Phys.org republishes this article from The Conversation:
On average, managers spend 23 hours a week in meetings. Much of what happens in them is considered to be of low value, or even entirely counterproductive. The paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings... in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones...
A 2015 handbook laid the groundwork for the nascent field of "Meeting Science". Among other things, the research revealed that the real issue may not be the number of meetings, but rather how they are designed, the lack of clarity about their purpose, and the inequalities they (often unconsciously) reinforce... Faced with what we call meeting madness, the solution is not to eliminate meetings altogether, but to design them better. It begins with a simple but often forgotten question: why are we meeting...?
The goal should not be to have fewer meetings, but better ones. Meetings that respect everyone's time and energy. Meetings that give a voice to all. Meetings that build connection.
Slashdot reader ShimoNoSeki shares an obligatory XKCD comic...
Popular genetics tests can’t tell you much about your dog’s personality, according to a recent study.
A team of geneticists recently found no connection between simple genetic variants and behavioral traits in more than 3,200 dogs, even though previous studies suggested that hundreds of genes might predict aspects of a dog’s behavior and personality. That’s despite the popularity of at-home genetic tests that claim they can tell you whether your dog’s genes contain the recipe for anxiety or a fondness for cuddles.
This is Max, and no single genetic variant can explain why he is the way he is.
Credit:
Kiona Smith
Gattaca for dogs, except it doesn’t work
University of Massachusetts genomicist Kathryn Lord and her colleagues compared DNA sequences and behavioral surveys from more than 3,000 dogs whose humans had enrolled them in the Darwin’s Ark project (and filled out the surveys). “Genetic tests for behavioral and personality traits in dogs are now being marketed to pet owners, but their predictive accuracy has not been validated,” wrote Lord and her colleagues in their recent paper.
South Korea is moving to impose bank-level liability standards on crypto exchanges following a $30.1 million hack at Upbit last month, shifting toward treating major platforms with the same regulatory rigor as traditional financial institutions.
According to The Korea Times, the Financial Services Commission is reviewing provisions that would require crypto exchanges to compensate users for losses caused by hacking or system failures, regardless of fault, mirroring rules currently applied only to banks and electronic payment firms under the country’s electronic financial transactions law.
The push follows a Nov. 27 breach at Upbit that saw over 104 billion Solana-based tokens worth 44.5 billion won ($36M) transferred to external wallets in just 54 minutes.
Despite the incident, the exchange faced minimal penalties since regulators cannot order compensation under existing laws.
South Korea’s largest crypto exchange Upbit @Official_Upbit reported a $36m Solana network hack on Thursday, halting withdrawals on the spot and pledging to fully reimburse affected customers.
Mounting System Failures Drive Regulatory Overhaul
The planned reforms come amid a pattern of platform instability across Korea’s crypto sector.
Financial Supervisory Service data shows the five major exchanges, Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax, recorded 20 system failures between 2023 and September this year, affecting over 900 users with combined losses of 5 billion won.
Upbit alone accounted for six incidents, with more than 600 victims suffering 3 billion won in damages.
Draft legislation is expected to mandate IT security infrastructure plans, upgraded system standards, and significantly stronger penalties.
Lawmakers are considering revisions that would allow fines of up to 3 percent of annual revenue for hacking incidents, matching standards for traditional financial institutions and replacing the current 5 billion won cap.
The shift would fundamentally reshape accountability in Korea’s crypto industry by making exchanges liable to compensate victims, as banks must respond to security breaches or system failures.
The Upbit breach also exposed reporting failures, with the exchange waiting over six hours after detecting the hack at 5 a.m. to notify regulators at 10:58 a.m.
Ruling party lawmakers alleged that Dunamu deliberately delayed disclosure until after its scheduled merger with Naver Financial, which concluded at 10:50 a.m.
Broader Compliance Crackdown Intensifies Across Industry
The regulatory tightening extends beyond security requirements into comprehensive anti-money laundering enforcement.
The unit has already disciplined Dunamu with a three-month suspension on new customer activity and a 35.2 billion won fine, setting a precedent for penalties expected to reach hundreds of billions of won across the sector.
