Trump Says ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked About Due Process and Upholding Constitution

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 14:46
President Trump repeatedly said he didn’t know when asked in a TV interview whether every person on American soil was entitled to due process, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.

This Alabama City Faces a Culture War, With Its Public Library at the Center

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 14:23
Fairhope originated as an experimental colony, and that spirit remains part of its character. But it now faces a culture war, with its library at the center.

Tech Leaders Launch Campaign To Make CS and AI a Graduation Requirement

SlashDot - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 14:20
"Our future won't be handed to us," says the young narrator in a new ad from the nonprofit Code.org. "We will build it." "But how can we when the education we need is still just an elective?" says another young voice... The ad goes on to tout the power "to create with computer science and AI — the skills transforming every industry..." and ends by saying "This isn't radical. It's what education is supposed to do. Make computer science and AI a graduation requirement." There's also a hard-hitting new web site, which urges people to sign a letter of support (already signed by executives from top tech companies including Microsoft, Dropbox, AMD, Meta, Blue Origin, and Palantir — and by Steve Ballmer, who is listed as the chairman of the L.A. Clippers basketball team). Long-time Slashdot reader theodp says the letter ran in the New York Times, while this campaign will officially kick off Monday... Code.org teased the new Unlock8 campaign last month on social media as it celebrated a new Executive Order that makes K–12 AI literacy a U.S. priority, which it called a big win for CS & AI education, adding, "We've been building to this moment." The move to make CS and AI a graduation requirement is a marked reversal of Code.org's early days, when it offered Congressional testimony on behalf of itself and tech-led Computing in the Core reassuring lawmakers that: "Making computer science courses 'count' would not require schools to offer computer science or students to study it; it would simply allow existing computer science courses to satisfy a requirement that already exists."

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FSF Announces Free Software Hackathon Honoring Its 40th Anniversary

SlashDot - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 12:34
Thursday the Free Software Foundation announced plans for a celebratory hackathon in November to improve free/libre software "in honor of its fortieth anniversary. The FSF has been campaigning for software freedom for over forty years. As part of its celebrations, the organization is inviting the wider free software community (both projects and individual contributors) to participate in a global, online hackathon to help improve important libre software projects. All free software projects, regardless of affiliation or (free) license, are invited to participate. As of now, the advanced GNU/Linux distribution and package manager GNU Guix, the boot software distribution GNU Boot, the media publishing system MediaGoblin, and the Free Software Directory, the FSF's catalog of useful free software, have announced that they will submit a project. Interested contributors are encouraged to review the hackathon guidelines, which the FSF has made available online... Hackathon contributions will be judged by a panel appointed by the FSF. The project and contributors making the most noteworthy contributions/patches will be given prizes by the Foundation. The hackathon will conclude with a closing ceremony. "The FSF's free software hackathon will be held November 21-23, 2025," according to the announcement. "Submissions will be open until May 27."

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We May Be In a 'Post-Herd Immunity World', says Immunology Expert

SlashDot - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 11:34
Dr. Paul Offit, an expert on infectious disease and immunology, told the Guardian that "We're living in a post-herd-immunity world. I think the measles outbreak proves that. Measles — because it is the most contagious of the vaccine-preventable diseases, the most contagious human disease really — it is the first to come back." Three large outbreaks in Canada, Mexico and the US now account for the overwhelming majority of roughly 2,300 measles cases across the World Health Organization's six-country Americas region, according to the health authority's update this week. Risk of measles is considered high in the Americas, and has grown 11-fold compared with 2024. Only slightly behind, data released earlier this week from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and WHO also noted that measles cases across Europe were up tenfold in 2024 compared to 2023. That data also indicated that the 2024 measles cases in Europe followed a seasonal pattern, which was not previously noted in 2021 through 2023. Of the European cases, which reportedly hit 35,212 for 2024, 87% were reported in Romania. The ECDC said the dip in vaccine rates has impacted the recent spike in measles, with only three countries, Hungary, Malta and Portugal, having coverage of 95% or more for both doses of the measles vaccine.

