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Submission + - EU parliament fails to renew loophole allowing tech firms to report abuse (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'The European parliament has blocked the extension of a law that permits big tech firms to scan for child sexual exploitation on their platforms, creating a legal gap that child safety experts say will lead to crimes going undetected.

'The law, which was a carve-out of the EU Privacy Act, was put in place in 2021 as a temporary measure allowing companies to use automated detection technologies to scan messages for harms, including child sexual abuse material (CSAM), grooming and sextortion. However, it expired on 3 April, and the EU parliament decided not to vote to extend it, amid privacy concerns from some lawmakers.

'The regulatory gap has created uncertainty for big tech companies, because while scanning for harms on their platforms is now illegal, they still remain liable to remove any illegal content hosted on their platforms under a different law, the Digital Services Act. Google, Meta, Snap and Microsoft said they would continue to voluntarily scan their platforms for CSAM, in a joint statement posted on a Google blog.'

Child abuse as the excuse for avoiding privacy protections. Who would have thought it?

Submission + - Meta Cafeteria Workers Take on ICE (wired.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Staff at a Meta café in Bellevue, Washington, had made a pact that they would rally together if the Trump administration's immigration crackdown affected any one of them.

Under a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, federal authorities detained Serigne, a Senegalese asylum seeker and the brother of dishwasher Abdoul Mbengue in December.

"I didn't know what to do at first, but we had this community, and I told them this news," Mbengue says through a coworker who is translating his French.

A number of the cooks, dishwashers, and front-of-house staff at the Meta café known as Crashpad are from Africa, the Caribbean, or Ukraine. Some, like Mbengue, are in the U.S. on temporary authorizations while awaiting the resolution of asylum or immigration cases.
Mbengue's colleagues launched a fundraising campaign to pay for the legal defense of his brother.

Thousands of dollars altogether came in from Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon workers. On February 24, a judge ordered the release of Mbengue's brother.

"He is back because of the efforts," Mbengue says.

This activism inside the tech industry may shift as big tech companies become less responsive to worker petitions and decline to take public stands against Trump policies. A decade ago, thousands of tech workers protested against Trump's immigration bans alongside executives.

Workers allege that on January 29, two agents in "DHS" clothing looking for a specific non-Microsoft employee working at the company's headquarters campus in Redmond were turned away at the reception of the Commons building. Microsoft could not confirm that the visitors were law enforcement.

Meta declined to comment for this story. Amazon and Google didn't respond to requests for comment.

Submission + - Anthropic blocks Claude subscriptions from third party AI tools like OpenClaw (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Anthropic says Claude subscriptions will no longer cover usage inside third party tools like OpenClaw starting April 4 at 12pm PT. Users who previously logged into those apps with their Claude account will now need to purchase usage bundles or use a Claude API key instead. The company says its subscription plans were built for normal chat usage, not the automated workloads often generated by external clients and agent frameworks.

The move appears aimed at controlling compute costs as demand for AI models continues to rise. Third party tools can generate far more model requests than a typical user chatting in a browser, especially when automation or scripting is involved. Casual users likely will not notice any difference, but developers and power users who relied on those tools may now face usage based pricing.

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 + - UFC-Que Choisir Takes Ubisoft to French Court Over The Crew Shutdown (reuters.com)

Submitted by Elektroschock
Elektroschock writes: When Ubisoft pulled the plug on The Crew’s servers without warning, players were left with a worthless game they’d already paid for. Now, consumer watchdog UFC-Que Choisir is fighting back, demanding gamers’ right to play regardless of publisher whims. Supported by the “Stop Killing Games” movement, this landmark case challenges unfair terms before the Créteil Judicial Court (Val-de-Marne near Paris), and aims to protect players from disappearing games.

