Light pollution extends the active hours of birds worldwide by nearly an hour, fundamentally altering the natural rhythms of over 500 species across multiple continents. Analysis of 60 million bird call recordings reveals that artificial lighting causes birds to begin vocalizing 20 minutes earlier each morning and continue 30 minutes later each evening. The effect varies significantly by species anatomy and behavior. Birds with proportionally larger eyes experience the strongest responses, with American Robins in highly illuminated areas beginning their songs up to two hours before sunrise. Species nesting in tree cavities or enclosed spaces show minimal changes, as opaque barriers shield them from artificial light. The research, drawing from BirdWeather devices deployed globally by birdwatchers, is the largest analysis of light pollution's biological impacts to date.

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Denmark's PostNord will end centuries of letter delivery as digitalization and high postage costs make physical mail nearly obsolete. The BBC reports: The steep decline in letter volumes has been driven largely by digitalization, and PostNord announced in March that it will cease letter services at the end of the year. It will bring to an end four centuries of letter deliveries by the state-owned operation. A third of its workforce is being let go, as it sheds 2,200 positions in its loss-making letter arm. Instead it will focus on its profitable parcel business, creating 700 new roles. "Danes hardly receive any letters anymore. It's been going down for years and years," says Kim Pedersen, chief of PostNord Denmark. "They're receiving one letter a month on average, it's not a lot." "On the contrary, Danes love to shop online," he adds. "Global e-commerce is growing significantly, and we are moving with it." Fifteen years ago, PostNord operated several enormous letter-sorting facilities, but now there's just one on the western outskirts of Copenhagen. Since 2000, the volume of letters the business handles has declined by more than 90%, from around 1.4 billion to 110 million last year, and it continues to fall rapidly. As PostNord prepares to cease letter deliveries, 1,500 of its red post boxes are being removed from Danish streets. However, few locals in the capital appear to use them much. From email and cashless mobile payments, to digital health cards carried by smartphone, there's an app for almost everything in Denmark - and it's one of the world's most digitalized nations, second only to South Korea, according to the OECD's 2023 Digital Government Index. The Danish government has embraced a "digital by default" policy, and for more than a decade correspondence with the public has been carried out electronically. "We are facing this natural evolution of a digitalized society, earlier than maybe some other countries," Mr Pedersen explains. "In Denmark, we are maybe five or 10 years ahead." The high cost of sending a letter in Denmark is also a contributing factor behind its decline. In 2024, a new law opened up the postal market to private competition and took away its exemption from the country's 25% rate of VAT, so the price of a PostNord stamp jumped to 29 Danish krone ($4.55) per letter. "That made [volumes] drop even further faster," Mr Pedersen points out. The report notes that private firm DAO will take over nationwide letter deliveries in Denmark after PostNord exits. However, concerns remain that elderly citizens and rural residents may struggle with fewer post boxes and reduced service quality. Both the advocacy group DaneAge and the 3F Postal Union warn the transition could disproportionately affect vulnerable populations.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As banks around the world prepare to replace many thousands of workers with AI, Australia's biggest bank is scrambling to rehire 45 workers after allegedly lying about chatbots besting staff by handling higher call volumes. In a statement Thursday flagged by Bloomberg, Australia's main financial services union, the Finance Sector Union (FSU), claimed a "massive win" for 45 union members whom the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) had replaced with an AI-powered "voice bot." The FSU noted that some of these workers had been with CBA for decades. Those workers in particular were shocked when CBA announced last month that their jobs had become redundant. At that time, CBA claimed that launching the chatbot supposedly "led to a reduction in call volumes" by 2,000 a week, FSU said. But "this was an outright lie," fired workers told FSU. Instead, call volumes had been increasing at the time they were dismissed, with CBA supposedly "scrambling" -- offering staff overtime and redirecting management to join workers answering phones to keep up. To uncover the truth, FSU escalated the dispute to a fair work tribunal, where the union accused CBA of failing to explain how workers' roles were ruled redundant. The union also alleged that CBA was hiring for similar roles in India, Bloomberg noted, which made it appear that CBA had perhaps used the chatbot to cover up a shady pivot to outsource jobs. While the dispute was being weighed, CBA admitted that "they didn't properly consider that an increase in calls" happening while staff was being fired "would continue over a number of months," FSU said. "This error meant the roles were not redundant," CBA confirmed at the tribunal. Now, CBA has apologized to the fired workers. A spokesperson told Bloomberg that they can choose to come back to their prior roles, seek another position, or leave the firm with an exit payment. "We have apologized to the employees concerned and acknowledge we should have been more thorough in our assessment of the roles required," CBA's spokesperson told Bloomberg. The FSU said that "the damage has already been done." These employees "have had to endure the stress and worry of facing redundancy" and were "suddenly confronted with the prospect of being unable to pay their bills." FSU warned that CBA's flip-flopping on AI serves as a "stark reminder to all of us that we can never trust employers to do the right thing by workers, and change can happen at any time and impact any one of us."

