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Submission + - Palantir posts Bond villain manifesto on X

Submitted by DeanonymizedCoward
DeanonymizedCoward writes: Engadget reports that Palantir has posted to X a summary of CEO Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska's 2025 book, The Technological Republic, which reads like a utopian idealist doodled on a Bond villain's whiteboard. While the post makes some decent points, it also highlights the Big-AI attitude that the AI surveillance state is in fact a good thing, and strongly implies that the Good Guys need to do war crimes before the Bad Guys get around to it.

Submission + - Why Voyager 1 Matters and Why NASA Just Switched Part of It Off (npr.org)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: NRP reports on the history of Voyager 1 and its recent reconfiguration.

Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object ever built, is running out of power. And the engineers who tend to it, from offices at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, are doing everything they can to delay the inevitable.

This week, NASA announced it had shut down one of that spacecraft's remaining science instruments — not because the mission has failed, but to keep it alive a little longer.

On April 17, mission engineers sent a sequence of commands to deactivate the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, known as the LECP, which is one of Voyager 1's remaining science instruments. The LECP has measured ions, electrons, and cosmic rays originating from both our solar system and the galaxy beyond it, helping scientists map the structure of interstellar space in a way no other instrument could. Its counterpart on Voyager 2 was turned off in March 2025.

Years ago, the Voyager science and engineering teams jointly agreed on the order in which instruments would be switched off, to conserve power while preserving the most scientifically valuable capabilities. The LECP was next on that list. "While shutting down a science instrument is not anybody's preference, it is the best option available," said Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at JPL, in a blog entry published by NASA Friday.

Voyager 1 now carries two operational science instruments: one that listens for plasma waves, and one that measures magnetic fields. Engineers believe the latest shutdown could buy the mission roughly another year of breathing room.

The team is also developing a more sweeping power conservation plan they informally call "the Big Bang" — a coordinated swap of several powered components all at once, trading older systems for lower-power alternatives. If testing on Voyager 2, planned for May and June 2026, goes well, the same procedure will be attempted on Voyager 1 no sooner than July. If it works, there is even a slim chance the LECP could once more continue to work.

The engineers say they hope to keep at least one instrument operating on each spacecraft into the 2030s. It would leave both still reporting from places no machine has ever gone before.

Comment Anime and video games show otherwise. (Score 1) 88

Expensive meat puppets are not required to entertain. The video game business is already bigger than Hollywood and unlike push content is interactive.

Tech will catch up to then pass meatbag limitations. Those not wanting AI are free to skip it. It's mere entertainment, just kitsch and nothing sacred.

Comment Contemporary writeable CD were vastly better. (Score 1) 179

Uncle Sugar bought the Zip drives I used at work where I learnt to dislike their meh relaiblity.

For myself I didn't bother with them since I found their high failure rate and media price annoying. I bought a parallel port HP CD burner instead whose drive lasted me many years. (I always burn CD/DVD at slowest speed available for best burn, proven while distrohopping and various live DOS and BartPE discs. Fre trial CDRWIN etc were limited to 1x which was ideal.)

The Zip and early writeable CD eras largely overlapped

Comment Why not help a growing, mostly pro-US democracy? (Score 1) 125

by couchslug (#66100434) Attached to: US To Create High-Tech Manufacturing Zone In Philippines

Americans don't want manufacturing jobs for themselves, they want some poor shmuck to take those jobs so they feel affirmed. I can't blame anyone for pulling that off because manufacturing workers are viewed as expendable drones in the US.

Management and labor in the US are historic enemies for good reasons. Lest we forget the objective of employment is eventual retirement while doing as little as possible so you destroy less of your body. The objective of management is maintaining ones escape from labor.

Pinoys and Pinays are working globally because their homeland lacks opportunity. Many of them join the US armed forces where they make excellent troops who are enthusiastic and chill to work with. I never had to discipline one in my USAF career, which I cannot say for home-grown shitbags. They make excellent Merchant Marine and US Navy sailors, jobs few USians want.

Submission + - There Are Signs of a Massive AI Backlash (futurism.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: The public outrage over the tech industry’s obsession with AI is starting to boil over — and the pitchforks are coming out.

Most recently, a man allegedly lobbed a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house. Days earlier, a councilman in Indianapolis said that somebody had fired a dozen bullets at his house, with a handwritten note reading “No Data Centers” left on his doorstep.

A similar story is playing out across swathes of rural America, with small towns continuing a years-long effort to keep environmentally damaging data centers that put a huge strain on water availability and the power grid out of their communities.

Earlier this week, voters in a small town in Missouri led a revolt, firing half of their city council over a recently-approved $6 billion data center deal.

Submission + - Government Workers Say They're Getting Inundated With Religion (wired.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Federal workers across multiple U.S. agencies are complaining that Christianity is flooding into their workplaces in ways they've never seen before—and they feel powerless to speak up.

It started after President Trump returned to office and signed an executive order in February 2025 creating a White House Faith Office and similar offices inside federal agencies. Since then, religion has crept into everyday government life in a big way...Secretary Brooke Rollins sent an agency-wide Easter email titled "He has risen!" with explicitly Christian messaging. One employee called it "grotesque" and suspected AI wrote it. A formal complaint was filed with the Office of Special Counsel.