“We will crack down on crypto money laundering, expanding the Travel Rule to transactions under 1 million won,” Financial Services Commission Chairman Lee Eok-won said during a National Assembly briefing.
The Financial Intelligence Unit will gain pre-emptive account-freezing powers in serious cases, while new rules will bar individuals with convictions for tax crimes or drug offenses from becoming major shareholders in licensed platforms.
Legislative amendments are expected in the first half of 2026 as Korea aligns with global standards through expanded coordination with the Financial Action Task Force.
The enforcement drive unfolds as Korea’s long-delayed crypto tax regime faces potential postponement beyond its January 2027 start date due to persistent infrastructure gaps, with no significant updates to the framework despite multiple deferrals since its 2020 approval.
Financial Supervisory Service Gov. Lee Chan-jin acknowledged the limits of current oversight despite the seriousness of the Upbit incident, stating that “regulatory oversight clearly has limits in imposing penalties” under existing law.
However, with the planned reforms, it aims to close these gaps as Korea positions itself to compete with major economies that have already formalized comprehensive digital asset frameworks.
USPD is facing a severe security breach after an attacker quietly gained control of its proxy contract months ago and used that access to mint new tokens and drain funds. USPD disclosed the incident on Dec. 5, saying the exploit…
European exchange WhiteBIT announced the inclusion of its native token in major digital asset benchmarks by leading global provider of financial market indices, S&P Dow Jones Indices, marking a significant step for the platform and the region’s crypto infrastructure sector.
WhiteBIT Included In Major Crypto Indices
On Thursday, top crypto exchange WhiteBIT announced that its token, WBT, has been added to the S&P Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Market (BDM) Index, curated by S&P Dow Jones Indices (DJI).
The S&P BDM Index is designed to track the performance of crypto assets that meet strict institutional criteria, including liquidity, market capitalization, governance, transparency, and risk controls, and are listed on recognized open digital exchanges.
This marks an important milestone for both WhiteBIT and the broader fintech landscape in Central and Eastern Europe, the exchange noted, as it reinforces “the platform’s growing role in the global crypto economy” and highlights the industry’s move toward regulated, infrastructure-level players.
In a statement, Volodymyr Nosov, CEO of WhiteBIT, affirmed that “being recognized by S&P DJI is more than an index inclusion — it signals that crypto infrastructure from our region has reached global institutional standards.”
The announcement also revealed that WBT was added to the other four S&P Dow Jones digital-asset indices, including the S&P Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Asset (BDA) Index, S&P Cryptocurrency Financials Index, S&P Cryptocurrency LargeCap Ex-MegaCap Index, and the S&P Cryptocurrency LargeCap Index.
Notably, index providers have been expanding coverage beyond protocol-layer tokens as the industry matures, acknowledging the systemic role of exchanges and financial infrastructure platforms, positioning these companies within the global map of institutional-grade digital asset providers.
The exchange underscored that the classifications require a remarkable record of liquidity stability, transparent price formation, and consistent market cap behavior. “This is a turning point not only for our company but also for the evolution of compliant crypto services worldwide,” Nosov continued.
WhiteBIT’s Expansion And WBT’s Momentum
The S&P index inclusions follow a strong market performance from WBT, which rallied around 50% over the last three months, despite recent market volatility that sent many leading tokens to multi-month lows in the past few weeks.
In mid-November, the altcoin reached an all-time high (ATH) of $62.96, fueled by last month’s positive developments. As reported by Bitcoinist, WhiteBIT unveiled its entry into the Argentine and Brazilian markets, building on its expansion to Australia, Croatia, Italy, and Kazakhstan.
The move is expected to integrate local fiat providers and add support for local currencies, aiming to further enhance accessibility and convenience for domestic users in the two largest countries in South America.
Moreover, the exchange signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Durrah AlFodah Holding, represented by His Royal Highness Prince Naif Bin Abdullah Bin Saud Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, to drive the Kingdom’s development in blockchain technology, digital finance, and data infrastructure.
Under the strategic agreement, WhiteBIT is set to provide technological expertise and infrastructure design. Meanwhile, Durrah AlFodah will facilitate the exchange’s market entry, regulatory engagement, and partnership development across Saudi Arabia.