Submission + - Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: More and more science is pushing back the Drake equation, reducing the parameters necessary for life to form. From the discovery that organic molecules are formed in the little red dot protogalaxies at the edge of our visible universe to AI models that identify a self replicating RNA molecule in only 45 nucleotides. Now comes Toshiki Koga et al with a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy reported on by phys.org finding all the nucleobases of RNA and DNA in pristine samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu. The bases being uracil adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. Ammonia was also found.

The universe it seems is made of soup.

Submission + - 50 percent of consumers prefer brands that avoid GenAI content (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: A new survey from Gartner suggests consumers may not be as enthusiastic about generative AI in marketing as companies assume. According to the research firm, 50 percent of U.S. consumers say they would prefer to do business with brands that avoid using GenAI in consumer facing content such as advertising and promotional messaging. The survey of 1,539 Americans, conducted in October 2025, also found growing skepticism about the reliability of online information, with 61 percent saying they frequently question whether information they use for everyday decisions is trustworthy.

That broader distrust may help explain the pushback against AI generated messaging. Gartner found that 68 percent of consumers often wonder whether the content they see online is real, while fewer people now rely on intuition alone to judge credibility. Instead, more consumers are actively verifying information and checking sources. Gartner says brands that use AI should be transparent about it and focus on clearly helpful use cases rather than forcing AI driven experiences on customers.

Submission + - Nuclear Regulators Scrap Rule That New Reactors Must Withstand 9/11 Plane Crash (reason.com) 1

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Regulations have made it harder and more expensive to deploy nuclear power in the United States. But in January, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rolled back more than a dozen regulations, including the "aircraft impact assessment." The rule, which was finalized in 2009, required developers of new power plants to demonstrate to the NRC that their reactor core would remain intact in the event of an improbable 9/11-style plane crash.

Submission + - Epic, Android, and what's *really* behind Google's "existential" threat to app d (thenewstack.io)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: One source in the "Keep Android Open" movement shared a good theory on Google's motives for requiring Android developers to register. "You can't separate this really from their ongoing interactions with Epic and the settlement that they came to... " Twelve days ago Epic Games and Googleannounced a new proposalfor settling their long-running dispute over the legality of alternative app stores on Android phones. (Rather than agreeing to let third-party app stores into their Play Store, Google wants them to continue being sideloaded, promising ina blog post last weekthat they'll even offer a "more streamlined" and "simplified" sideloading alternative for rival app stores. "This Registered App Store program will begin outside of the US first, and we intend to bring it to the US as well, subject to court approval.")

So "developer verification" could be Google's fallback plan if U.S. courts fail to approve this proposal, argues my unnamed source in the "Keep Android Open" movement. "If the Google Play Store has to allow any third-party repository app store, Google essentially has given up all control of the apps. But if they're able to claw back that control by requiring that all developers, no matterhowthey distribute their apps, have to register with Google — have to agree to their Terms & Conditions, pay them money, provide identification — then they have a large degree ofindirectcontrol over any app that can be developed for the entire platform."

At the Keep Android Open site there's now a "huge backlog" of signers for an Open Letter that already includes EFF, the Software Freedom Conservancy, and the Free Software Foundation. ("Richard Stallman is actually a friend of mine," Prud'hommeaux says, and when it comes to Google's plans to register Android developers, "He'scompletelyopposed to it." Though Prud'hommeaux adds with a laugh that Stallman "is more or less opposed to everything Google does.") He believes Android's existing Play Protect security "is completely sufficient to handle the particular scenarios they claim that developer verification is meant to address" — and wonders if Google could just collaborate with other Android app distributors on improving security, "working with the community instead of against it.”

TheKeep Android Opensite urges developers not to sign up for Android's early access program when it launches next week. (Instead, they're asking developers to respond to invites with an email about their concerns — and to spread the word to other developers and organizations in forums and social media posts.) There's also apetition at Change.orgcurrently signed by 64,000 developers — adding 13,000 new signatures in less than a week. And "If you have an Android device, try installing F-Droid!" he adds. (Google tracks how many people install these alternative app repositories, and a larger user base means greater consequences from any Android policy changes.)

