Trump Heads to the Middle East Focused on Business Deals, Not Diplomacy

NY Times - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:42
President Trump has always viewed the presidency as a worldwide hunt for deals. And there is no better place for that than the Gulf, where a few men wield absolute authority over vast wealth.

Pope Leo XIV May Be a Stern Teacher for American Catholics

NY Times - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 01:00
Political partisanship is likely to become an even more untenable position for American Catholics than it already is.

Serbia Is Showing America What’s Possible

NY Times - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 01:00
Serbian protesters are bravely combating a powerful autocratic government.

Videogame's Players Launch Boycott Over Bugs, Story Changes, Monetization

SlashDot - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 00:34
It's been a mobile-only game for decades. Then a little more than a week ago Infinity Nikkireleased its 1.5 update (which introduced multiplayer and customization options) and launched the game on Steam. But it "didn't go over as planned," writes the worker-owned gaming site Aftermath, citing some very negative reactions on Reddit. (Some players say that in response the game's publisher is now even censoring the word "boycott" on its official forums and community spaces...) Infinity Nikki players were immediately incensed by a bevy of bugs and general game instability, and made even more angry by several baffling changes to both the story and its monetization structure... Players globally are vowing to stay off the game until Infold Games addresses their concerns, including at least one Infinity Nikki creator who is part of the game's partner program... [T]he Chinese Infinity Nikki community — as well as others — has been flooding Steam with negative reviews of the game... [T]he complaints are also impacting Infinity Nikki's review score on the Google Play Store... The company said it's working to fix the patch's performance issues, which have caused game-breaking bugs for some players.... [T]he Infinity Nikki team also gave players some free currency, but there's been problems there, too: Players say Infold had a bug in this distribution, which awarded players too much free currency. Instead of letting players keep that — it was Infold's mistake, after all — they deducted the currency, some of which players had already spent, putting them in the negative. But the community is looking for more from the studio; it wants an acknowledgement of the "dumpster fire" of a situation, as one Infinity Nikki player told Aftermath, but also wants some of the biggest problems reversed... Beyond the problematic monetization strategy, players Aftermath spoke with said they're also pissed off at a major change to the start of the game... Infold Games removed the game's original start with the update; the new intro drops players into Infinity Nikki with little context and a new, unexplained character who is supposed to be a guide as Nikki is dropped into intergalactic limbo. While the spend-to-upgrade-your-character model has always been inherently predatory, as one player put it, the new update pushed the system "much too far for a lot of players," according to the article — "something made more egregious by the numerous bugs and strange gameplay changes." The article now describes some players as "upset that the trust they've given Infold Games thus far has been broken." "Infold Games has not responded to a request for comment."

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Rodrigo Duterte Is Expected to Again Become Mayor of Davao City

NY Times - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 00:03
Former President Rodrigo Duterte, who faces international court charges of crimes against humanity, remains very popular at home.

Can More Military Spending Revive an Economy? This British Town Hopes So.

NY Times - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 00:01
Britain is spending billions of pounds more on defense, but wants the money to go beyond nuclear submarines to improve local jobs and prosperity. Barrow-in-Furness may be the model.

How a Quiet American Cardinal Became Pope

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 23:34
At a conclave with many new members, a swift, stunning consensus built around an unknown to many outside of the church.

Johnny Rodriguez, Country Music Star, Dies at 73

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 22:32
He was best known for the 1970s hits “I Just Can’t Get Her Out of My Mind” and “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico,” and as the first popular Mexican American country artist.

Asia Stocks Rise on Hope for Lower Tariffs After U.S.-China Talks

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 21:51
Investors were optimistic after American officials touted progress in trade negotiations over the weekend, though details had yet to be released.

Apple's iPhone Plans for 2027: Foldable, or Glass and Curved. (Plus Smart Glasses, Tabletop Robot)

SlashDot - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 21:46
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge: This morning, while summarizing an Apple "product blitz" he expects for 2027, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter that Apple is planning a "mostly glass, curved iPhone" with no display cutouts for that year, which happens to be the iPhone's 20th anniversary... [T]he closest hints are probably in Apple patents revealed over the years, like one from 2019 that describes a phone encased in glass that "forms a continuous loop" around the device. Apart from a changing iPhone, Gurman describes what sounds like a big year for Apple. He reiterates past reports that the first foldable iPhone should be out by 2027, and that the company's first smart glasses competitor to Meta Ray-Bans will be along that year. So will those rumored camera-equipped AirPods and Apple Watches, he says. Gurman also suggests that Apple's home robot — a tabletop robot that features "an AI assistant with its own personality" — will come in 2027... Finally, Gurman writes that by 2027 Apple could finally ship an LLM-powered Siri and may have created new chips for its server-side AI processing. Earlier this week Bloomberg reported that Apple is also "actively looking at" revamping the Safari web browser on its devices "to focus on AI-powered search engines." (Apple's senior VP of services "noted that searches on Safari dipped for the first time last month, which he attributed to people using AI.")