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Cisco, the San Jose-based technology giant, has announced another round of layoffs affecting Bay Area workers, marking a familiar pattern of reporting skyrocketing revenue followed by drastic job cuts. From a report: According to Aug. 13 WARN filings with California's Employment Development Department, the company will eliminate 221 positions across its Milpitas and San Francisco offices. WARN documents are generally required by the state in the event of mass layoffs. Employees were notified of the layoffs on Aug. 14 and their terminations will be effective Oct. 13. The most cuts, affecting 157 jobs, largely in software engineering roles, were at Cisco's Milpitas office at 560 McCarthy Blvd. Cisco's San Francisco office at 500 Terry A. Francois Blvd. will cut 64 positions, according to the filing. The filings came the same day Cisco released its fourth-quarter earnings, which reported $14.7 billion in revenue, an 8% increase from the same quarter last year. Revenue for the 2025 fiscal year was $56.7 billion, up 5% from the previous year.

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Gaming handhelds are becoming the industry's new battleground as Microsoft launches its ROG Xbox Ally devices October 16, chasing Nintendo Switch 2's record-breaking 5.8 million units sold in seven weeks. The ASUS-manufactured handhelds run full Windows 11 with a gaming-optimized interface, accessing Xbox Game Pass, Steam, Battle.net, and other PC storefronts without platform lockdown. Two models arrive at launch: the standard Xbox Ally with AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor and the premium Xbox Ally X featuring Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, 24GB RAM, 1TB storage, and 80Wh battery. Microsoft's Handheld Compatibility Program pre-verifies thousands of PC games for portable play. Pricing remains unannounced.

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Phone manufacturers rarely acknowledge that IP68 water resistance degrades over time, but Google has broken that silence with advertising disclaimers for its Pixel 10 Pro Fold. The fine print explicitly warns that water and dust protection "will diminish or be lost over time due to normal wear and tear, device repair, disassembly or damage." The company further notes that liquid damage voids warranties despite IP68 certification at manufacture.

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Solar panels in space could cut Europe's terrestrial renewable energy needs by 80% by 2050, a study has found. The Guardian: Using a detailed computer model of the continent's future power grid, the researchers found that a system of space-based panels designed by Nasa could reduce the cost of the whole European power system by as much as 15%. It could also cut battery use by more than two-thirds. The study, led by researchers at King's College London, is the first to assess the possible impact of space solar energy on Europe. The space-based solar power (SBSP) panels that yielded the positive results uses a heliostat design. The design, which the system imitates, uses mirror-like reflectors to collect sunlight in orbit. The sunlight is then transmitted to stations on Earth and converted to electricity before it is delivered to an energy grid. The computer model of the continent's power grid spans 33 countries, and simulates electricity demand, generation and storage to identify the lowest-cost option to meet Europe's electricity needs.