Now, being part of S&P’s indices offers WBT a clear benchmark, the announcement added, facilitating its use in future financial products and long-term investment strategies.
This expanded representation marks an important shift for WBT: from a utility token into a component integrated into global benchmark structures used by investment firms, ETF/ETN designers, and quantitative research platforms. Its presence in multiple institutional models means that WBT is now incorporated into the analytical frameworks that guide long-term allocation strategies, diversified exposure construction, and risk-adjusted portfolio modelling.
In the late hours of December 3, WBT rallied to a new ATH of $63.05 before stabilizing around the $62 mark, according to CoinGecko data. This represents a 14.5% increase from the recent lows and a 9% surge in the weekly timeframe.
The Pentagon’s plan to fix its decades-old material weaknesses — its inability to reliably track government property in the possession of contractors — is failing, a new inspector general evaluation finds.
The Pentagon IG concluded that the department’s corrective action plan — which calls on DoD components to use a software application called the Government Furnished Property Module within the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment — has stalled due to a lack of enforcement from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and slow adoption by the military services.
Auditors warn that if DoD components don’t implement the GFP module, the department risks missing its goal of achieving a clean audit opinion by 2028.
“The implementation of that GFP module is the key to getting this to work,” Mark Thomas, DoD IG’s supervisory auditor, told Federal News Network.
One of the technical challenges, Thomas said, is that each military service uses its own accountable property system of record, or APSR, to track government assets in the hands of contractors. The office of the secretary of defense, however, wants the services to connect their systems to the GFP module.
“That is something that the components have not been able to do yet. They’re still working to implement that. Each of the components has corrective action dates for that that are still into the future,” Thomas said.
“The goal would be to complete everything by 2028, preferably before 2028 so that the auditors, as they come in to do the work, that control environment has been established and been working before the auditors come in and start to do some of the work. That would be the best way to do it,” he added.
But some of the timelines to remediate this weakness stretch beyond the 2028 deadline.
“Unless there’s a change in those dates, then they’ll be at risk for missing the deadline,” Thomas said.
Each military service has its own reasons for lagging in implementing the department-wide solution, but most of those reasons center around the same issue — every component is grappling with its own longstanding material weakness in accounting for government property in the possession of contractors.
“They have their own systems which differ from component to component. So they have their own technical challenges and how their particular system in the Air Force functions and how it accounts for property versus how the Navy does it. Each group is kind of working on their own technical challenges and how they’re going to report this into their own APSR — they are busy doing that and they’re actively trying to clean that up so that they can all get opinions on their financial statements,” Thomas said.
But the IG found that this component-level focus has come at the expense of the broader, department-wide effort.
Thomas said the services have been receptive to adapting the department-wide solution, but each faces a number of technical challenges connecting their systems to the GFP module.
“They understand the importance of it, and they understand what this really would give us if there is a functioning GFP module across the department. This would really give the department a larger bird’s eye view of all of the property that they have in the possession of contractors. And it would provide that enterprise level look and ability to tell we have so much property at contractor x,” Thomas said.
Meanwhile, DoD leaders have not mandated the use of the GFP module, which is stalling the department’s efforts to remediate this material weakness. The audit found that the OSD could be “more forceful” in recommending and implementing the department-wide solution.
“They need to be more direct in saying that we will use this module, all the components will use this module. That was one of the areas that we thought was weak, that the department could improve their messaging, and they could improve to be more direct and require the use of this module,” Thomas said.
FILE - The Department of Defense logo is seen on the wall in the Press Briefing room at the Pentagon, Oct. 29, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)
Two sibling contractors convicted a decade ago for hacking into US State Department systems have once again been charged, this time for a comically hamfisted attempt to steal and destroy government records just minutes after being fired from their contractor jobs.
The Department of Justice on Thursday said that Muneeb Akhter and Sohaib Akhter, both 34, of Alexandria, Virginia, deleted databases and documents maintained and belonging to three government agencies. The brothers were federal contractors working for an undisclosed company in Washington, DC, that provides software and services to 45 US agencies. Prosecutors said the men coordinated the crimes and began carrying them out just minutes after being fired.
Using AI to cover up an alleged crime—what could go wrong?
