Ask Slashdot: Can You Use an Unsafe Computer Safely?

“I think the answer is no, but there are some clever people around here,” writes long-time Slashdot reader shanen, “so…

“Is there any firewall or router or some other device that can adequately protect an old and no longer supported computer?”

I have at least two of those that come to mind, and I might use them more often if there was a safe way to connect them to the Internet.

The specifics probably matter, though that’s like opening a can of worms, but… One is a little old machine running an old and no longer supported version of Linux. Another is a Windows XP box that’s too customized at a low level to run Linux.

But the big concern involves a couple of old boxes that are only alive now because Windows 10 saved them from the end-of-service of Windows 7. Right now it looks like they might outlive Windows 10, too, but two of them are not suitable for Windows 11. Plus my spouse has an old Windows 8 box now running under 10…

What happens when you combine missed security updates with internet connectivity? Share your best thoughts in the comments.

Can you use an unsafe computer safely?

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Scooter Startup Lime Sues Hertz For Poaching Engineers

Urban scooter company Lime sued Hertz Corp on Thursday alleging unfair competition and accusing the rental car giant of improperly hiring the startup’s senior engineers. Reuters reports: San Francisco-based Neutron Holdings Inc, which does business as Lime, filed the lawsuit (PDF) in California federal court seeking unspecified monetary damages and an injunction “to recover and protect its trade secrets.” It also named Charlie Fang, who previously was Lime’s head of engineering, and another engineer as defendants. Lime claimed that Fang, who joined Hertz last year as a senior vice president, violated his employment agreement to not solicit former colleagues after leaving the company.

Hertz said in a statement it “vehemently disagrees with the claims made in the lawsuit.” The loss of engineers has “significantly harmed” Lime, which provides short-term e-bike and scooter rentals in about 30 countries. The company said in the lawsuit it now faces “staff shortages, recruiting costs, and critical project delays.” Hertz sought to “capitalize” on Fang and his team’s knowledge of building “back-end infrastructure for ride-sharing and consumer facing apps so that it could gain a competitive advantage over other companies,” according to the complaint.

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Stable Diffusion AI Art Generator Now Has an Official Blender Plug-In

A popular app for 3D artists just received an accessible way to experiment with generative AI: Stability AI has released Stability for Blender, an official Stable Diffusion plug-in that introduces a suite of generative AI tools to Blender’s free 3D modeling software. The Verge reports: The add-on allows Blender artists to create images using text descriptions directly within the software — just like the Stable Diffusion text-to-image generator. You can also create images using existing renders, allowing you to experiment with various styles for a project without having to completely remodel the scene you’re working on. Textures can similarly be generated using text prompts alongside reference images, and there’s also the function to create animations from existing renders. The results for the latter are… questionable, even in Stability’s own examples, but it’s fun to play around with crudely transforming your projects into a video format.

Stability for Blender is completely free and doesn’t require any additional software or even a dedicated GPU to run. Providing you have the latest version of Blender installed, all you need to get Stable Diffusion running inside it is an internet connection and a Stability API key (which you can get directly from Stability AI). Installing the plug-in is relatively straightforward, and Stability has provided several tutorials to walk through how to use its various features.

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Universal Hydrogen’s 40-Passenger Hydrogen Electric Plane Completes Maiden Flight

Mere weeks after achieving experimental airworthiness certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Universal Hydrogen has successfully taken its 40-passenger regional hydrogen electric plane to the skies. Electrek reports: Universal Hydrogen is celebrating today following the first successful flight of the hydrogen electric plane this morning, which took off in Grant County, Washington, at 8:41 a.m. PST and flew for 15 minutes. For this initial flight, one of the airplane’s engines was replaced with Universal Hydrogen’s fuel cell-electric powertrain. The other standard engine remained to ensure the safety of the plane and its pilot, former US Air Force test pilot Alex Kroll.

Kroll spoke to the confidence achieved during flight: “During the second circuit over the airport, we were comfortable with the performance of the hydrogen powertrain, so we were able to throttle back the fossil fuel turbine engine to demonstrate cruise principally on hydrogen power. The airplane handled beautifully, and the noise and vibrations from the fuel cell powertrain are significantly lower than from the conventional turbine engine.”

Connect has secured the first US order to convert 75 ATR 72-600 planes to Universal Hydrogen powertrains with the purchase rights for 25 more. With the first successful flight complete, Universal Hydrogen kicks off a two-year testing program that is expected to enable full certification for hydrogen electric passenger flights using the aforementioned ATR 72 planes by 2025. The flight also marks the Dash-300 flying test bed as the largest hydrogen electric plane to take flight, paving the way for more hydrogen electric conversions of existing aircraft. You can watch a video of the flight on YouTube or embedded in Electrek’s article.

