181171112
submission
joshuark writes:
Lawmakersare pressing the nation's top intelligence official to publicly disclose whether Americans who use commercialVPN servicesrisk being treated as foreigners under United States surveillance law—a classification that would strip them of constitutional protections against warrantless government spying. Lawmakers pressed Tulsi Gabbard to reveal whether using a VPN can strip Americans of their constitutional protections against warrantless surveillance.
In a letter sent Thursday to Director of National IntelligenceTulsi Gabbard, the lawmakers say that because VPNs obscure a user's true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they're entitled to under the law.
Several federal agencies, including the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Trade Commission, haverecommendedthat consumers use VPNs toprotect their privacy. But following that advice may inadvertently cost Americans the very protections they're seeking.
180922468
submission
AirHog writes:
Aptera has completed the first validation vehicle rolling off its new assembly line in San Diego. These pre-production vehicles will let them perfect the assembly line for mass production. Some validation vehicles may also be used for regulatory compliance purposes. Reservation holders, it's finally time to get ready.
180162543
submission
nnet writes:
From Malwarebytes:
If you use Gmail, you need to be aware of an important change that’s quietly rolling out. Reportedly, Google has recently started automatically opting users in to allow Gmail to access all private messages and attachments for training its AI models. This means your emails could be analyzed to improve Google’s AI assistants, like Smart Compose or AI-generated replies. Unless you decide to take action.
The reason behind this is Google’s push to power new Gmail features with its Gemini AI, helping you write emails faster and manage your inbox more efficiently. To do that, Google is using real email content, including attachments, to train and refine its AI models. Some users are now reporting that these settings are switched on by default instead of asking for explicit opt-in.
178629628
submission
Nicholas Grayhame writes:
Remember several GOP congressmen taking credit for providing funding for various projects in their districts even though they voted against the bills that authorized such funding? Well, the tradition continues ProPublica reports that "Many of the same Republican lawmakers who have targeted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for cuts have collectively directed thousands of constituents’ complaints about banks, credit cards, loans and other products to the agency."
From the article:
"Data obtained by ProPublica through a public records request shows that many of the same Republican members of Congress who have targeted the CFPB for cuts have collectively routed thousands of constituent complaints to the agency.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia, for example, voted to reduce the CFPB’s budget. Yet each of their offices has referred more than 100 constituents to the CFPB for help, among the most of any House members. The office of Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who also voted for the CFPB cuts, has routed more than 800 constituent complaints to the agency, the most of any current lawmaker from either party, ProPublica found. ...Overall, members of Congress have steered nearly 24,000 complaints to the CFPB since it opened its doors in 2011. Roughly 10,000 of those were referred by the offices of current and former Republican lawmakers, ProPublica found."
177293923
submission
sinij writes:
Suit Says Toyota Sold Driversâ(TM) Data Without Permission.
176809543
submission
Baron_Yam writes:
No more burning fossil fuels, playing with fissile material, damming rivers, erecting wind mills, or making solar panels. All of our energy needs could potentially be supplied by the angular kinetic energy of the Earth — and because of the mass of the planet, doing so would slow its rotation down by a mere 7ms per century.
Normally this would be considered impossible as the Earth's large and uniform field does not induce a current in conductors, but researchers believe that a hollow cylinder of manganese, zinc and iron can alter the interaction with our planetary magnetic field and allow the extraction of energy from it. So far, the results are positive but still below the level where they cannot be explained by multiple possible causes of experimental error. Further research is required to confirm the effect.
175989191
submission
satch89450 writes:
The rules are simple: each web site needs to have a role account
"webmaster" active. (I'd quote the RFC, but I'm not interested in
doing your homework. I take my lead from the attorney general
candidate's response to Shiffty during congressional committee
hearings.)
Oh, hell, why not?
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc21...,
MAILBOX NAMES FOR COMMON SERVICES, ROLES AND FUNCTIONS
"If a host is not configured to accept mail directly, but it
implements a service for which this specification defines a mailbox
name, that host must have an MX RR set (see [RFC974]) and the mail
exchangers specified by this RR set must recognize the referenced
host's domain name as 'local' for the purpose of accepting mail
bound for the defined mailbox name."
Oops.
> $ dig -4 +trace whitehouse.gov mx
>
> ; > DiG 9.18.30-0ubuntu0.20.04.1-Ubuntu > -4 +trace whitehouse.gov mx
> ;; global options: +cmd
> . 7067 IN NS k.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS c.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS m.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS g.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS i.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS e.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS l.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS h.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS j.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS b.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS f.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS a.root-servers.net.
> . 7067 IN NS d.root-servers.net.
> ;; Received 262 bytes from 127.0.0.53#53(127.0.0.53) in 0 ms
>
> gov. 172800 IN NS b.ns.gov.
> gov. 172800 IN NS d.ns.gov.
> gov. 172800 IN NS a.ns.gov.
> gov. 172800 IN NS c.ns.gov.
