline," says Hoecker. "Maybe laying off people isn't going to make much of a dent in that bill, but by creating a little bit of cashflow, it helps."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Mar 2026 3:00pm GMT

Their goal is to use biometric data and blockchain to build age-verification measures directly into disposable vape cartridges. Wired reports on a partnership between vape/cartridge manufacturer Ispire Technology and regulatory consulting company Chemular (which specializes in the nicotine market) - which they've named "Ike Tech": [Using blockchain-based security, the e-cig cartridge] would use a camera to scan some form of ID and then also take a video of the user's face. Once it verifies your identity and determines you're old enough to vape, it translates that information into anonymized tokens. That info goes to an identity service like ID.me or Clear. If approved, it bounces back to the app, which then uses a Bluetooth signal to give the vape the OK to turn on. "Everything is tokenized," [says Ispire CEO Michael Wang]. "As a result of this process, we don't communicate consumer personal private information." He says the process takes about a minute and a half... After that onetime check, the Bluetooth connection on the phone will recognize when the vape cartridge is nearby and keep it unlocked. Move the vape too far away from the phone, and it shuts off again. Based on testing, the companies behind Ike Tech claim this process has a 100 percent success rate in age verification, more or less calling the tech infallible. "The FDA told us it's the holy grail technology they were looking for," Wang says. "That's word-for-word what they said when we met with them...." Wang says the goal is to implement additional features in the verification process, like geo-fencing, which would force the vape to shut off while near a school or on an airplane. In the future, the plan is to license this biometric verification tech to other e-cig companies. The tech may also grow to include fingerprint readers and expand to other product categories; Wang suggests guns, which have a long history of age-verification features not quite working.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Mar 2026 11:34am GMT

Why did a leading prediction market feel the need for an in-person bar in DC?

29 Mar 2026 11:35am GMT

Research proceeds on alternatives, but some doubt whether true lie detection is possible.

29 Mar 2026 11:01am GMT

Breathing capacity could have compensated for lower atmospheric oxygen.

28 Mar 2026 12:30pm GMT

All I wanted was to learn how to play guitar, but ended up building a DIY kit for it.

28 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT

This guide describes how you can install a Plan 9 network on an OpenBSD machine (it will probably work on any unix machine though). The authentication service (called "authsrv" on Plan 9) is provided by a unix version: authsrv9. The file service is provided by a program called "u9fs". It comes with Plan 9. Both run from inetd. The (diskless) cpu server is provided by running qemu, booted from only a floppy (so without local storage). Finally, the terminal is provided by the program drawterm. The nice thing about this approach is that you can use all your familiar unix tools to get started with Plan 9 (e.g. you can edit the Plan 9 files with your favorite unix editor). I'm assuming you have read at least something about Plan 9, for example the introduction paper Plan 9 from Bell Labs. ↫ Mechiel Lukkien If you're running OpenBSD, you're already doing something better than everyone else, and if you want to ascend to the next level, this is a great place to start. Of course, the final level, where you leave your earthly roots behind and become a being of pure enlightened energy, is running Plan 9 on real hardware as the universe intended, but let's not put the cart before the horse. One day, all of humanity will just be an endless collection of interconnected cosmic Plan 9 servers, more plentiful than the stars in the known universe.

27 Mar 2026 7:40pm GMT

Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. "I had some time, so I thought: let's have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about," he says. "Very quickly, I became fascinated." Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling "a little isolated". He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to "chill", but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma had sunk €100,000 (about £83,000) into a business startup based on a delusion, been hospitalised three times and tried to kill himself. ↫ Anna Moore at The Guardian These stories are absolutely heart-wrenching, and it doesn't just happen to people who have had a history of mental illness or other things you might associate with priming someone for "falling for" an "AI" chatbot. Just a few years in, and it's already clear that these tools pose a real danger to a group of people of indeterminate size, and proper research into the causes is absolutely warranted and needed. On top of that, if there's any evidence of wrongdoing from the companies behind these chatbots - intentionally making them more addictive, luring people in, ignoring established dangers, covering up addiction cases, etc. - lawsuits and regulation are definitely in order. Only yesterday, Facebook and Google lost a landmark trial in the US, ruling the companies intentionally made social media as addictive as possible, thereby destroying a person's life in the process. Countless similar lawsuits are underway all over the world, and I have a feeling that in a few years to decades, we'll look at unregulated, rampant social media the same way we look at tobacco now. Perhaps "AI" chatbots will join their ranks, too.

27 Mar 2026 7:30pm GMT

Today, we're excited to announce a significant step forward in our ongoing commitment to Windows security and system reliability: the removal of trust for all kernel drivers signed by the deprecated cross-signed root program. This update will help protect our customers by ensuring that only kernel drivers that the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (WHCP) have passed and been signed can be loaded by default. To raise the bar for platform security, Microsoft will maintain an explicit allow list of reputable drivers signed by the cross-signed program. The allow list ensures a secure and compatible experience for a limited number of widely used, and reputable cross-signed drivers. This new kernel trust policy applies to systems running Windows 11 24H2, Windows 11 25H2, Windows 11 26H1, and Windows Server 2025 in the April 2026 Windows update. All future versions of Windows 11 and Windows Server will enforce the new kernel trust policy. ↫ Peter Waxman at the Windows IT Pro Blog The cross-signed root program was discontinued in 2021, and ran since the early 2000s, so I think it's fair to no longer automatically assume such possibly old and outdated drivers are still to be trusted.

27 Mar 2026 7:18pm GMT

On Friday, July 18th, 2025, the Arch Linux team was notified that three AUR packages had been uploaded that contained malware. A few maintainers including myself took care of deleting these packages, removing all traces of the malicious code, and protecting against future malicious uploads.

30 Jan 2026 12:00am GMT

While starting this post I realized I have been maintaining personal infrastructure for over a decade! Most of the things I've self-hosted is been for personal uses. Email server, a blog, an IRC server, image hosting, RSS reader and so on. All of these things has all been a bit all over the place and never properly streamlined. Some has been in containers, some has just been flat files with a nginx service in front and some has been a random installed Debian package from somewhere I just forgot.

19 Jan 2026 12:00am GMT