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Apple Blocks Update of ChatGPT-Powered App

Apple has delayed the approval of an email-app update with AI-powered language tools over concerns that it could generate inappropriate content for children, according to communications Apple sent to the app maker. The software developer disagrees with Apple’s decision. From a report: The dispute shows the broad concerns about whether language-generating artificial-intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, are ready for widespread use. Apple took steps last week to block an update of email app BlueMail because of concerns that a new AI feature in the app could show inappropriate content, according to Ben Volach, co-founder of BlueMail developer Blix, and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. BlueMail’s new AI feature uses OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT chatbot to help automate the writing of emails using the contents of prior emails and calendar events. ChatGPT allows users to converse with an AI in seemingly humanlike ways and is capable of advanced long-form writing on a variety of topics.

“Your app includes AI-generated content but does not appear to include content filtering at this time,” Apple’s app-review team said last week in a message to the developer reviewed by the Journal. The app-review team said that because the app could produce content not appropriate for all audiences, BlueMail should move up its age restriction to 17 and older, or include content filtering, the documents show. Mr. Volach says it has content-filtering capabilities. The app’s restriction is currently set for users 4 years old and older. Apple’s age restriction for 17 and older is for categories of apps that may include everything from offensive language to sexual content and references to drugs. Mr. Volach says that this request is unfair and that other apps with similar AI functions without age restrictions are already allowed for Apple users.

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Apple Suppliers Are Racing To Exit China, AirPods Maker Says

Apple’s Chinese suppliers are likely to move capacity out of the country far faster than many observers anticipate to pre-empt fallout from escalating Beijing-Washington tensions, according to one of the US company’s most important partners. From a report: AirPods maker GoerTek is one of the many manufacturers exploring locations beyond its native China, which today cranks out the bulk of the world’s gadgets from iPhones to PlayStations. It’s investing an initial $280 million in a new Vietnam plant while considering an India expansion, Deputy Chairman Kazuyoshi Yoshinaga said in an interview. US tech companies in particular have been pushing hard for manufacturers like GoerTek to explore alternative locations, said the executive, who oversees GoerTek’s Vietnamese operations from northern Bac Ninh province.

“Starting from last month, so many people from the client side are visiting us almost every day,” Yoshinaga said from his offices at GoerTek’s sprawling industrial complex north of Hanoi. The topic that dominates discussions: “When can you move out?” The expanding conflict between the US and China, which began with a trade war but has since expanded to encompass sweeping bans on the exchange of chips and capital, is spurring a rethink of the electronics industry’s decades-old supply chain. The world’s reliance on the Asian nation became starkly clear during the Covid Zero years, when Beijing’s restrictions choked off the supply of everything from phones to cars.

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Qualcomm CEO Says He’s Expecting Apple To Use Its Own Modems in iPhones in 2024

Apple is moving to in-house 5G modem chips for its 2024 iPhones, as far as the chief executive of Qualcomm — which currently produces them for the tech giant — is aware. From a report: “We’re making no plans for 2024, my planning assumption is we’re not providing [Apple] a modem in ’24, but it’s their decision to make,” Cristiano Amon told CNBC at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Apple’s most recent iPhone 14 models use Qualcomm modems, but the company has been looking to go solo in the wireless connectivity market for some years.

It bought Intel’s modem business in 2019 and there had been speculation it would begin using in-house parts this year. In an interview with CNBC’s Karen Tso and Arjun Kharpal, Amon said Qualcomm had told investors back in 2021 that it did not expect to provide modems for the iPhone in 2023, but Apple then decided to continue for another year. Amon did not confirm whether Apple would pay Qualcomm QTL licenses if it moves to its own modems, but said royalty was “independent from providing a chip.”

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First PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs Are Now Available, Predictably Expensive

The first PCIe 5.0 SSDs are slated to ship this year with massive heatsinks and predictably high prices. Tom’s Hardware reports: There are multiple M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSDs slated to ship this year, and the first model looks to be the Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 10000, which as the name inventively implies can deliver up to 10,000 MB/s. Earlier rumors suggested the drive would be able to hit 12,000 MB/s reads and 10,000 MB/s writes, so performance was apparently reigned in while getting the product ready for retail. The Gigabyte Aorus SSD uses the Phison E26 controller, which will be common on a lot of the upcoming models. Silicon Motion is working on its new SM2508 controller that may offer higher overall performance, but it’s a bit further out and may not ship this year. The other thing to note with the Aorus is the massive heatsink that comes with the drive, which seems to be the case with all the other Gen5 SSD prototypes we’ve seen as well. Clearly, these new drives are going to get just a little bit warm.

The Gigabyte drive is currently listed on Amazon and Newegg, though the latter is currently sold out while the former is only available via a third-party marketplace seller — at a whopping $679.89 for the 2TB model. That’s almost certainly not the MSRP or a reflection of what MSRP might end up being once the drive becomes more widely available, which should happen in the coming month or two.