> gov. 86400 IN DS 2536 13 2 0BAF26B7BBF313A859046FD3B1EE49DDFBA33934CFB3E717C21E2A29 35C2F259
> gov. 86400 IN RRSIG DS 8 1 86400 20250203170000 20250121160000 26470 . hHJeQcyc3e5II0ZhUzsA/uYkVXy5/40pPc5d/BI+7AseSos1QMhFNpPJ 0Qge0Smo8/pTdzvjXa2S4tRuOaGXPjoBVrHBwI8c5wrzT8gNHcIdhi/o hNjOfA5BhOQfxGf63akjFsrt0zlJ0yExu05jcm5QE4tXObp/7rG1Z7Rd j92R82ysbpRmD4aDWJzeO0O561O1E8ubt47EC7MdxQ7R7Y09piitoxM5 m/c8txtnbMSFvOWv+PK0BWhf2k5TxhnQ854zF9LBM5eRCPLPGjcWGUEk H2FlJNUNxXUco/tFKID4iKrlkTzo/E4z6jBv2T9uvUhLZ4ZnqTVGOacK rvuMVA==
> ;; Received 652 bytes from 192.36.148.17#53(i.root-servers.net) in 20 ms
>
> whitehouse.gov. 10800 IN NS ernest.ns.cloudflare.com.
> whitehouse.gov. 10800 IN NS wally.ns.cloudflare.com.
> whitehouse.gov. 3600 IN DS 2371 13 2 BE4C7B11AD123596BA672B13FFDA04CA73C9FE0652E66542AEFADAF2 06B381AE
> whitehouse.gov. 3600 IN RRSIG DS 13 2 3600 20250122191209 20250120171209 35496 gov. AonGq9nTzH43zWIGFt2AmaDNWQTxW1Yr36f8GqyvRhj7zQwPhanwNjUR IxfN1X+fd5rEbPORUw+ha7jwibwtrg==
> ;; Received 248 bytes from 199.33.231.1#53(b.ns.gov) in 16 ms
>
> whitehouse.gov. 1800 IN SOA ernest.ns.cloudflare.com. dns.cloudflare.com. 2362876422 10000 2400 604800 1800
> whitehouse.gov. 1800 IN NSEC \000.whitehouse.gov. A NS SOA HINFO TXT AAAA LOC SRV NAPTR CERT SSHFP RRSIG NSEC DNSKEY TLSA SMIMEA HIP CDS CDNSKEY OPENPGPKEY SVCB HTTPS URI CAA
> whitehouse.gov. 1800 IN RRSIG NSEC 13 2 1800 20250122191209 20250120171209 34505 whitehouse.gov. paP+qyptYxKTXoGNXkC0PLKcyeW9ZL9e60v0x4TQjhDX7HQoK5bgRuc3 gYF02w5SFUGbXWOfhvDaBclx+MsRCA==
> whitehouse.gov. 1800 IN RRSIG SOA 13 2 1800 20250122191209 20250120171209 34505 whitehouse.gov. uflQie+N0ILZXaYPd/NHxyLiNMR0tpZvsyLuwTCuL2fcSaJtQ/lARb2s n1OuRG8z4Z6tA+2fFb55Z/1lT8SlFA==
> ;; Received 371 bytes from 173.245.58.239#53(wally.ns.cloudflare.com) in 156 ms
------------------------------------------------------------------------
No MX record.
That means a mail exchanger would use the A record for the mail server.
> ; > DiG 9.18.30-0ubuntu0.20.04.1-Ubuntu > whitehouse.gov a
> ;; global options: +cmd
> ;; Got answer:
> ;; ->>HEADER
> ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
>
> ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
> ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 65494
> ;; QUESTION SECTION:
> ;whitehouse.gov. IN A
>
> ;; ANSWER SECTION:
> whitehouse.gov. 300 IN A 192.0.66.168
------------------------------------------------------------------------
That implies that there is a service running on port 25. Well, is there?
> Jan 21 09:44:22 smtp postfix/smtp[58429]: E6A0A9FDDE: to=, relay=none, delay=30, delays=0.22/0.02/30/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to whitehouse.gov[192.0.66.130]:25: Connection timed out)
> Jan 21 09:50:33 smtp postfix/smtp[58589]: E6A0A9FDDE: to=, relay=none, delay=402, delays=371/0.03/30/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to whitehouse.gov[192.0.66.223]:25: Connection timed out)
> Jan 21 10:00:33 smtp postfix/smtp[58663]: E6A0A9FDDE: to=, relay=none, delay=1002, delays=972/0.03/30/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to whitehouse.gov[192.0.66.136]:25: Connection timed out)
Nope. Not RFC complaint.
Q.E.D.
173472810
submission
christoban writes:
A team of physicists and engineers at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory built a twisting fusion reactor known as a stellarator that uses permanent magnets, showcasing a potentially cost-effective way of building the powerful machines. Their experiment, called MUSE, relies on 3D-printed and off-the-shelf parts.
173418520
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
How Meta Competed Against Snapchat and YouTube: Unsealed Documents
“Meta used a spyware to access user activities on rival platforms, including Snapchat and YouTube, according to newly unsealed documents from a class action suit.”
172254923
submission
schwit1 writes:
And no, it's not COBOL
"A secret text has been discovered in Türkiye, scattered among tens of thousands of ancient clay tablets, which were written in the time of the Hittite Empire during the second millennium BCE.
No one yet knows what the curious cuneiform script says, but it seems to be a long-lost language from more than 3,000 years ago.
Experts say the mysterious idiom is unlike any other ancient written language found in the Middle East, although it seems to share roots with other Anatolian-Indo-European languages."Link to Original Source
171509484
submission
ZipNada writes:
The third and fourth reactors were originally supposed to cost $14 billion, but are now on track to cost their owners $31 billion. That doesn’t include $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners to walk away from the project. That brings total spending to almost $35 billion.
The third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016 when construction began in 2009.