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Security Researchers Create Proof-of-Concept Program that Evades Linux Syscall-Watching Antivirus

SlashDot - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 10:34
Slashdot reader Mirnotoriety shared this report from the Register: A proof-of-concept program has been released to demonstrate a so-called monitoring "blind spot" in how some Linux antivirus and other endpoint protection tools use the kernel's io_uring interface. That interface allows applications to make IO requests without using traditional system calls [to enhance performance by enabling asynchronous I/O operations between user space and the Linux kernel through shared ring buffers]. That's a problem for security tools that rely on syscall monitoring to detect threats... [which] may miss changes that are instead going through the io_uring queues. To demonstrate this, security shop ARMO built a proof-of-concept named Curing that lives entirely through io_uring. Because it avoids system calls, the program apparently went undetected by tools including Falco, Tetragon, and Microsoft Defender in their default configurations. ARMO claimed this is a "major blind spot" in the Linux security stack... "Not many companies are using it but you don't need to be using it for an attacker to use it as enabled by default in most Linux systems, potentially tens of thousands of servers," ARMO's CEO Shauli Rozen told The Register. "If you're not using io_uring then disable it, but that's not always easy with cloud vendors."

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Designers Do a Double Take at the Lettering on Pope Francis’ Tombstone

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 09:44
Irregularly spaced letters spelling “F R A NCISC VS” have caused a stir among typography nerds who specialize in spacing and fonts. One called them “an abomination unto design.”

Israel’s Total Blockade of Gaza Has Created ‘Catastrophic’ Conditions, Doctors Say

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 09:07
The effect of Israel’s total siege has become “catastrophic,” doctors say. Food, water and medicine shortages are prompting a surge of preventable illnesses, and deaths.

Firefox Could Be Doomed Without Google Search Deal, Executive Says

SlashDot - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 07:34
An anonymous reader shared this report from The Verge: Firefox could be put out of business should a court implement all the [U.S.] Justice Department's proposals to restrict Google's search monopoly, an executive for the browser owner Mozilla testified Friday. "It's very frightening," Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said. The Department of Justice wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers including Firefox, among a long list of other proposals including a forced sale of Google's own Chrome browser and requiring it to syndicate search results to rivals. The court has already ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in search, partly thanks to exclusionary deals that make it the default engine on browsers and phones, depriving rivals of places to distribute their search engines and scale up. But while Firefox — whose CFO is testifying as Google presents its defense — competes directly with Chrome, it warns that losing the lucrative default payments from Google could threaten its existence. Firefox makes up about 90 percent of Mozilla's revenue, according to Muhlheim, the finance chief for the organization's for-profit arm — which in turn helps fund the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. About 85 percent of that revenue comes from its deal with Google, he added. Losing that revenue all at once would mean Mozilla would have to make "significant cuts across the company," Muhlheim testified, and warned of a "downward spiral" that could happen if the company had to scale back product engineering investments in Firefox, making it less attractive to users. That kind of spiral, he said, could "put Firefox out of business." That could also mean less money for nonprofit efforts like open source web tools and an assessment of how AI can help fight climate change. Ironically, Muhlheim seemed to suggest that could cement the very market dominance the court seeks to remedy. Firefox's underlying Gecko browser engine is "the only browser engine that is held not by Big Tech but by a nonprofit," he said.

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One Moment That Foretold It All

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 07:28
The most consequential day of Donald Trump’s second term came before it even began.

What Effect Did Trump Have on Australia’s Election?

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 07:11
The global turmoil wreaked by President Trump’s policies made him a factor in the election, bolstering the re-election of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Trapped and Hungry in Mexico, Migrants Struggle to Return Home

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 05:01
Thousands of migrants from Venezuela and other countries are stranded in southern Mexico, forbidden to travel or work, but lacking the papers or money to go back to their home countries.

Where Would Hollywood Find Its Guillotines or Pay Phones Without Them?

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 05:00
For nearly four decades the prop house History for Hire has helped filmmakers recreate the past. But with fewer films shot in Los Angeles, they are not sure how much longer they can hang on.

Did Peking U. Just Make the World's Fastest Transistor - Without Using Silicon?

