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Submission + - Elon Musk's Satellites Now Constantly Falling Out of the Sky (futurism.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: According to storied Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, there are now one or two of these Starlink satellites falling back to Earth every single day, he recently told EarthSky. And that figure, McDowell warned, is only going to keep climbing.

The alarming statistic underscores the concerns around rapidly populating the planet’s Low Earth Orbit with expendable satellites. Musk’s SpaceX has been launching thousands of them up there using his reusable rockets since 2019, with more than 8,000 currently in operation.

With those efforts accelerating in recent years, SpaceX has launched more than 2,000 satellites in 2025 alone. Meanwhile, its competitors are rushing to catch up with their own satellite-based internet service, with Amazon kickstarting its plan to deploy more than 3,200 with its first batch launched earlier this year.

Submission + - 'Circular' mega-deals by Bay Area tech giants are raising eyebrows (sfgate.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: The deals are so vast that they defy comprehension — the Financial Times put the company’s recent commitments at north of $1 trillion – and they’re making public companies’ stock prices jump. Stock analysts dub some of these agreements “circular,” because investment money is flowing between companies that also buy from or sell to one another. The worry then is that such deals might prop up or overhype a bad business.

Here’s one indicatively tangled pathway through the morass of companies. Nvidia is investing billions in and selling chips to OpenAI, which is also buying chips from and earning stock in AMD. AMD sells processors to Oracle, which is building data centers with OpenAI — which also gets data center work from CoreWeave. And that company is partially owned by, yes, Nvidia. Taken together, it’s a doozy. There are other collaborations and rivalries and many other factors at play, but OpenAI is the many-tentacled octopus in the middle, spinning its achievement of ChatGPT into a blitz of speculative investments.

Submission + - DJB on the NSA's attempt to remove backup algorithms from post-quantum crypto

Submitted by alanw
alanw writes: Daniel J. Bernstein" has made a couple of blog posts about the NSA's attempts to influence NIST post-quantum cryptography standards, by removing the "belt and braces" current algorithms and silencing dissent.

NSA and IETF: Can an attacker simply purchase standardization of weakened cryptography?

MODPOD: The collapse of IETF's protections for dissent.

Submission + - Code.org CEO Rips NY Times for Stoking 'Populist Fears' Over CS Jobs and AI

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: GeekWire reports: "[Tech-backed nonprofit] Code.org co-founder and CEO Hadi Partovi ripped The New York Times for its latest report detailing how some computer science majors are having trouble finding work in the U.S.. In a post on LinkedIn, Partovi said the newspaper and its Monday episode of 'The Daily' podcast were cherrypicking anecdotes 'to stoke populist fears about tech corporations and AI.'"

"'Computer science and AI are still the best paying fields one can study,' Partovi said, adding a quote from AI pioneer Andrew Ng about how telling students not to study CS is 'the worst career advice ever given.' The podcast episode, titled Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn’t Follow name-dropped Partovi and Code.org in a report about how a computer science education and guaranteed six-figure salary to follow was turning out to be an empty promise for recent graduates. The episode also calls out Microsoft President Brad Smith in reference to tech giants supporting computer science education."

Partovi also took to X, tweeting "Today the NYTimes (falsely) claimed CS majors can’t find work. The data tells the opposite story: CS grads have the highest median wage and the fifth-lowest underemployment across all majors. [...] Journalism is broken. Do better NYTimes." To which Code.org co-founder Ali Partovi (Hadi's twin), replied, "I agree 100%. That NYTimes Daily piece was deplorable — an embarrassment for journalism."

Submission + - Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn't Follow.

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "As a reporter who's spent more than a decade studying Silicon Valley's influence on American education," the NY Times' Natasha Singer tells The Daily podcast (audio + transcript), "I can say that the reduced job prospects for computer science grads this year represents a stunning breakdown in the promise that tech executives have made to millions of American school kids over the last decade. Silicon Valley’s promise to kids was if you just work hard and learn to code, computer programming will be your golden ticket to a high paying, high powered, high status tech job, and you will be more or less set for life."

But after a decade-long push for coding in the classroom that led to soaring CS enrollment, AI is The New New Thing and the times they are a-changin'. "I’m reporting on how some of the same tech companies that pushed for computer science are now pivoting from coding to pushing for AI education and AI tools in schools," Singer notes. "And we see Microsoft just announced an effort to provide $4 billion in AI technology and training to skill students in schools and community colleges with AI. Google just announced a $1 billion commitment for a similar AI education effort, and the crisis rhetoric is similar to the coding crusade. The country needs more skilled AI workers to stay competitive, and kids who learn to use AI will get better job opportunities."

"So, it’s 2010 all over again?" asks host Michael Barbaro. "Exactly," replies Singer. "So, I think we have the opportunity now to proceed more deliberately and think more clearly about what are the things that are most important for kids to learn, and not so much what’s best for tech companies."

Submission + - Trump and RFK Jr. to Ban COVID-19 Vaccine 'Within Months' 4

Submitted by ukoda
ukoda writes: The Daily Beast has this worrying article:

The Trump administration will move to pull the COVID vaccine off the U.S. market “within months,” one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s closest associates has told the Daily Beast.