Plus, installing F-Droid "might be refreshing!" Prud'hommeaux says. "You don't see all the advertisements and promotions and scam and crapware stuff that you see in the commercial app stores!"

Submission + - Indian H1B Scammers Found Guilty In Multi-Million Dollar Fraud In Pennsylvania (zerohedge.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A federal jury in Philadelphia has delivered a resounding guilty verdict against two Pennsylvania brothers and a longtime associate, convicting them of masterminding one of the most elaborate and prolonged racketeering operations uncovered in recent years. The scheme, which prosecutors say drained more than $32 million from Pennsylvania's Medicaid program while exploiting vulnerable foreign workers through the H-1B visa system, spanned over a decade and involved layers of deception across multiple states.

At the center of the criminal enterprise — self-dubbed the “Savani Group” — were brothers Bhaskar Savani, 60, a trained dentist from Ambler, Pennsylvania, and Arun Savani, 58, from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Bhaskar controlled the groups extensive network of dental practices, while Arun oversaw finances and real estate holdings. Together, they built what U.S. Attorney David Metcalf described as a “complex web” of sham entities and fraudulent operations, amassing tens of millions through outright fraud “at every turn.”

A third defendant, Aleksandra “Ola” Radomiak, 48, of Lansdale, Pennsylvania—a longtime associate—was also convicted for her role, primarily in the healthcare fraud components.

The multi-faceted conspiracy encompassed several interlocking schemes:
  • Visa fraud and worker exploitation: The group filed numerous false H-1B visa petitions with the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. These applications misrepresented job titles, duties, and other details to bring in foreign workers—most from India—who were dependent on the Savani Group for their legal status. Once employed, many were coerced into kicking back portions of their salaries and paying additional fees back to the enterprise, creating a captive, underpaid workforce.
  • Healthcare fraud against Medicaid: After the Savani Group's legitimate dental practices lost their Medicaid contracts due to prior issues, the conspirators pivoted to using nominee-owned shell entities and sham dental practices. They fraudulently billed Pennsylvania Medicaid in the names of non-treating dentists for services that were either unnecessary, never performed, or grossly inflated. This alone resulted in over $32 million in improper payments, robbing taxpayers and depriving the healthcare system of vital resources.
  • Money laundering and tax evasion: Proceeds from the fraud were funneled through a sophisticated network of financial transactions, including concealment and transactional money laundering. The group also conspired to defraud the U.S. Treasury via wire fraud tied to false tax returns.
  • Obstruction of justice: When federal investigators closed in, the conspirators actively obstructed a grand jury probe.

The convictions, handed down on March 9, 2026, after a lengthy trial, covered a sweeping array of charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and related statutes.

The brothers now face severe penalties: Bhaskar Savani up to 420 years in federal prison, and Arun Savani up to 415 years. Sentencing is scheduled for July 2026.

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 + - How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Execs

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Executives, the NY Times begins, "For more than two decades, the convicted sex offender developed a network at the tech giant, making him privy to [CEO] succession discussions and other business. [...] The files from the Justice Department show that he spent more than a decade developing a network of Microsoft executives, including Mr. Gates; Nathan Myhrvold, a former technology chief; Steven Sinofsky, who ran Microsoft’s Windows division; Linda Stone, a former technology research executive; Reid Hoffman, a Microsoft board member; and employees of Mr. Gates’s personal investment and charity funds. [...] Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s communications chief, said the company was disappointed to read emails between Mr. Epstein and “former Microsoft employees acting in their personal capacities.” Without mentioning a name, Mr. Shaw acknowledged the emails showed that a former executive — who was Mr. [Steven] Sinofsky — had shared confidential company business with Mr. Epstein."

