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Submission + - Canadia to force companies to simplify police wiretapping (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Liberal government's second attempt at giving police and spies easier access to Canadians' information includes what's anticipated to be costly demands on a range of private businesses to change how they manage data. The government says it doesn't yet know how much the companies, or Canadian taxpayers, would have to pay.

Submission + - trump proposes nasa budget be slashed by 23% (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Mr. Dollar Ton
Mr. Dollar Ton writes: right in the wake of the lunar mission achieving a major milestone and on top of its 1.5 trillion military budget proposal, the trump administration want to save money by slashing nasa budget significantly.

tired of winning yet?

Submission + - Masturbate more to lower your risk of cancer (nypost.com) 1

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Dr. Lorelei Mucci, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a co-author of emerging research on prostate cancer and ejaculation, told The Post that her team has come across some interesting patterns.

Data from a long-term health and lifestyle study assessing more than 50,000 men since 1986 suggests that those who ejaculate 21 or more times per month had a 19-22% lower risk of prostate cancer than those who came less, she said.

“The ’21 or more’ isn’t a strict biological magic number, but rather a finding that emerged from our robust statistical analysis,” Mucci explained, adding that her team has even observed small reductions in risk for men who ejaculated only eight times per month.

Submission + - Tech Companies Are Trying to Neuter Colorado's Landmark Right-to-Repair Law (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today at a hearing of the Colorado Senate Business, Labor, and Technology committee, lawmakers voted unanimously to move Colorado state bill SB26-090—titled Exempt Critical Infrastructure from Right to Repair—out of committee and into the state senate and house for a vote. The bill modifies Colorado’s Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment act, which was passed in 2024 and went into effect in January 2026. While the protections secured by that act are wide, the new SB26-090 bill aims to “exempt information technology equipment that is intended for use in critical infrastructure from Colorado's consumer right to repair laws.”

The bill is supported by tech manufacturers like Cisco and IBM, according to lobbying disclosures. These are companies that have vested interests in manufacturing things like routers, server equipment, and computers and stand to profit if they can control who fixes their products and the tools, components, and software used to make those upgrades and repairs. They also cite cybersecurity concerns, saying that giving people access to the tools and systems they would need to repair a device could also enable bad actors to use those methods for nefarious means. (This is a common argument manufacturers make when opposing right-to-repair laws.)

[...] During the hearing, more than a dozen repair advocates spoke from organizations like Pirg, the Repair Association, and iFixit opposing the bill. YouTuber and repair advocate Louis Rossmann was there. The main problem, repair advocates say, is that the bill deliberately uses vague language to make the case for controlling who can fix their products. “The ‘information technology’ and ‘critical infrastructure’ thing is as cynical as you can possibly be about it,” says Nathan Proctor, the leader of Pirg’s US right-to-repair campaign. “It sounds scary to lawmakers, but it just means the internet.” [...]

The Colorado Labor and Technology committee advanced the bill, but it still needs to go through votes on the Colorado Senate and House floors before going into effect. Those votes may take place as early as next week. Regardless of how the bill goes in the state, it’s likely that manufacturers will continue their push to alter or undo repair legislation in other states across the country. “This only hardens my resolve,” Proctor says. “We cannot stop until this problem is addressed. In practice everywhere, people need to be able to fix their stuff. This is proof that we have to keep going.”

Submission + - A Private Company Wants to Block the Sun (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Stardust sold geoengineering to investors. Now it needs to sell it to the public.

More like extract public funds doing something extremely reckless. We have no idea what intervention like that would do to our ability to grow food.

Submission + - Penalties stack up as AI spreads through the legal system (npr.org)

Submitted by Tony Isaac
Tony Isaac writes: When it comes to using AI, it seems some lawyers just can't help themselves.

Last year saw a rapid increase in court sanctions against attorneys for filing briefs containing errors generated by artificial intelligence tools. The most prominent case was that of the lawyers for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who were fined $3,000 each for filing briefs containing fictitious, AI-generated citations.

But as a cautionary tale, it doesn't seem to have had much effect. The numbers started taking off last year, and the rate is still increasing. He counts a total of more than 1,200 to date, of which about 800 are from U.S. courts.

