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Submission + - America is building a society that cannot function without AI (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: The United States is rapidly building a society that assumes artificial intelligence will always be available. AI now sits at the center of banking, healthcare, logistics, education, media, and government workflows, increasingly handling not just automation but decision-making and cognition itself. The risk is not AI being “too smart,” but Americans slowly losing the ability — and habit — of thinking and functioning without it. As more writing, research, planning, and judgment are outsourced to centralized systems, human fallback skills quietly atrophy, making society efficient but brittle.

That brittleness becomes a national risk when AI’s real dependencies are considered. Large-scale AI depends on data centers, power grids, and stable infrastructure that can fail due to outages, cyber incidents, or geopolitical pressure. Foreign adversaries do not need to defeat the US militarily to cause disruption; they only need to interrupt systems Americans assume will always work. A society optimized for AI uptime rather than resilience may discover, very suddenly, that when the intelligence layer goes dark, confusion spreads faster than solutions.

Submission + - Top 10 Post Office scandal stories of 2025 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Top 10 Post Office scandal stories of 2025

The past year has been another relentless one in terms of developments in the Post Office Horizon scandal.

If 2024 was the aftermath of the ITV drama on the scandal, 2025 was about more people drilling deeper into it ..

.. Fujitsu has received significant attention this year for its role in the scandal, while former subpostmasters who suffered as a result of a second Post Office system, known as Capture, have had major successes in their own campaign for justice.

Submission + - Threat groups steal identities to access Microsoft 365 accounts (scworld.com)

Submitted by spatwei
spatwei writes: A threat actor was observed using device code phishing to trick unsuspecting users into granting a cybercriminal access to their Microsoft 365 accounts.

In a Dec. 18 blog post, Proofpoint Threat Research explained that in device code phishing, an attacker will socially engineer someone into logging into an application with legitimate credentials. The app then generates a token that’s obtained by the threat actor, which gives them control over the Microsoft 365 account.

While it’s not a novel technique, the Proofpoint team pointed out that it’s notable to see it used increasingly by multiple threat clusters, including TA2723, a tracked financially motivated cybercriminal threat actor.

“Over the last few years, there has been an increasing focus by threat actors on identity, including account takeovers, which is the result of a successful attack using the OAuth device code phishing technique we’ve reported,” said Sarah Sabotka, a staff threat researcher at Proofpoint. “If a threat actor can successfully establish a foothold by compromising a legitimate user’s identity, the opportunities for upstream attacks are endless.”

Submission + - Young Journalists Drone, Expose Russian Ships Off Dutch-German Coasts (digitaldigging.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Seven German journalism students, as a continuation of their OSINT course project, tracked the movements of ships with Russian crews off the coasts of the Netherlands and Germany and linked them to swarms of drones appearing over European military airfields and other strategic sites.

The guys not only analyzed thousands of data points, but also used leaked documents, established connections with sources in European agencies, and drove 2,500 km across three countries chasing one of the ships – even launching their own drone to fly over it.

At the end of the article, there’s precise data on the vessels, so you can follow them yourself.

Submission + - Arkansas becoming 1st state to sever ties with PBS, effective July 1 (apnews.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Arkansas is becoming the first state to officially end its public television affiliation with PBS. The Arkansas Educational Television Commission, whose members are all appointed by the governor, voted to disaffiliate from PBS effective July 1, 2026, citing the $2.5 million annual membership dues as “not feasible.” The decision was also driven by the loss of a similar amount in federal funding after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was defunded by Congress.

PBS Arkansas is rebranding itself as Arkansas TV and will provide more local content, the agency’s Executive Director and CEO Carlton Wing said in a statement. Wing, a former Republican state representative, took the helm of the agency in September.

“Public television in Arkansas is not going away,” Wing said. “In fact, we invite you to join our vision for an increased focus on local programming, continuing to safeguard Arkansans in times of emergency and supporting our K-12 educators and students.”

“The commission’s decision to drop PBS membership is a blow to Arkansans who will lose free, over the air access to quality PBS programming they know and love,” a PBS spokesperson wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

The demise of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is a direct result of President Donald Trump’s targeting of public media, which he has repeatedly said is spreading political and cultural views antithetical to those the United States should be espousing. Trump denied taking a big should on television viewers.

Submission + - 97% Of Buildings On Earth 3D Mapped (nature.com)

Submitted by Gilmoure
Gilmoure writes: Imagine a video game with the world's buildings already mapped in basic spatial dimensions!

"Scientists have produced the most detailed 3D map of almost all buildings in the world . The map, called GlobalBuildingAtlas, combines satellite imagery and machine learning to generate 3D models for 97% of buildings on Earth.

The data set, published in the open-access journal Earth System Science Data on 1 December1, covers 2.75 billion buildings, each mapped with footprints and heights at a spatial resolution of 3 metres by 3 metres.

The 3D map opens new possibilities for disaster risk assessment, climate modelling and urban planning, according to study co-author Xiaoxiang Zhu, an Earth observation data scientist at the Technical University of Munich in Germany."

– nature.com

Submission + - University of Utah team finds original UNIX os from 1973 on a tape. (ksl.com)

Submitted by Smonster
Smonster writes: Aleks Maricq, research associate in the Flux Research Group, discovered a version of the original UNIX operating system from 1973 that was thought to be lost. He found it while cleaning a storage room.

"I think UNIX before was only sent out to 20 people total, outside of Bell Laboratories, so it was rather scarce," Maricq said. "The fact we found a version at all is pretty astonishing."

Rob Ricci, a professor in the Kalhert School of Computing, said this particular tape was influential. It paved the way for operating systems like Linux and macOS.

"Someone at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City; we believe it was Martin Newell, who's also famous for being the guy who invented the Utah teapot that's used for graphics; expressed an interest in this, asked Ken for a copy, and was sent here," Ricci said.

Submission + - 'No US Citizens': Meet the IT Firms Discriminating Against Americans (freebeacon.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The job post for LanceSoft, an IT staffing firm committed to "diversity, equality, and inclusivity," began innocently enough.

The $60-per-hour role would be based in Santa Clara, Calif., focus on "technical support," and entail a 3–10 p.m. shift. Posted on Nvoids, an IT jobs aggregator, the ad described LanceSoft as an equal opportunity employer and said that the firm, one of the largest staffing agencies in the country, strives "to be as diverse as the clients and employees we partner with."

"We embrace people of any race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender identity, and sexual orientation," the Nov. 25 post read.

This particular job, however, would not be open to a very large group of people: citizens of the United States.

In a section titled "Visa requirement," LanceSoft recruiter Riyaz Ansari wrote that "candidates must hold an active H1B visa"—and stated explicitly that American citizens need not apply.

"No USC/GC for this role," Ansari wrote, using the acronyms for U.S. citizens and green card holders. He added that "LanceSoft is a certified Minority Business Enterprise"—a status the firm has used to secure public contracts—and touted the company's "diversified team environment."

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