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Submission + - Visual Studio Code update added Copilot as co-author by default to Git commits (ycombinator.com)

Submitted by UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: On April 15, 2026, a Microsoft employee made a change to Visual Studio Code and pushed it within 8 hours without review, notification, or documentation. The change would add "Co-authored-by: Copilot " by default to the end of commit messages in Git if Copilot was used in creating the code. However, the implementation was bugged, and the message was added to every commit regardless if Copilot was used or disabled. Since this message was automatically added to the end of commit messages, users were not aware of it as the UI does not show this addition when making commits. The change as been reverted as of May 3, but not before 1.4 million commits were made. Unfortunately those messages cannot be cleansed and are permanent.

Submission + - 'Missing-Scientist' Story Is Unbelievably Dumb (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by mmarlett
mmarlett writes: The Atlantic has a long article on the story of missing scientists recently featured here on Slashdot. In short, it is an incoherent conspiracy theory that spreads wide and far, not paying any attention to boundaries of time, space or area of expertise. “Which is all to say that another piece of flagrant nonsense has ascended to the highest levels of U.S. politics and media. To call it a conspiracy theory would be far too kind, because no comprehensive theory has been floated to explain the pattern of events. But then, even the phrase pattern of events is imprecise, because there is no pattern here at all. Given all the people who could have been roped into this narrative but weren’t, any hope of finding meaning falls away. Barring any dramatic new disclosures, the mystery of the missing scientists has the dubious honor of being a sham in every way at once.”

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 + - 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 + - Brazil Builds Free Payment System; US Wonders If That's Allowed (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by Suripat
Suripat writes: Brazil’s instant payment system, Pix, has quickly changed how people handle money, making transfers free and nearly immediate. It’s become so widely used that cash and even card payments are losing ground. That success is now getting attention abroad, especially in the United States, where officials are looking into whether a government-backed system like Pix gives it an unfair edge over private payment companies. Supporters see it as efficient and accessible, while critics raise questions about competition. As Pix keeps growing, it’s starting to look less like a local innovation and more like something that could challenge established payment systems worldwide.

Submission + - Co-founder of Supermicro allegedly smuggled $2.5B worth of GPUs to China (cnn.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: The co-founder of Super Micro Computer and two others were charged with diverting $2.5 billion worth of servers with Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips to China, in violation of US laws barring exports to that country without a license.

Yih-Shyan Liaw, known as Wally; Ruei-Tsang Chang, known as Steven; and Ting-Wei Sun, known as Willy, were charged with conspiring to violate export control laws, smuggling goods from the US and conspiring to defraud the US.

Liaw, who co-founded Super Micro Computer and served on its board of directors, was arrested Thursday in California and released on bail. Sun, a contractor, is held awaiting a detention hearing. Chang, who worked in the Taiwan office of Super Micro, remains at large.

Submission + - OpenAI to merge Atlas browser, ChatGPT, Codex into a single desktop super app (neowin.net)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: OpenAI is planning to combine its Atlas web browser, ChatGPT app, and Codex coding app into a singular desktop super app. CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, said the company was doubling down on its successful products.

By taking this move, the AI company aims to streamline the user experience and reduce fragmentation. With that said, each of the apps currently do quite different things so it will be interesting to see how they put this all together. Simo said in an internal memo: “We realized we were spreading our efforts across too many apps and stacks, and that we need to simplify our efforts. That fragmentation has been slowing us down and making it harder to hit the quality bar we want.”

OpenAI is in a fierce battle with companies like Anthropic and Google to produce the best models and products. By unifying and speeding up the development of their desktop offering, it gives OpenAI a leg up in the race.

Atlas is probably the least known among the three products. It lets users browse the web with ChatGPT packed in. This browser is only available on macOS, so fewer people have had a chance to use it.

