09 Aug 2026
Hacker News
The phone book that led us to Assad's spy chief in hiding
09 Aug 2026 1:55am GMT
TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
09 Aug 2026 1:23am GMT
Linuxiac
DietPi 10.6 Adds Support for Orange Pi 4 Pro, Zero 3W, and New Odroid Boards

DietPi 10.6 expands its SBC support with new images for Orange Pi 4 Pro, Zero 3W, and Odroid M1, M1S, and M2 devices.
09 Aug 2026 12:29am GMT
08 Aug 2026
Slashdot
Slashdot Reader Builds a Photo-Verification App for iPhones
Long-time Slashdot reader BrianFagioli is announcing that he's released a new iPhone app that creates a cryptographic witness for photos without uploading the original image. The app hashes the file, signs the hash using a dedicated identity stored in Apple Keychain, and publishes the witness to Nostr relays while keeping the photo inside the app unless the user chooses to export it. Rather than trying to determine whether a scene was genuine, the app - named Veridenz - answers a narrower question, by verifying whether a photo file matches the one that was originally witnessed. Users do not need a Nostr account because the app creates its own signing identity, keeping private documentation separate from a public Nostr profile. "The developer does not collect any data from this app," says its page in Apple's iPhone store. The app's tagline is "Capture. Prove. Verify."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
08 Aug 2026 11:57pm GMT
Hacker News
Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386
08 Aug 2026 11:37pm GMT
Linuxiac
Polychromatic 0.9.8 OpenRazer Front-End Improves Brightness Controls

Polychromatic 0.9.8 is out with Razer Blade 16 (2023) support, a smoother brightness slider, improved icon lookups, and several fixes.
08 Aug 2026 10:48pm GMT
Slashdot
New Orleans Will Use AI To Answer 911 Calls Instead of a Human
"If you call 911 in New Orleans, you may hear the sound of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent answering your call instead of a human voice," reports the Shreveport Times: The Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD) is currently testing out the new tool designed to reduce the volume of calls human dispatchers must handle, which is over a thousand emergency calls a day. New Orleans implemented AI in April to answer 311 calls for non-emergencies. The AI was trained and programmed to provide information to callers, as the OPCD says 50% of 311 calls are for information, according to GovTech. AI is now answering 911 emergency calls in Louisiana's largest city and one of the cities with the highest call rates in the U.S. The OPCD is using Carbyne's AI Emergency Call Triage, with triage being the process of analyzing and prioritizing emergency calls. The AI system assesses incoming calls and can provide immediate feedback to callers. This is intended to handle the increase of calls that are related to one incident, so callers get automatically routed to an AI agent who asks if they are calling regarding the incident. If the answer is yes, then callers can receive information or updates, and if it's no, then the callers are transferred to a human. This combats multitudes of calls piling up and taking longer time to potentially answer an emergency call. The OPCD said the AI will not be used to handle emergency calls, only to direct such calls to a human dispatcher.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
08 Aug 2026 9:57pm GMT
More Police Officers Fired, Investigated, or Arrested for Misusing Flock Camera Systems
In Georgia the Savannah Police Department "terminated four sworn officers and two civilian employees following an internal investigation into misuse of the department's Flock Safety License Plate Reader system," according to a local news report: All six cases are also under independent criminal investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation... Investigators found that employees were running searches on personal acquaintances and family members. One officer was found to have given someone from an outside law enforcement agency access to SPD's Flock Safety system, which they weren't authorized to do. Elsewhere ABC News reports that a female North Carolina police officer was arrested Wednesday "for allegedly using Flock license plate readers to track her boyfriend's ex-wife, according to police..." The officer is accused of accessing the system for personal use 31 different times, including at least twice when she was off-duty, and listing most of the lookups as motor vehicle infractions. [Police chief Ron] Campurciani "added that the department is looking at 10 other potential misuse cases and said three 'look like they could be problematic.'" And an Ohio news station reports a police officer who recently resigned "while under internal investigation repeatedly used the Flock license plate reader system to search a vehicle registered to someone investigators identified as his likely domestic partner." Meanwhile, 404 Media reported this week that an Iowa county's usage police specifically tells police officers - in all capital letters - not to tell occupants of a vehicle that an automated license plate reader was used for a traffic stop. It also instructs officers to not even mention the use of the ALPR technology in their reports "unless absolutely necessary," according to information they'd obtained from a public records request," suggesting they instead they call the cameras "county resources": It is not just local police in small communities who are creating policies designed to obfuscate Flock usage. Earlier this year, we reported that police in multiple states were being told to be "as vague as permissible" about why they were using Flock because their searches could be obtained using public records requests, and that warning was being shared by the FBI and Department of Justice... In the [Iowa county] public records request, Sheriff Don Phillips said "there is no need" to tell people about the use of Flock... "because the information is verified by the deputy running the license plate. It is common practice for law enforcement to refrain from disclosing investigative methods and sources to prevent criminals from learning how to circumvent them."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
08 Aug 2026 8:43pm GMT
Linuxiac
Wine 11.15 Released with ARM64EC and Local NTLM Support

Wine 11.15 is out with ARM64EC build support in MinGW mode, local NTLM authentication, more BCrypt KDF algorithms, and WindowsCodecs improvements.
08 Aug 2026 12:51pm GMT
Ars Technica
The first self-driving vehicle on Mars has proven to be a smashing success
About 90 percent of the distance driven by Perseverance has been autonomous.
08 Aug 2026 11:30am GMT
DeepMind’s hurricane breakthrough has surprised weather scientists
Open source WeatherNext model can make accurate predictions with lower-resolution weather data.
08 Aug 2026 11:05am GMT
07 Aug 2026
Ars Technica
Europe's free satellite service just made it easier to track wildfires
Copernicus Browser adds wildfire visualization amid record wildfire season.
07 Aug 2026 9:48pm GMT