SlashDot - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 03:34
"It is the fastest, most efficient transistor ever," proclaims an announcment from Peking University. "And most important of all, there's no trace of silicon involved," adds ZME Science. From the South China Morning Post: A team of researchers at Peking University claims to have shattered chip performance limits and proven that China can use new materials to "change lanes" in the semiconductor race by circumventing silicon-based roadblocks entirely. The researchers, led by physical chemistry professor Peng Hailin, said their self-engineered 2D transistor could operate 40 per cent faster than Intel and TSMC's cutting-edge 3-nanometre silicon chips, while consuming 10 per cent less energy.... "While this path is born out of necessity due to current sanctions, it also forces researchers to find solutions from fresh perspectives," [Hailin] added. "Peking's major innovation comes from the two-dimensional nature of their transistors, facilitated by using an element other than silicon," writes Tom's Hardware: BiâOâSe, or bismuth oxyselenide, is a semiconductor material studied for its use in sub-1nm process nodes for years, largely thanks to its ability to be a 2D semiconductor. Two-dimensional semiconductors, like 2D BiâOâSe, are more flexible and sturdy at a small scale than silicon, which runs into reduced carrier mobility at even the 10nm node. Such breakthroughs into stacked 2D transistors and the move from silicon to bismuth are exciting for the future of semiconductors and are necessary for the Chinese industry to compete on the leading edge of semiconductors. ZME Science adds this note of skepticism. "Turning laboratory breakthroughs into commercial chips typically takes years — sometimes decades..." Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

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Luxury Condo Owners Accuse Builders of Hiding Dangerous Defects

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 03:00
In a lawsuit, the condo board at 432 Park Avenue says the city and potential residents were not told about the severity of early cracks in the supertall building’s exterior.

How Badly Did ChatGPT and Copilot Fail to Predict the Winners of the Kentucky Derby?

SlashDot - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 00:34
In 2016, an online "swarm intelligence" platform stunned horse-racing fans by making a correct prediction for the Kentucky Derby — naming all four top finishers in order. (But the next year its predictions weren't even close, with TechRepublic suggesting 2016's race just had an unusual cluster of obvious picks.) Since then it's become almost a tradition — asking AI to predict the winning horses each year, then see how close it came. So before today's race, a horse named "Journalism" was given the best odds of winning by professional bookmakers — but could AI make a better prediction? USA Today reports: The USA TODAY Network asked Microsoft Copilot AI to simulate the order of finish for the 2025 Kentucky Derby field based on the latest, odds, predictions and race factors on Thursday, May 1. Journalism came out on top in its projection. The AI-generated response cited Journalism's favorable post position (No. 8), which has produced the second-most Kentucky Derby winners and a four-race winning streak that includes last month's Santa Anita Derby. ChatGPT also picked the exact same horse, according to FanDuel. But in fact, the winning horse turned out to be "Sovereignty" (a horse Copilot predicted would finish second). Meanwhile Copilot's pick for first place ("Journalism") finished in second. But after that Copilot's picks were way off... Copilot's pick for third place was a horse named Rodriguez — which hours later was scratched from the race altogether. (And the next day Copilot's pick for 10th place was also scratched.) Copilot's pick for fourth place was "Sandman" — who finished in 18th place. Copilot's pick for fifth place was "Burnham Square" — who finished in 11th place. Copilot's pick for sixth place was "Luxor Cafe" — who finished in 10th place Copilot's pick for seventh place was "Render Judgment" — who finished in 16th place... An online racing publication also asked "a trained AI LLM tool" for their predictions, and received a wildly uneven prediction: Burnham Square (finished 11th) Journalism (finished 2nd) Sandman (finished 18th) Tiztastic (finished 15th) Baeza (finished 3rd)

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‘People Who Are Salaried Are Crying’: Taxes on Workers Add to Debt Misery

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 00:01
Increased payroll taxes are one element of a desperate bid in Kenya to keep the government running and pay off the country’s foreign creditors.

After 100 Years, Britain’s Two-Party Political System May Be Crumbling

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 00:01
Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party, Reform U.K., is presenting a serious challenge to the governing Labour Party and to the opposition Conservatives.

Trump’s Tariffs Create Fear and Uncertainty at Vietnam’s Factories

NY Times - Sun, 05/04/2025 - 00:00
The threat of 46 percent levies, among the highest for any country, is rattling Vietnam’s factory managers and workers, as well as thousands of exporters.

Voters Approve Incorporation of SpaceX Hub as Starbase, Texas

NY Times - Sat, 05/03/2025 - 22:44
A South Texas community, mostly made up of SpaceX employees, voted 212 to 6 in favor of establishing a new city called Starbase.

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