The other PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD that’s now available is the Inland TD510 2TB, available at Microcenter for just $349.99 — assuming you have a Microcenter within driving distance. Inland is Microcenter’s own brand of drive, and while the cooler that comes with the SSD isn’t quite as large as the Aorus, it does feature a small fan for active cooling. Word is that the fan can be quite loud for something this small, so not a great feature in other words. Like the Aorus 10000, the Inland TD510 uses the Phison E26 controller and has the same 10,000 MB/s reads and 9,500 MB/s writes specification. Where Gigabyte doesn’t currently list random read/write speeds, the Microcenter page lists up to 1.5 million IOPS read and 1.25 million IOPS write for the Inland drive. Both drives also have an endurance rating of 1,400 TBW, with read/write power use of around 11W.

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Scientist Finds Rare Jurassic Era Bug At Arkansas Walmart, Kills It and Puts It On a Pin

Longtime Slashdot reader theshowmecanuck shares a report from CBS News: A 2012 trip to a Fayetteville, Arkansas, Walmart to pick up some milk turned out to be one for the history books. A giant bug that stopped a scientist in his tracks as he walked into the store and he ended up taking home turned out to be a rare Jurassic-era flying insect. Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State University’s Insect Identification Lab, found the mysterious bug — an experience that he says he remembers “vividly.”

“I was walking into Walmart to get milk and I saw this huge insect on the side of the building,” he said in a press release from Penn State. “I thought it looked interesting, so I put it in my hand and did the rest of my shopping with it between my fingers. I got home, mounted it, and promptly forgot about it for almost a decade.”

[I]n the fall of 2020 when he was teaching an online course on insect biodiversity and evolution, Skvarla was showing students the bug and suddenly realized it wasn’t what he originally thought. He and his students then figured out what it might be — live on a Zoom call. “We were watching what Dr. Skvarla saw under his microscope and he’s talking about the features and then just kinda stops,” one of his students Codey Mathis said. “We all realized together that the insect was not what it was labeled and was in fact a super-rare giant lacewing.” A clear indicator of this identification was the bug’s wingspan. It was about 50 millimeters — nearly 2 inches — a span that the team said made it clear the insect was not an antlion. His team’s molecular analysis on the bug has been published in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington.

theshowmecanuck captioned: “To be fair, he said he didn’t know what it was so [he] just collected it and took it home, and then figured it out later. My thought that I added to the title was because of this quote in the story (which tickled my cynicism in humanity): “It could have been 100 years since it was even in this area — and it’s been years since it’s been spotted anywhere near it…”

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BitTorrent Seedbox Provider Handed Criminal Conviction Over Users’ Piracy

A man who rented out servers configured for BitTorrent file-sharing use has been handed a three-month suspended sentence in Denmark. Known as ‘seedboxes’, these pre-configured servers are not illegal per se, but when customers used the devices to break copyright law on known pirate sites, rightsholders held the server provider liable. TorrentFreak reports: Local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance (Rettigheds Alliancen) mitigates all types of piracy but for the past few years, has maintained a keen focus on torrent sites. Working in partnership with the Danish government’s SOIK IP-Task Force, Rights Alliance forced several sites to close down and successfully prosecuted site operators, staff members, and users who uploaded content to those sites. In 2021, Rights Alliance targeted specialized servers that not only supply content to torrent sites but also play a role in boosting download times while improving security.

In 2021, news broke that six people had been arrested in Denmark due to their alleged connections to several local torrent sites. Among them was Kasper Nielsen of internet services company HNielsen Networks, a supplier of servers under various brands that could be configured for ‘seedbox’ purposes. Available information indicated that the servers had been used by an unknown number of users to share content on private torrent sites ShareUniversity, Superbits and DanishBytes. […] When Rights Alliance filed its criminal complaint against HNielsen Networks, the anti-piracy group referenced the landmark Filmspeler case which involved the sale of piracy-configured media players.

According to statements published by Rights Alliance and NSK (Saerlig Kriminalitet) Denmark’s Special Crime Unit, Nielsen was convicted yesterday for selling seedboxes in the knowledge they were being used by others to share movies, TV shows, eBooks and other content, without permission from rightsholders. “On February 28, the Court in Aalborg ruled against the Danish owner behind a seedbox company for, in the period November 2020 to May 2021, having sold seedboxes and server capacity to an unknown number of people, knowing that they were used for illegal sharing of no less than 3,838 copyright-protected works on the Danish and Nordic file sharing services ShareUniversity, Superbits and DanishBytes,” Rights Alliance reports. Nielsen was handed a three-month conditional (suspended) sentence and a confiscation order for DKK 300,000 (around $42,600), the amount users had paid his company to access the seedbox servers. The 35-year-old must also pay compensation of DKK 298,660 to Rights Alliance. “Providers of seedboxes have a responsibility to ensure that their services are not used for illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted content, which the Rights Alliance can clearly see that they are doing,” says Maria Fredenslund, Director of Rights Alliance. “Therefore, this case helps to send a signal to other providers that you cannot deliberately sell services to the illegal market.”

Since Neilsen took a plea deal at an early stage, none of the claims made by Rights Alliance were needed to be proven in court. “The 3,838 figure and any evidence related to ‘knowledge’ of infringement carried out by seedbox customers on the sites, were accepted as true,” reports TorrentFreak.

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