Submission + - The College Student—and His Cat Meme—Who Hunted the World's Biggest (wsj.com)

Submitted by sturgeon
sturgeon writes: For the first time, the wild behind the scenes story of the discovery and takedown of the world's largest (and most destructive botnet) last month. At times, the Kimwolf and related botnets included more than a million compromised home android and photo frames — enough DDoS firepower bandwidth to disrupt US and global internet traffic

Submission + - Perplexity's 'Incognito Mode' Is a 'Sham,' Lawsuit Says (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Perplexity’s AI search engine encourages users to go deeper with their prompts by engaging in chat sessions that a lawsuit has alleged are often shared in their entirety with Google and Meta without users’ knowledge or consent. “This happened to every user regardless of whether or not they signed up for a Perplexity account,” the lawsuit alleged, while stressing that “enormous volumes of sensitive information from both subscribed and non-subscribed users” are shared.

Using developer tools, the lawsuit found that opening prompts are always shared, as are any follow-up questions the search engine asks that a user clicks on. Privacy concerns are seemingly worse for non-subscribed users, the complaint alleged. Their initial prompts are shared with “a URL through which the entire conversation may be accessed by third parties like Meta and Google.” Disturbingly, the lawsuit alleged, chats are also shared with personally identifiable information (PII), even when users who want to stay anonymous opt to use Perplexity’s “Incognito Mode.” That mode, the lawsuit charged, is a “sham.”

“‘Incognito’ mode does nothing to protect users from having their conversations shared with Meta and Google,” the complaint said. “Even paid users who turned on the ‘Incognito’ feature still had their conversations shared with Meta and Google, along with their email addresses and other identifiers that allowed Meta and Google to personally identify them.”

Submission + - EPA Flags Microplastics, Pharmaceuticals As Contaminants In Drinking Water (npr.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Responding to public health concerns about microplastics and pharmaceuticals in the nation's drinking water, the Trump administration for the first time has placed them on a draft list of contaminants maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA announced the move Thursday, touting it as a "historic step" for the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement, which often raises concerns about toxic chemicals and plastic pollution in our food and environment.

Also Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a $144 million initiative, called STOMP, to develop tools to measure and monitor microplastics in drinking water and in a later stage, to remove them. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires the EPA to publish an updated version of its Contaminant Candidate List every five years. This is the sixth iteration of the list. Microplastics and pharmaceuticals appear in the draft of the upcoming list, alongside per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and dozens of other chemicals and microbes. Their inclusion on the list gives local regulators a tool to evaluate risks in their water supply, the EPA says, and it can set the stage for more research and regulatory action — but doesn't actually guarantee that will happen.

Submission + - Python blood could hold the secret to healthy weight loss (colorado.edu)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: CU Boulder researchers are reporting that they have discovered an appetite-suppressing compound in python blood that helps the snakes consume enormous meals and go months without eating yet remain metabolically healthy. The findings were published in the journal Natural Metabolism on March 19, 2026.

Pythons can grow as big as a telephone pole, swallow an antelope whole, and go months or even years without eating—all while maintaining a healthy heart and plenty of muscle mass. In the hours after they eat, research has shown, their heart expands 25% and their metabolism speeds up 4,000-fold to help them digest their meal.

The team measured blood samples from ball pythons and Burmese pythons, fed once every 28 days, immediately after they ate a meal. In all, they found 208 metabolites that increased significantly after the pythons ate. One molecule, called para-tyramine-O-sulfate (pTOS) soared 1,000-fold.

Further studies, done with Baylor University researchers, showed that when they gave high doses of pTOS to obese or lean mice, it acted on the hypothalamus, the appetite center of the brain, prompting weight loss without causing gastrointestinal problems, muscle loss or declines in energy.

The study found that pTOS, which is produced by the snake’s gut bacteria, is not present in mice naturally. It is present in human urine at low levels and does increase somewhat after a meal. But because most research is done in mice or rats, pTOS has been overlooked.

Submission + - Federal judge throws out most of Blake Lively's claims against Justin Baldoni

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Judge Lewis Liman dismissed 10 of Lively’s 13 claims against Baldoni, including claim of sexual harassment

“Among the 10 claims that Liman threw out were Lively’s claims of sexual harassment, conspiracy and defamation. Just three of the actor’s claims will now be heard at trial: breach of contract, retaliation, and aiding and abetting in retaliation.”

Submission + - Scientists Engineered a Plant to Produce 5 Different Psychedelics at Once (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: What do plants, toads, and mushrooms have in common? They can all produce psychedelic substances â" and now their powers have been combined in one plant, like a trippier Captain Planet.

In a wild first, scientists have taken the genes these organisms use to make five natural psychedelics and introduced them into a tobacco plant (Nicotiana benthamiana), which then produced all five compounds simultaneously.

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