Submission + - r/linux poster unearths Meta's lobbying net behind OS Age Verfication blitz (archive.org)

Submitted by He Who Has No Name
He Who Has No Name writes: In an incredibly in-depth researched post that was removed by Reddit mods almost as soon as it went up but is preserved at Archive.org, Reddit user Ok_Lingonberry3296 has dug deep into lobbying activity and records across multiple states and at the federal level to unearth what — or who — is behind the nationwide state-level and federal legislation blitz of nearly identical age verification laws targeting operating systems instead of companies — with no carveout for open source, no awareness of how these centralized control models break when applied to a FOSS operating system like Linux, and no apparent regard for the avalanche of second order effects the legislation could cause in contexts like embedded devices, VMs, and data centers.

The culprit that emerges isn't a huge surprise: a recently created lobbying org called the Digital Childhood Alliance, which appears to be functionally a front group for the lobbying efforts of... (drumroll) ...Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, formerly Facebook.

Ok_Lingonberry3296 writes: "...Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her. The bill as drafted required only app stores (Apple, Google) to verify user ages. It did not require social media platforms to do anything.

...Senator Jay Morris, who expanded the bill to include app developers alongside app stores after Google's senior director of government affairs publicly questioned why "Mark Zuckerberg is so keen on passing these bills." When Morris introduced his amendment, Meta went silent. The conference committee compromise maintained dual responsibility but kept the primary burden on app stores, which is what Meta wanted from the start.

At that same Senate hearing, Morris directly questioned DCA Executive Director Casey Stefanski about who funds her organization. She reportedly deflected, said she "wasn't comfortable answering," then under continued pressure admitted tech companies provide funding but refused to name them."

The research gets into funding, connected groups (on both sides of the political aisle) involved with lobbying, messaging, funding, and other parts of the legislative push, and most of all, tracks the money.

For those that want to dig into the research itself, OK_Lingonberry3296 posted their entire folder of research and sources on github, here: github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

A quick synopsis of where the US laws currently stand:

CA | AB-1043 | Enacted, effective Jan 1, 2027
CO | SB26-051 | Passed Senate, in House committee
LA | HB-570 | Enacted, effective July 1, 2026
UT | SB-142 | Enacted, first in nation
TX | SB-2420 | Enjoined by federal judge
NY | S8102A | Pending
IL | HB-3304, HB-4140, SB-2037 | Pending
Federal | KOSA, ASAA | Pending

Submission + - Tech Giant CEOs No-Shows at Rev. Jesse Jackson's Memorial Service

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Before this week, the last time the three living former U.S. Presidents got together was at the Trump Inauguration in 2025 in Washington, DC. Joining them were current and former CEOs of Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple (Microsoft's CEO didn't attend, but the company sent a $1 million check).

So, on Friday, when former Presidents Bush, Obama, and Biden reconvened in Chicago at the memorial service for civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., one might have expected to see the tech giant CEOs join them again. After all, their companies pledged to work with Jackson to do better on their hiring efforts, as Jackson first pressured Google and then the others into finally publishing their woeful EEO-1 diversity numbers that they formerly kept under wraps under the guise of 'trade secrets'. "We’ve always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google," confessed Google HR Chief Laszlo Bock in a 2014 mea culpa blog post. "We now realize we were wrong, and that it’s time to be candid about the issues. Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly." The tech giants redoubled their racial equity pledges in 2020.

So, why wouldn't the tech CEOs come together at Jackson's memorial service and celebrate Jackson's life and accomplishments? Even Trump publicly praised Jackson (albeit with some unnecessary swipes at others). Well, one possible explanation might be that the workforce transparency the tech giants promised Jackson to determine how successful their efforts were going never fully materialized. The tech giants largely chose to spin their own cherrypicked metrics of workforce diversity success instead of publishing meaningful raw data for others to objectively analyze. Worse than that, a Wired report in November 2025 revealed that as Jackson's health took a turn for the worse, some tech giants — including Google, Microsoft, and Meta — stopped their decade-long practice of publishing statistics about the gender and racial makeup of their workforce altogether. "The broad loss in transparency," Wired reported, "could obscure the impact of President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies on the tech workforce." Yusef Jackson [Jesse Jackson's son], who now leads the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, said the group would fight the nondisclosure of diversity data.