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A federal appeals court rejected T-Mobile's attempt to overturn $92 million in fines for selling customer location information to third-party firms. From a report: The Federal Communications Commission last year fined T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon, saying the carriers illegally shared access to customers' location information without consent and did not take reasonable measures to protect that sensitive data against unauthorized disclosure. The fines relate to sharing of real-time location data that was revealed in 2018, but it took years for the FCC to finalize the penalties. The three carriers appealed the rulings in three different courts, and the first major decision was handed down Friday. A three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously against T-Mobile and its subsidiary Sprint. "Every cell phone is a tracking device," the ruling begins. "To receive service, a cell phone must periodically connect with the nearest tower in a wireless carrier's network. Each time it does, it sends the carrier a record of the phone's location and, by extension, the location of the customer who owns it. Over time, this information becomes an exhaustive history of a customer's whereabouts and 'provides an intimate window into [that] person's life.'"

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The era of software without embedded AI assistants is increasingly ending as Adobe launches Acrobat Studio, adding collaborative AI workspaces to the 32-year-old PDF format. The new platform allows users to upload multiple documents into "PDF spaces" where personalized chatbot assistants parse and answer questions about their contents. Adobe began integrating generative AI into Acrobat last year and now positions this release as the format's biggest transformation since its 1993 debut. The shift arrives amid growing user fatigue with AI features proliferating across everyday applications -- a Pew Research Center report found US adults more concerned than excited about AI's impact on their lives. Adobe's move cements 2025 as the year generative AI became inescapable in essential software, fundamentally altering how users interact with documents that once replicated the familiarity of paper.

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President Donald Trump says his administration will not approve solar or wind power projects, even as electricity demand is outpacing the supply in some parts of the U.S. From a report: "We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar," Trump, who has complained in the past that solar takes up too much land, posted on Truth Social. "The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!" The president's comment comes after the administration tightened federal permitting for renewables last month. The permitting process is now centralized in Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's office. Renewable companies fear that projects will no longer receive permits that were once normal course of business.

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A complete shutdown of encrypted web traffic isolated China from the global internet for 74 minutes Wednesday morning, blocking citizens from accessing foreign websites and disrupting international business operations that depend on secure connections to offshore servers. The Great Firewall began injecting forged TCP RST+ACK packets to terminate all connections on port 443 at 00:34 Beijing time on August 20, according to activist group Great Firewall Report. The standard HTTPS port carries most modern web traffic, meaning Chinese users lost access to virtually all foreign-hosted websites while companies including Apple and Tesla couldn't connect to servers powering their basic services. The blocking device didn't match known Great Firewall hardware fingerprints, suggesting Beijing either deployed new censorship equipment or experienced a configuration error. No significant events requiring information blackout occurred during the outage window. Pakistan's internet traffic dropped significantly hours before China's incident, potentially connected through shared firewall technology.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Adweek: Meta wanted advertisers to believe its ecommerce ad product, Shops ads, was outperforming the competition, per a whistleblower complaint filed in a U.K. court. The former employee alleges the social media giant artificially inflated return on ad spend (ROAS) by counting shipping fees as revenue, subsidizing bids in ad auctions, and applying undisclosed discounts. The complaint, viewed by ADWEEK, was filed with the London Central Employment Tribunal on Wednesday (August 20) by Samujjal Purkayastha, a former product manager on Meta's Shops ads team. The document claims Meta artificially inflated performance metrics to push brands toward its fledgling ecommerce ad product. The company's motivation, the complaint says, was in part to combat Apple's 2021 privacy changes that cut the troves of iOS tracking information that had long powered Meta's ad machine. Meta's former chief financial officer (CFO), David Wehner, said the changes would cost "on the order of $10 billion" in losses during the company's Q4 2021 earnings call. User purchases on Facebook or Instagram Shops pages would provide more first-party data, however. Purkayastha, who joined Meta (then Facebook) in 2020 as a product manager on the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Applied Research team, was reassigned to the Shops Ads team in March 2022 and remained at the company until Feb. 19, 2025, when he was terminated. He alleged that during internal reviews in early 2024, Meta data scientists found the return on ad spend (ROAS) from Shops ads had been inflated between 17% and 19%. This discrepancy stemmed from Meta counting shipping fees and taxes as part of a sale, even though that money never went to merchants, he alleged. The company's other ad products exclude those figures, in line with competitors like Google, the complaint reads. Without including the fees and taxes, Shops ads performed no better than Meta's traditional ads, Purkayastha claimed. "This was significant," the complaint reads. "In addition to the ROAS performance metric being overstated by nearly a fifth, it meant that, rather than having exceeded our primary target, the Shops Ads team had in fact missed it once the figure was reduced to take account of the artificial inflation." Purkayastha raised these concerns with senior leadership in multiple meetings between 2022 and 2024, and is now seeking interim relief through his employment tribunal filing to have his former position reinstated. A Meta spokesperson told ADWEEK the company is "actively defending these proceedings," adding that "allegations related to the integrity of our advertising practices are without merit and we have full confidence in our performance review processes."