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Trump Is Poised to Accept a Luxury 747 From Qatar for Use as Air Force One

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 20:54
The plan raises substantial ethical issues, given the immense value of the lavishly appointed plane and that Mr. Trump intends to take ownership of it after he leaves office.

Trump Plan Would Tie Some Drug Prices to What Peer Nations Pay

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 20:47
The president announced an executive order aimed at lowering U.S. drug costs, revisiting an idea that was blocked in court during his first term.

Why Patients Are Being Forced to Switch to a 2nd-Choice Obesity Drug

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 20:08
CVS Caremark decided to stop offering Zepbound in favor of Wegovy for weight loss. It’s the latest example of limits imposed by insurance that disrupt treatments for patients.

Families of Sept. 11 Victims Urge Lutnick to Help Extradite Saudi National

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 19:58
The letter comes as the commerce secretary plans to accompany President Trump to Saudi Arabia as part of an upcoming trip to the Middle East.

‘Viva Papa Leo!’ At U.S. Masses, Dawn of Homegrown Pope Brings an Air of Electricity.

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 19:55
In Chicago, New Orleans and beyond, elated worshipers and priests celebrated their immediate sense of connection with Pope Leo.

Is the California Dream a Mirage?

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 19:54
The state is confronting what officials say is an unprecedented confluence of forces that will test its long record of enduring catastrophes, natural and otherwise.

Hamas Says It Will Release Its Last American Hostage

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 19:29
The announcement, which did not say when the hostage, Edan Alexander, would be set free, came as President Trump planned to visit the region.

Researchers Just Solved a Big, 70-Year-Old Problem for Fusion Energy

SlashDot - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 19:26
Fusion energy "took one step closer to reality," announced the University of Texas at Austin, as their researchers joined with a team from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Type One Energy Group and "solved a longstanding problem in the field" — how to contain high-energy particles inside fusion reactors. When high-energy alpha particles leak from a reactor, that prevents the plasma from getting hot and dense enough to sustain the fusion reaction. To prevent them from leaking, engineers design elaborate magnetic confinement systems, but there are often holes in the magnetic field, and a tremendous amount of computational time is required to predict their locations and eliminate them. In their paper published in Physical Review Letters, the research team describes having discovered a shortcut that can help engineers design leak-proof magnetic confinement systems 10 times as fast as the gold standard method, without sacrificing accuracy... "What's most exciting is that we're solving something that's been an open problem for almost 70 years," said Josh Burby, assistant professor of physics at UT and first author of the paper. "It's a paradigm shift in how we design these reactors...." This new method also can help with a similar but different problem in another popular magnetic fusion reactor design called a tokamak. In that design, there's a problem with runaway electrons — high-energy electrons that can punch a hole in the surrounding walls. This new method can help identify holes in the magnetic field where these electrons might leak.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over 3,200 Cursor Users Infected by Malicious Credential-Stealing npm Packages

SlashDot - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 18:26
Cybersecurity researchers have flagged three malicious npm packages that target the macOS version of AI-powered code-editing tool Cursor, reports The Hacker News: "Disguised as developer tools offering 'the cheapest Cursor API,' these packages steal user credentials, fetch an encrypted payload from threat actor-controlled infrastructure, overwrite Cursor's main.js file, and disable auto-updates to maintain persistence," Socket researcher Kirill Boychenko said. All three packages continue to be available for download from the npm registry. "Aiide-cur" was first published on February 14, 2025... In total, the three packages have been downloaded over 3,200 times to date.... The findings point to an emerging trend where threat actors are using rogue npm packages as a way to introduce malicious modifications to other legitimate libraries or software already installed on developer systems... "By operating inside a legitimate parent process — an IDE or shared library — the malicious logic inherits the application's trust, maintains persistence even after the offending package is removed, and automatically gains whatever privileges that software holds, from API tokens and signing keys to outbound network access," Socket told The Hacker News. "This campaign highlights a growing supply chain threat, with threat actors increasingly using malicious patches to compromise trusted local software," Boychenko said. The npm packages "restart the application so that the patched code takes effect," letting the threat actor "execute arbitrary code within the context of the platform."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Flights Could Be Disrupted Across U.S., Transportation Secretary Warns

NY Times - Sun, 05/11/2025 - 18:18
After a series of problems at Newark Liberty International Airport, the secretary, Sean Duffy, said he would meet with airline leaders on Wednesday to plan to scale back Newark flights.

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