Email released by the DOJ related to Microsoft included: 1. Epstein being tipped off to the announcement of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's planned resignation announcement in Aug. 2013 by a forwarded email from the President of bgC3 [aka Gates Ventures], a personal service company for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, on a day that saw Microsoft stock soar 7%., 2. Epstein being given a heads up by a redacted sender about a rumored 2011 Bill Gates return to Microsoft that never panned out, 3. Epstein being told in a 2013 Steven Sinofsky email about Ballmer's desire to buy a phone company that included some other juicy insider tidbits (when Microsoft's Nokia purchase was announced the following year, Microsoft stock sank 6%). In other correspondence, Sinofsky — who headed Microsoft's Windows Division — thanked Epstein for his advice in negotiating a $14 million exit package from Microsoft and later forwarded Epstein old internal email from top execs discussing the poor sales of the Microsoft Surface tablet.

In one Microsoft-related Epstein email, former Harvard President Larry Summers — who recently announced he's giving up his Harvard teaching appointments — sent Epstein a terse two-word email dissing Melinda Gates' Women in Tech initiative. "I'm gagging," Summers wrote, attaching an article about Gates' efforts (a search didn't find any reply from Epstein). Summers came under fire in 2005 when he said that women lack natural ability in math in science. Summers earlier resigned his OpenAI Board seat amid fallout over his Epstein ties that came to light following the DOJ's release of documents last November, which included the revelation that Summers and his wife were invited to dine with Bill and Melinda Gates at Epstein's NYC mansion in 2013 , Melinda's one and only Epstein encounter. Interestingly, Microsoft President Brad Smith — who coincidentally helped negotiate Microsoft's $14M exit package for Epstein-advised Sinofsky — cautioned OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about naming Summers to the OpenAI Board in November 2023. “Your future would be decided by Larry [Summers],” Smith texted. “He’s smart but so mercurial [...] too risky.” The advice went unheeded, with Altman saying the choice of Summers was non-negotiable.

Submission + - U.S. Cybersecurity Adds VMware Aria Operations to KEV Catalog (thehackernews.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a VMware Aria Operations vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-22719 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, flagging the flaw as exploited in attacks.

VMware Aria Operations is an enterprise monitoring platform that helps organizations track the performance and health of servers, networks, and cloud infrastructure.

The flaw has now been added to the CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, with the US cyber agency requiring federal civilian agencies to address the issue by March 24, 2026. Broadcom said it is aware of reports indicating the vulnerability is exploited in attacks but cannot confirm the claims.

"A malicious unauthenticated actor may exploit this issue to execute arbitrary commands which may lead to remote code execution in VMware Aria Operations while support-assisted product migration is in progress," the advisory explains.

Broadcom released security patches on February 24 and also provided a temporary workaround for organizations unable to apply the patches immediately.

The mitigation is a shell script named "aria-ops-rce-workaround.sh," which must be executed as root on each Aria Operations appliance node. There are currently no details on how the vulnerability is being exploited in the wild, who is behind it, and the scale of such efforts.

Submission + - Seagate just unleashed 44TB hard drives (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Seagate says it is now shipping its Mozaic 4+ HAMR-based hard drives at up to 44TB per drive, with production deployments already underway at two hyperscale cloud providers. The company claims the platform is the only heat-assisted magnetic recording implementation currently operating at scale, and it is targeting a path from todayâ(TM)s 4+TB per disk toward 10TB per disk, eventually enabling 100TB-class drives. In a one-exabyte deployment, Seagate estimates Mozaic could improve infrastructure efficiency by roughly 47 percent compared to standard 30TB drives, cutting both footprint and energy consumption.

While GPUs dominate AI headlines, large-scale storage remains the economic backbone of training and archival workloads. HAMR uses a tiny laser to heat the disk surface during writes, allowing higher areal density without sacrificing stability. With most major cloud storage providers reportedly qualified on the Mozaic platform, Seagate is positioning spinning disks, not flash, as the long-term answer for cost-effective AI-scale data growth.

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