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Submission + - GM wants parts makers to pull supply chains from China (businesstimes.com.sg)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: General Motors (GM) has directed several thousand of its suppliers to scrub their supply chains of parts from China, four people familiar with the matter said, reflecting automakers’ growing frustration over geopolitical disruptions to their operations.

GM executives have been telling suppliers they should find alternatives to China for their raw materials and parts, with the goal of eventually moving their supply chains out of the country entirely, the people said.

The automaker has set a 2027 deadline for some suppliers to dissolve their China sourcing ties, some of the sources said.

GM approached some suppliers with the directive in late 2024, but the effort took on fresh urgency this past spring, during the early days of an escalating US-China trade battle, the sources said.

Submission + - Google will leave open the option to sideload apps on Android (googleblog.com)

Submitted by Artem S. Tashkinov
Artem S. Tashkinov writes: A few months ago, Google proposed that every Android developer, including those distributing apps outside the Google Play Store, such as popular third-party stores like F-Droid, must verify their identity to have their apps installable on "certified Android devices," starting circa 2026 in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. This triggered strong push-back from indie developers and open-source advocates, who saw it as a shift toward a more closed ecosystem, raising fears that sideloading would be free in name only and making Android essentially an iOS clone.

In response, Google clarified in its November 2025 blog post that while verification is moving forward, there will be lighter-weight paths for students and hobbyists, and an "advanced flow" for power users to install unverified apps with full warning of the risks, essentially backtracking on its initial proposal.

Submission + - How Google is using the law to stop text message scams (bgr.com)

Submitted by anderzole
anderzole writes: Google this week filed a lawsuit against a large scam text operator responsible. Google's legal action is comprehensive and is intent on completely dismantling Lighthouse's operations. The search giant is bringing claims under RICO, the Lanham Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Submission + - NTP Solicits Donations 1

Submitted by ewhac
ewhac writes: Coming on the heels of FFmpeg having to cope with slop bug reports from Google (without attendant fixes), the Network Time Foundation, the stewards of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) and reference software implementation that keeps billions of computers' internal clocks set to the correct date and time, is having a donation drive. Depending on which page you look at (ntp.org or nwtime.org), the Foundation's goal is to raise a king's ransom of... $11,000.00. Yes, eleven thousand dollars.

Submission + - Thanks to a computer model, five Vietnam War MIAs come home (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In the decades after the war, joint U.S., Laotian and Vietnamese teams mounted several expeditions to search the peak, recovering several of the men lost that day. But the dense vegetation, remote environs and possibility of unexploded munitions at the site, not to mention the sheer size of the mountain, complicated the search for the remaining missing Airmen.

With the expertise of Russell Quick, a Ph.D. graduate in anthropology from UIC and member of the CRIM team, the researchers scanned the mountain with drones to make a digital 3D model of the site. They used a remote sensing technology called LiDAR, which maps the terrain using laser beams aimed at the ground and measuring their reflection back to the aircraft.

The program, trained on images of tropical forests, will ping when it detects an area that looks different from the rest.

"It will not give any alarms to rocks or trees or what you see in a tropical forest. But if you have a belt or something like that, it's an unusual object, and it'll create an alert," said Cetin.

The researchers homed in on several areas of interest and submitted their findings to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Submission + - Copy-paste now exceeds file transfer as top corporate data exfiltration vector (scworld.com)

Submitted by spatwei
spatwei writes: It is now more common for data to leave companies through copying and paste than through file transfers and uploads, LayerX revealed in its Browser Security Report 2025.

This shift is largely due to generative AI (genAI), with 77% of employees pasting data into AI prompts, and 32% of all copy-pastes from corporate accounts to non-corporate accounts occurring within genAI tools.

“Traditional governance built for email, file-sharing, and sanctioned SaaS didn’t anticipate that copy/paste into a browser prompt would become the dominant leak vector,” LayerX CEO Or Eshed wrote in a blog post summarizing the report.