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Longtime Slashdot reader Xesdeeni writes: I received an email indicating Intuit will not support Windows 10 for the desktop versions of TurboTax starting this tax year. Laughably, they say "security is a top priority for us" before adding: "To use TurboTax Desktop software for tax year 2025, your computer will need to run on Microsoft Windows 11 [or] TurboTax Online." I'm just paranoid enough to use the desktop version, since at least it limits what they see to the forms they send to the IRS -- rather than everything. Even if I was willing to endure the added burden of printing and mailing the forms, this would be the end of that, since I'm out on Windows 11 for the reasons you already know. Here's what they sent: Hi there, We're reaching out to provide an update on TurboTax Desktop software for tax year 2025. After October 14, 2025, Microsoft will no longer provide software updates, technical assistance, or security fixes for Windows 10 operating system. Because security is a top priority for us, TurboTax Desktop software for tax year 2025 onwards will not be compatible with Windows 10 operating system. To use TurboTax Desktop software for tax year 2025, your computer will need to run on Microsoft Windows 11 operating system. You can also consider switching to TurboTax Online, which will work on any supported browser (available December 2025). For more resources and additional information about this change, go to this help article: How does the end of support for Windows 10 affect my TurboTax Desktop experience? Thanks for being part of the TurboTax family. Warm regards, The TurboTax Team Xesdeeni comments: "I've wanted a Linux offering for years now and only kept Windows for such limited products as this. I guess I can completely punt it now."

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Google, TVA, and Kairos Power are teaming up to power data centers with advanced nuclear energy through a collaboration in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The project aims to deliver 50 MW of nuclear energy by 2030. From a blog post: Today we announced the first deployment of Kairos Power's advanced nuclear reactor -- the Hermes 2 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee -- through a new power purchase agreement (PPA) between Kairos Power and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Marking the first purchase of electricity from an advanced GEN IV reactor by a U.S. utility, this agreement will enable 50 megawatts (MW) of nuclear energy on TVA's grid that powers our data centers in Montgomery County, Tennessee and Jackson County, Alabama. Last October, we began a long-term collaboration with Kairos Power to unlock up to 500 MW of nuclear power for the U.S. electricity system through multiple deployments of their small modular reactor. With this next step, we are creating a three-party solution where energy customers, utilities, and technology developers work together to advance new technologies that can help meet the world's growing energy needs with reliable, affordable capacity. Here's how it works: TVA will purchase electricity from Kairos Power's Hermes 2 plant, scheduled to begin operations in 2030. In this initial phase of the collaboration, we will procure clean energy attributes from the plant through TVA to help power our data centers in the region with locally sourced clean energy, every hour of every day.

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Once upon a time, when the Web was young, if you wanted to be a cool kid, you absolutely needed two things on your website: a guestbook for people to sign, and a hit counter showing how many people had visited your Geocities page hosting your Star Trek fan fiction.

These days, we don't see them as often, but companies still like to track the information, especially when it comes to counting downloads. So when Justin started on a new team and saw a download count in their analytics, he didn't think much of it at all. Nor did he think much about it when he saw the download count displayed on the download page.