All of which would certainly not make for the greatest of press, especially if it came out in the same week that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg closed on a new record breaking $170 million mansion on Miami's exclusive 'Billionaire Bunker' island that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also calls home (and a billion-dollar tax shelter). By the way, Meta's last-published EEO-1 report shows that the number of reported Black employees was 43.6% lower at the end of 2023 than at the end of 2022, compared to an overall workforce reduction of 21.8% (Zuckerberg dubbed 2023 Meta's "Year of Efficiency").

Writing in Fortune, Brennan Nevada Johnson has a message for tech CEOs: "Reverend Jackson did not protest technology, but rather insisted on participating in shaping it. He forced an industry that prides itself on innovation to innovate socially. Today, despite much pushback due to the current administration, diversity reports, inclusive recruiting pipelines, and equity initiatives do exist across major tech firms. It’s so important that we honor Reverend Jackson’s legacy of continuing accountability. The future is still being built, and as Reverend Jesse Jackson reminded Silicon Valley [and even children], it must be built by all, for all."

Submission + - Oil surges 35% this week for biggest gain in futures trading history (cnbc.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: President Donald Trump on Friday demanded unconditional surrender from Iran, raising fears of a prolonged war that could wreak havoc on the global oil and gas market. The war has already brought traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route for energy supplies, to a near standstill.

Qatar’s energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, told The Financial Times on Friday that crude prices could reach $150 per barrel in the coming weeks if oil tankers were unable to pass through the Strait.

This could “bring down the economies of the world,” Kaabi said.

Submission + - NY AG Letitia James is suing Valve (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by DesScorp
DesScorp writes: James is going after Valve on gambling charges, stating that loot boxes are predatory, especially for underage gamers:

"This loot box model that Valve has developed—charging an individual for a chance to win something of value based on luck alone—is quintessential gambling, prohibited under New York's Constitution and Penal Law," the complaint says. In one of the games, the process even resembles a slot machine, according James. Since the prizes in the loot boxes are determined randomly in accordance with odds set by Valve, James alleges, that effectively makes Valve an online casino. "Valve, a video game developer, has made billions of dollars by letting children and adults illegally gamble for the chance to win valuable virtual prizes," James posted on social media. "These features are addictive and harmful. That's why I'm suing to stop Valve's unlawful conduct and protect New Yorkers."

Submission + - Eradicating Fujitsu and Horizon from the Post Office

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Eradicating Fujitsu and Horizon from the Post Office, step by step

“Decommissioning and replacing an IT system that has caused irreparable harm to thousands of people is not the usual job description of an incoming chief technology officer (CTO), but that’s what Paul Anastassi signed up for when he took on the role at the Post Office.”

Submission + - Did Ring's Super Bowl commercial destroy its brand? (nj.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Super Bowl commercials often spark conversation, but one 2026 ad in particular has caused quite a stir.

The home security company Ring aired a Super Bowl advertisement highlighting the AI-powered Search Party feature. When a pet owner reports their pet missing in the Ring app, Search Party kicks in on participating outdoor Ring cameras, scanning the area for the missing pet.

The commercial presented the feature as a wholesome way to reunite pets with their beloved owners, but many viewers took issue with the implications of Search Party.

“Do you see what I did there? I disguised mass human surveliance [sic] as a puppy search party,” one X user wrote.

Other social media posts slammed the commercial as “creepy as can be,” “concerning” and “invasive.”

“Marketing team at Ring Camera HQ seriously sat around and was like, ‘How do we sell unconstitutional surveillance of our citizens during the Super Bowl?’ And one guy was like “DOGS!’” one person quipped.

Submission + - Dave Farber has died 1

Submitted by alanw
alanw writes: From the NANOG mailing list: https://seclists.org/nanog/202...

We are heartbroken to report that our colleague — our mentor, friend, and conscience — David J. Farber passed away suddenly at his home in Roppongi, Tokyo. He left us on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026, at the too-young age of 91.

https://www.internethalloffame...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://www.scientificamerican...

Farber is sometimes called the "Grandfather of the Internet" both because of his pioneering work in distributed computing and his mentoring of graduate students who helped build the Internet. He remains deeply involved in debates over how to maximize benefits and minimize risks of the Internet.

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And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones

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