Department of Labor hosts monthly worship services with pastors and political figures. One speaker, Alveda King, said she was "more concerned about" nonreligious employees—a comment that rattled staffers who felt it implied atheists were going to hell.

Health and Human Services, under vaccine denier RFK Jr., expanded funding for faith-based addiction treatment and gave workers the afternoon off for Good Friday.

Department of Defense has seen the most dramatic shift, with Secretary Pete Hegseth hosting monthly prayer services featuring high-profile Christian nationalist figures like Doug Wilson, who has advocated for a theocracy and argued women shouldn't vote. Hegseth himself has called the U.S. war with Iran a "holy war."
Employees are afraid to push back—only 22.5% of federal workers in 2025 say they could report wrongdoing without retaliation, down from nearly 72% in 2024.

The government's position: these events are voluntary and legally permitted. A public policy professor quoted in the piece put it plainly: "The Trump administration has opened a new chapter in the integration of Christianity into the daily work of government."

Submission + - Microsoft increases the FAT32 limit from 32GB to 4TB (windows.com) 2

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Windows has limited FAT32 partitions to a maximum of 32GB for decades now. When memory cards and USB drives exceeded 32GB in size, the only options were exFAT or NTFS. Neither option was well supported on other platforms at first, although exFAT support is fairly widespread now.

In their latest blog post, Microsoft announced that the limit for FAT32 partitions is being increased to 2TB. Of course, that doesn't mean that every device that supports FAT32 will work flawlessly with a 2TB partition size, but at least there is a decent chance that older devices with don't support exFAT will now be usable with memory cards over 32GB.

Submission + - Fructose Isn't Just Sugar. It Acts More Like a Hormone (scienceblog.com) 1

Submitted by smazsyr
smazsyr writes: A new review says we've had fructose wrong for decades. The nine authors, led by Richard Johnson at the University of Colorado Anschutz, argue that fructose is not just a calorie. It is a signal. It tells the liver to make fat, hold on to water, and brace for a famine that never comes. The old story made sense for a bear fattening up on autumn berries. It makes less sense for a person drinking soda in March. The review reframes the WHO's sugar guideline. It is not really a warning about calories. It is a warning about a hormone-like molecule we have been dosing ourselves with, several times a day, for most of a century.

Submission + - Vishing attacks on Okta identity systems on the rise (scworld.com)

Submitted by spatwei
spatwei writes: Vishing attacks on Okta identity systems have increased in which attackers simply call the victim or an IT help desk and convince them to weaken or reset multi-factor authentication (MFA).

In an April 13 blog post, LevelBlue researchers said once Okta is compromised via vishing, the attackers gain access to an enterprise’s SaaS systems via single sign-on (SSO), which leads to the exfiltration of SharePoint, OneDrive, Salesforce, and Google Workspace data.

The LevelBlue researchers explained that as part of the attack, the threat actors aim to get the victim or help desk to reset MFA, enroll a new authenticator device, provide one-time passcodes, disclose passwords, or reset Okta credentials.

“The initial attack vector here is still classic social engineering, however, the strategy has matured,” said Mika Aalto, co-founder and CEO at Hoxhunt. “Instead of targeting individual users, attackers are moving upstream to bypass MFA at the identity provider level, manipulating in this case Okta's IT help desk to unlock access across the targeted organization.”

Submission + - OpenAI Widens Access to Cybersecurity Model After Anthropic's Mythos (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: OpenAI has introduced GPT-5.4-Cyber, a cybersecurity-focused model that will be offered to many defenders. OpenAI announced that it’s scaling its Trusted Access for Cyber program to thousands of verified defenders and hundreds of security teams. They will be given access to GPT-5.4-Cyber, a fine-tuned variant of GPT-5.4 that relaxes the usual guardrails for legitimate cybersecurity work.

The announcement comes in the wake of Anthropic’s release of Claude Mythos, a new and powerful AI model allegedly capable of autonomously discovering thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities. This led Anthropic to withhold its public release and instead offer it only to a few dozen major organizations through a restricted program called Project Glasswing.

Comment No need for black market. (Score 1) 63

by couchslug (#66096122) Attached to: FCC Grants Netgear Conditional Approval For Routers

Used routers that can run FOSS router software abound because factory firmware updates ended though many are amply fast for their real use case. I just flashed my old 6700v3 with FreshTomato which is simple to do. I'd upgraded but kept the 6700v3 as a ready backup. (I don't believe in being one-deep on comm gear including computers.)

Of course any PC with two or more NICs can route and there are plenty available. "Home lab" enthusiasts make all sorts of interesting appliances from tiny PCs with ethernet and wireless with space to add a second single or multiport network card.

Routers are computers after all.

Comment Data centers are like hog farms. (Score 1) 60

by couchslug (#66093266) Attached to: Maine Set To Become First State With Data Center Ban

Their services/products do not require local production to enable consumption.

That people eat pork does not mean they should want a hog farm and its nasty environmental impacts nearby. There is plenty of land elsewhere. The US is enormous and most of it lightly populated. Logistics is a long-solved problem.

That people may use AI does not mean they need a data centers impact on their aquifers or nor its impact on their power production industry.

Those businesses are already often more distant than not from consumers. Maine does not need data centers IN Maine.

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