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has repeatedly claimed in the face of scientific consensus that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus, told the Daily Beast that Kennedy’s stance is shared by “influential” members of President Donald Trump’s family. Like Kennedy himself, no Trumps hold any scientific qualifications.

Malhotra is a leading adviser to the controversial lobby group Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Action, which is seen as an external arm of Kennedy’s agenda as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary.

He told the Beast that many of those closest to RFK Jr. have told him they “cannot understand” why the vaccine continues to be prescribed, and that a decision to remove the vaccine from the U.S. market pending further research will come “within months,” even if it is likely to cause “fear of chaos” and bring with it major legal ramifications.

Just glad I live in a country where the Covid vaccine is free and encouraged.

Submission + - Someone read Rama series? Designed actual spacecraft. (livescience.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Proposed spacecraft could carry up to 2,400 people on a one-way trip to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri

Engineers have designed a spacecraft that could take up to 2,400 people on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to our own. The craft, called Chrysalis, could make the 25 trillion mile (40 trillion kilometer) journey in around 400 years, the engineers say in their project brief, meaning many of its potential passengers would only know life on the craft.

Chrysalis is designed to house several generations of people until it enters the star system, where it could shuttle them to the surface of the planet Proxima Centuri b — an Earth-size exoplanet that is thought to be potentially habitable.

The project won first place in the Project Hyperion Design Competition, a challenge that requires teams to design hypothetical multigenerational ships for interstellar travel.

The ship could theoretically be constructed in 20 to 25 years and retains gravity through constant rotation. The vessel, which would measure 36 miles (58 km) in length, would be constructed like a Russian nesting doll, with several layers encompassing each other around a central core. The layers include communal spaces, farms, gardens, homes, warehouses and other shared facilities, each powered by nuclear fusion reactors.

[My first thought was that someone read Arthur C. Clarke's book, Rendezvous with Rama and used it as a model design.]

Submission + - When facial recognition goes wrong (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'A man who is bringing a High Court challenge against the Metropolitan Police after live facial recognition technology wrongly identified him as a suspect has described it as "stop and search on steroids".

'Shaun Thompson, 39, was stopped by police in February last year outside London Bridge Tube station.

'Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch said the judicial review, due to be heard in January, was the first legal case of its kind against the "intrusive technology".

'The Met, which announced last week that it would double its live facial recognition technology (LFR) deployments, said it was removing hundreds of dangerous offenders and remained confident its use is lawful.

'LFR maps a person's unique facial features, and matches them against faces on watch-lists.'

I suspect a payout of £10,000 for each false match that is acted on would probably encourage more careful use, perhaps with a second payout of £100,000 if the same person is victimised again.

Submission + - Taiwan's high 20% tariff rate linked to Intel investment (notebookcheck.net)

Submitted by EreIamJH
EreIamJH writes: German tech newsletter NotebookCheck is reporting that the unexpectedly high 20% tariff the USA recently imposed against Taiwan is intended to pressure TSMC to buy a 49% minority stake in Intel including IP transfer and also spend $400 billion in the US in addition to the $176 billion previously required.

Submission + - Canada: Let's allow the US to spy on all our citizens and backdoor everything (eff.org)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: The Canadian government is preparing to give away Canadians’ digital lives—to U.S. police, to the Donald Trump administration, and possibly to foreign spy agencies.

Bill C-2, the so-called Strong Borders Act, is a sprawling surveillance bill with multiple privacy-invasive provisions. But the thrust is clear: it’s a roadmap to aligning Canadian surveillance with U.S. demands.

Submission + - Qantas hit by cyberattack (abc.net.au)

Submitted by dnrck
dnrck writes: Qantas has confirmed a significant cyber incident affecting one of its contact centres, where a cybercriminal gained access to a third-party customer service platform containing data on approximately six million customers.
The breach exposed customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and frequent flyer numbers, but did not compromise credit card details, personal financial information, passport details, or account passwords and PINs. Qantas responded by immediately containing the breach, notifying impacted customers, and working with government cyber agencies and law enforcement. The airlineâ(TM)s operations and safety were not affected, and additional security measures, including enhanced monitoring and support lines, have been implemented while investigations continue. Qantas has also warned customers to be vigilant against potential scams following the incident.
The company and other researchers have posited that this is likely the work of having group Scattered Spider.

Submission + - US Embassy: open your social media profiles (usembassy.gov)

Submitted by rastos1
rastos1 writes: U.S. Embassies in countries around the world, have following on their website:
Notice: Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media accounts to ‘public’ to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States under U.S. law.

Submission + - The top red teamer in the US is an AI bot (csoonline.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The hacker “Xbow” now tops an eminent US security industry leaderboard that ranks red teamers based on reputation — and it’s an AI chatbot.

On HackerOne, which connects organizations with ethical hackers to participate in their bug bounty programs, Xbow scored notably higher than 99 other hackers in identifying and reporting enterprise software vulnerabilities. It’s a first in bug bounty history, according to the company that operates the eponymous bot.

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