Another thing that Justin didn't think much about was big piles of commits getting merged in overnight, at least not at first. But each morning, Justin needed to pull in a long litany of changes from a user named "MrStinky". For the first few weeks, Justin was too preoccupied with getting his feet under him, so he didn't think about it too much.

But eventually, he couldn't ignore what he saw in the git logs.

docs: update download count to 51741 docs: update download count to 51740 docs: update download count to 51738

And each commit was exactly what the name implied, a diff like:

- 51740 + 51741

Each time a user clicked the download link, a ping was sent to their analytics system. Throughout the day, the bot "MrStinky" would query the analytics tool, and create new commits that updated the counter. Overnight, it would bundle those commits into a merge request, approve the request, merge the changes, and then redeploy what was at the tip of main.

"But, WHY?" Justin asked his peers.

One of them just shrugged. "It seemed like the easiest and fastest way at the time?"

"I wanted to wire Mr Stinky up to our content management system's database, but just never got around to it. And this works fine," said another.

Much like the rest of the team, Justin found that there were bigger issues to tackle.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Serbian scientists have been experimenting with mealworms as a way to break down polystyrene. Larisa Ilijin, a principal research fellow at Belgrade's Institute for Biology, said the scientists had discovered that mealworms can digest various plastics, including polystyrene, which is used in packaging, insulation and food containers. In the project endorsed by the government and the United Nations' agency for international development, UNDP, and other international donors, they have been including the polystyrene in the regular food of the larval form of the yellow mealworm beetle, or Tenebrio molitor. They habitually eat more or less anything, but need the training to eat the plastic products. "We have larvae that have been adapted over a long time to biodegrade plastic, to be as efficient as possible in the process," Ilijin told Reuters. She said the bacteria living in their guts break down the plastic into carbon dioxide and water, and showed no evidence of leaving microplastic residue in their innards or faeces. The work builds on similar research projects in the U.S. and Africa. [...] The institute has given Belgrade-based Belinda Animals several containers of the mealworms. It is now breeding them and hoping to attract a network of similar farms. "When breaking down 1 kg of Styrofoam, larvae emit one to two grams of carbon dioxide ... If we incinerate it ... (Styrofoam) emits over 4,000 times more," owner Boris Vasiljev said. He also envisages the larvae being used as animal feed, should it reach a large commercial scale. The use of mealworms is still in its infancy, Ilijin said, as Serbia still needs to adopt regulations that would allow the use and sale of insect products for animal fodder. "Styrofoam takes over 500 years to decompose in nature ... this would be one of the good ways for solving the problem of plastic waste in nature," Ilijin said.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta has paused hiring in its artificial intelligence division after bringing on more than 50 researchers and engineers. "All that's happening here is some basic organizational planning: creating a solid structure for our new superintelligence efforts after bringing people on board and undertaking yearly budgeting and planning exercises," a spokesperson for Meta said in an emailed statement to Reuters. Over the last few months, Meta has been offering AI researchers salaries that dwarf those of the Manhattan Project and the Space Race. The company recently offered AI researcher Matt Deitke $250 million over four years (an average of $62.5 million per year), with potentially $100 million in the first year alone. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly also offered an unnamed AI engineer $1 billion in compensation to be paid out over several years.

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A new review of nearly 700 studies on portable air cleaners found that over 90% of them were tested in empty spaces, not on people, leaving major gaps in evidence about whether these devices actually prevent infections or if they might even cause harm by releasing chemicals like ozone or formaldehyde. The Conversation reports: Many respiratory viruses, such as COVID-19 and influenza, can spread through indoor air. Technologies such as HEPA filters, ultraviolet light and special ventilation designs -- collectively known as engineering infection controls -- are intended to clean indoor air and prevent viruses and other disease-causing pathogens from spreading. Along with our colleagues across three academic institutions and two government science agencies, we identified and analyzed every research study evaluating the effectiveness of these technologies published from the 1920s through 2023 -- 672 of them in total. These studies assessed performance in three main ways: Some measured whether the interventions reduced infections in people; others used animals such as guinea pigs or mice; and the rest took air samples to determine whether the devices reduced the number of small particles or microbes in the air. Only about 8% of the studies tested effectiveness on people, while over 90% tested the devices in unoccupied spaces. We found substantial variation across different technologies. For example, 44 studies examined an air cleaning process called photocatalytic oxidation, which produces chemicals that kill microbes, but only one of those tested whether the technology prevented infections in people. Another 35 studies evaluated plasma-based technologies for killing microbes, and none involved human participants. We also found 43 studies on filters incorporating nanomaterials designed to both capture and kill microbes -- again, none included human testing.