On February 18 at roughly 4:55 pm, the men were fired from the company, according to an indictment unsealed on Thursday. Five minutes later, they allegedly began trying to access their employer’s system and access federal government databases. By then, access to one of the brothers’ accounts had already been terminated. The other brother, however, allegedly accessed a government agency’s database stored on the employer’s server and issued commands to prevent other users from connecting or making changes to the database. Then, prosecutors said, he issued a command to delete 96 databases, many of which contained sensitive investigative files and records related to Freedom of Information Act matters.
Cynthia Lummis’ Bitcoin meme post on X revives speculation that the U.S. could expand BTC reserves under Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve framework. U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis posted a Bitcoin-themed image on social media platform X, prompting speculation that the United…
Security defenders are girding themselves in response to the disclosure of a maximum-severity vulnerability disclosed Wednesday in React Server, an open-source package that’s widely used by websites and in cloud environments.
The vulnerability is easy to exploit and allows hackers to execute malicious code on servers that run it. Exploit code is now publicly available.
React is embedded into web apps running on servers so that remote devices render JavaScript and content more quickly and with fewer resources required. React is used by an estimated 6 percent of all websites and 39 percent of cloud environments. When end users reload a page, React allows servers to re-render only parts that have changed, a feature that drastically speeds up performance and lowers the computing resources required by the server.
Microsoft has lowered sales growth targets for its AI agent products after many salespeople missed their quotas in the fiscal year ending in June, according to a report Wednesday from The Information. The adjustment is reportedly unusual for Microsoft, and it comes after the company missed a number of ambitious sales goals for its AI offerings.
AI agents are specialized implementations of AI language models designed to perform multistep tasks autonomously rather than simply responding to single prompts. So-called “agentic” features have been central to Microsoft’s 2025 sales pitch: At its Build conference in May, the company declared that it has entered “the era of AI agents.”
The company has promised customers that agents could automate complex tasks, such as generating dashboards from sales data or writing customer reports. At its Ignite conference in November, Microsoft announced new features like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, along with tools for building and deploying agents through Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. But as the year draws to a close, that promise has proven harder to deliver than the company expected.
A sprawling infrastructure that has been bilking unsuspecting people through fraudulent gambling websites for 14 years is likely a dual operation run by a nation-state-sponsored group that is targeting government and private-industry organizations in the US and Europe, researchers said Wednesday.
Researchers have previously tracked smaller pieces of the enormous infrastructure. Last month, security firm Sucuri reported that the operation seeks out and compromises poorly configured websites running the WordPress CMS. Imperva in January said the attackers also scan for and exploit web apps built with the PHP programming language that have existing webshells or vulnerabilities. Once the weaknesses are exploited, the attackers install a GSocket, a backdoor that the attackers use to compromise servers and host gambling web content on them.
All of the gambling sites target Indonesian-speaking visitors. Because Indonesian law prohibits gambling, many people in that country are drawn to illicit services. Most of the 236,433 attacker-owned domains hosting the gambling sites are hosted on Cloudflare. Most of the 1,481 hijacked subdomains were hosted on Amazon Web Services, Azure, and GitHub.
Arizona is the latest state to sue Temu and its parent company PDD Holdings over allegations that the Chinese online retailer is stealing customers’ data.
The shoe is most certainly on the other foot. On Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly declared a “code red” at the company to improve ChatGPT, delaying advertising plans and other products in the process, The Information reported based on a leaked internal memo. The move follows Google’s release of its Gemini 3 model last month, which has outperformed ChatGPT on some industry benchmark tests and sparked high-profile praise on social media.
In the memo, Altman wrote, “We are at a critical time for ChatGPT.” The company will push back work on advertising integration, AI agents for health and shopping, and a personal assistant feature called Pulse. Altman encouraged temporary team transfers and established daily calls for employees responsible for enhancing the chatbot.
The directive creates an odd symmetry with events from December 2022, when Google management declared its own “code red” internal emergency after ChatGPT launched and rapidly gained in popularity. At the time, Google CEO Sundar Pichai reassigned teams across the company to develop AI prototypes and products to compete with OpenAI’s chatbot. Now, three years later, the AI industry is in a very different place.
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