Submission + - A jailed hacking kingpin reveals all about cybercrime gang (bbc.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Penchukov and the gangs he either led or was a part of stole tens of millions of pounds from them.

In the late 2000s, he and the infamous Jabber Zeus crew used revolutionary cyber-crime tech to steal directly from the bank accounts of small businesses, local authorities and even charities. Victims saw their savings wiped out and balance sheets upended. In the UK alone, there were more than 600 victims, who lost more than £4m ($5.2m) in just three months.

Between 2018 and 2022, Penchukov set his sights higher, joining the thriving ransomware ecosystem with gangs that targeted international corporations and even a hospital.

Submission + - Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa (substack.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: You know that feeling when you’re waiting for the cable guy, and they said ‘between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up?

Now imagine that, except the cable guy is ‘electricity,’ the day is ‘50 years,’ and you’re one of 600 million people. At some point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself.

What’s happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it’s not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It’s being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it’s working.

Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.

And if you understand what’s happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.

Submission + - DHS head reportedly authorized purchase of planes that airline didn't own (theguardian.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: DHS head reportedly authorized purchase of 10 engineless Spirit Airlines planes that airline didn’t own– and that the aircraft lacked engines. The bizarre anecdote was contained in a Wall Street Journal report released on Friday, which recounted how Noem and Corey Lewandowski – who managed Donald Trump’s first winning presidential campaign – had recently arranged to buy 10 Boeing 737 aircraft from Spirit Airlines. People familiar with the situation told the paper that the two intended to use the jets to expand deportation flights – and for personal travel.

Complicating matters further, Spirit, which filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time, in August, did not own the jets and their engines would have had to be bought separately. Meanwhile, Democrats on the House appropriations committee said in October that during this fall’s record-long government shutdown, the DHS had already acquired two Gulfstream jets for $200m.

“It has come to our attention that, in the midst of a government shutdown, the United States Coast Guard entered into a sole source contract with Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation to procure two new G700 luxury jets to support travel for you and the deputy secretary, at a cost to the taxpayer of $200m,” Democratic representatives Rosa DeLauro and Lauren Underwood wrote in a letter to the DHS.

The American taxpayer's dollars at work for truth, freedom, justice, and the American $$$ way.

Submission + - Jensen Huang: The U.S. Sanctions on China Are the Dumbest Thing (binance.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: nVidia CEO Huang held a closed-door meeting in a top private room at the Grand Hyatt Taipei. There were only 12 invited guests, all heavyweight figures—executives from TSMC, Quanta, Wistron, and Hon Hai, as well as partners from two American venture capital firms. Just after the meeting ended, three participants leaked the content verbatim to a Financial Times reporter who published Huang's words (paywalled) and Reuters and Bloomberg verified it with all 12 attendees present that day, and everyone confirmed the authenticity of the report. The key sentences in the speech are explosive:
  • The opening conclusion: "If you ask me who’s going to win the generative AI race in the next 5-10 years — China is going to win. Period."
  • "They have one million people working on this 24/7. One million. Not 100,000 — one million. You know how many we have in the entire Silicon Valley working full-time on foundation models? Maybe 20,000 on a good day."
  • "And they’re not going to quit. They’re not going to quit. The more you sanction them, the harder they work. You can’t stop them. The more you stop them, the more determined they get."
  • On Huawei: ""Don’t underestimate Huawei. Their Ascend 910C is already within 8-12% of H100 performance in most workloads — and they make 200,000 of them per month now. Two hundred thousand. Per month. While we’re sitting here arguing about CFIUS."
  • "These export controls? They’re the dumbest thing we’ve ever done. You just gave them the best national mobilization mission in 50 years. It’s like a Sputnik moment on steroids."
  • "Washington thinks they’re stopping China. They’re not stopping China — they’re accelerating China. By 2027, China will have more AI compute than the rest of the world combined. Mark my words."
  • The concluding remakr: "So yeah, keep the sanctions if you want. Just understand: you’re handing them the trophy."

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