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Last week, following a recent U.S. Customs ruling, Apple reintroduced blood oxygen monitoring to certain Apple Watch models in the U.S., sidestepping an ITC import ban stemming from its legal dispute with medical device maker Masimo. Today, Masimo fired back with a new lawsuit against the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 9to5Mac reports: The company says US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) overstepped its authority and violated due process when it reversed its earlier decision on August 1 and allowed Apple to restore the feature. Moreover, Masimo says it found out about the decision when Apple publicly announced the return of the feature: "It has now come to light that CBP thereafter reversed itself without any meaningful justification, without any material change in circumstances, and without any notice to Masimo, let alone an opportunity for Masimo to be heard. CBP changed its position on Apple's watch-plus-iPhone redesign through an ex parte proceeding. Specifically, on August 1, 2025, CBP issued an 3 ex parte ruling permitting Apple to import devices that, when used with iPhones already in the United States, perform the same functionality that the ITC found to infringe Masimo's patents. Masimo only discovered this ruling on Thursday, August 14, 2025, when Apple publicly announced it would be reintroducing the pulse oximetry functionality through a software update." The company is now asking the court for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block the CBP's decision, and reinstate the original ruling that "determined that Apple's redesigned watches could be imported only to the extent the infringing functionality was completely disabled." As reported by Bloomberg Law, Masimo says the following in its supporting brief: "Each passing day that this unlawful ruling remains in effect irreparably deprives Masimo of its right to be free from unfair trade practices and to preserve its competitive standing in the U.S. marketplace." Masimo further argues that CBP's move "effectively nullified" the ITC's exclusion order against Apple. Apple's appeal of that ban is still pending before the Federal Circuit.

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A 22-year-old Oregon man has been charged with operating one of the most powerful botnets ever recorded. The network, known as Rapper Bot, launched over 370,000 DDoS attacks worldwide, including against X, DeepSeek, U.S. tech firms, and even Defense Department systems. It was allegedly operated by Ethan Foltz of Eugene, Oregon. The Wall Street Journal reports: Foltz faces a maximum of 10 years in prison on a charge of abetting computer intrusions, the Justice Department said in a news release. Rapper Bot was made up of tens of thousands of hacked devices and was capable of flooding victims' websites with enough junk internet traffic to knock them offline, an attack known as a distributed denial of service, or DDoS. In February, the networking company Nokia measured a Rapper Bot attack against a gaming platform at 6.5 trillion bits per second, well above the several hundred million bits a second of the average high-speed internet connection. "This would place Rapper Bot among the most powerful DDoS botnets to have ever existed," said a criminal complaint that the prosecutors filed Tuesday in a federal court in Alaska. Investigators said Rapper Bot's attacks were so powerful that they were able to overwhelm all but the most robust networks. Foltz allegedly rented out Rapper Bot to paying customers, including gambling website operators who would use the network in extortion attempts, according to the complaint. The botnet was used to launch more than 370,000 attacks in 80 countries, including China, Japan and the U.S., prosecutors said. It launched its attacks from hacked routers, digital video recorders and cameras, not from computers. [...] "At its height, it mobilized tens of thousands of devices, many with no prior role in DDoS," said Jerome Meyer, a researcher with Nokia's Deepfield network-analysis division. "Taking it down removes a major source of the largest attacks we see."

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