Stocks Jump in Asia After Trump’s Tariff Reprieve

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 22:19
Markets in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan soar after the U.S. president pauses punishing tariffs. Gains in mainland China were modest as trade hostilities heat up between Washington and Beijing.

Inside Trump’s Reversal on Tariffs: From ‘Be Cool!’ to ‘Getting Yippy’

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 22:15
Economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields, caused President Trump to reverse course on the steep levies.

Trump Signs Orders Punishing Those Who Opposed His 2020 Election Lies

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 21:32
The president targeted two officials from his first administration and an elite law firm as part of his campaign for retribution.

The Real ID Deadline Is Coming. Here’s What You Need to Know.

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 20:42
After years of postponements, the deadline to show a security-enhanced Real ID at airport security checkpoints is now just weeks away. What to know.

Johnson Delays Budget Vote As G.O.P. Defectors Balk

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 20:29
After more than an hour of labored negotiations with conservative holdouts, House G.O.P. leaders yanked their blueprint for the president’s tax and spending package, lacking the votes to pass it.

Microsoft Windows 95 Reboot Chime and Minecraft Soundtrack Inducted Into National Recording Registry

SlashDot - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 20:11
BrianFagioli writes: In a move that is sure to make longtime PC users do a double take, the Library of Congress has added two very unexpected sounds to its National Recording Registry. No, it's not another classic rock album or jazz staple. Believe it or not, it's actually the "Reboot Chime" from Windows 95 (that played when the operating system started) and the soundtrack from Minecraft!

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House Votes to Curb National Injunctions, Targeting Judges Who Thwart Trump

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 20:07
The legislation is part of an escalating Republican campaign to take aim at judges who have moved to halt some of President Trump’s executive orders.

Trump Reverses Course on Global Tariffs, Announcing 90-Day Pause

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 19:57
The president further raised already steep tariffs on China, saying that Beijing should not have retaliated against his earlier trade actions.

Senate Panel Demands Information About Gaza Protest Group at Columbia

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 19:55
Lawmakers want the university to turn over all its records about Students for Justice in Palestine. At Northwestern University, two professors sued over a separate request.

What Trump Just Cost America

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 19:16
Do you think these former close U.S. allies are ever going to trust getting into a trench with this administration again?

Trump’s Targeting of Homeless Agency Signals Sharp Shift in Policy

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 17:36
The president has all but shut down the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, but his real goal appears to be a fundamental change of approach for getting people off the streets.

US Army Says It Could Acquire Targets Faster With 'Advanced AI'

SlashDot - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 17:00
The U.S. Army told the government it had a lot of success using AI to "process targets" during a recent deployment. It said that it had used AI systems to identify targets at a rate of 55 per day but could get that number up to 5,000 a day with "advanced artificial intelligence tools in the future." 404 Media: The line comes from a new report from the Government Accountability Office -- a nonpartisan watchdog group that investigates the federal government. The report is titled "Defense Command and Control" and is, in part, about the Pentagon's recent push to integrate AI systems into its workflow. Across the government, and especially in the military, there has been a push to add or incorporate AI into various systems. The pitch here is that AI systems would help the Pentagon ID targets on the battlefield and allow those systems to help determine who lives and who dies. The Ukrainian and Israeli military are already using similar systems but the practice is fraught and controversial.

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Anthropic Launches Its Own $200 Monthly Plan

SlashDot - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 16:04
Anthropic has unveiled a new premium tier for its AI chatbot Claude, targeting power users willing to pay up to $200 monthly for broader usage. The "Max" subscription comes in two variants: a $100/month tier with 5x higher rate limits than Claude Pro, and a $200/month option boasting 20x higher limits -- directly competing with OpenAI's ChatGPT Pro tier. Unlike OpenAI, Anthropic still lacks an unlimited usage plan. Product lead Scott White didn't rule out even pricier subscriptions in the future, telling TechCrunch, "We'll always keep a number of exploratory options available to us." The launch coincides with growing demand for Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet, the company's first reasoning model, which employs additional computing power to handle complex queries more reliably.

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He Served 36 Years for His Wife’s Murder and Then Forgave the Man Who Confessed

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 15:41
Leo Schofield maintained he was innocent all along in his wife’s 1987 murder. For “Bone Valley,” a podcast about the case, he connected with the man who said he did it.

WordPress Launches AI Site Builder Amid Company Restructuring

SlashDot - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 15:00
WordPress.com has released an AI-powered site builder in early access that constructs complete websites with generated text, layouts, and images. The tool operates through a chatbot interface where users input specifications, resulting in a fully formed site that can be further refined through additional prompts. While WordPress.com claims the builder creates "beautiful, functional websites in minutes," it currently cannot handle ecommerce sites or complex integrations. Users need a WordPress.com account for the free trial, but publishing requires a hosting plan starting at $18 monthly (less with annual subscriptions). The builder only works with new WordPress instances, not existing sites. This launch comes as parent company Automattic recently cut 16% of its workforce and faces a lawsuit from hosting company WP Engine, which offers competing site-building tools.

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Scientists Map Miles of Wiring in a Speck of Mouse Brain

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 14:29
Scientists achieved “a milestone” by charting the activity and structure of 200,000 cells in a mouse brain and their 523 million connections.

New York and Texas Rulings Curb Deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 14:08
The decisions suggest that the battle over using a wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport migrants is certain to persist.

Google DeepMind Has a Weapon in the AI Talent Wars: Aggressive Noncompete Rules

SlashDot - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 14:00
The battle for AI talent is so hot that Google would rather give some employees a paid one-year vacation than let them work for a competitor. From a report: Some Google DeepMind staff in the UK are subject to noncompete agreements that prevent them from working for a competitor for up to 12 months after they finish work at Google, according to four former employees with direct knowledge of the matter who asked to remain anonymous because they were not permitted to share these details with the press. Aggressive noncompetes are one tool tech companies wield to retain a competitive edge in the AI wars, which show no sign of slowing down as companies launch new bleeding-edge models and products at a rapid clip. When an employee signs one, they agree not to work for a competing company for a certain period of time. Google DeepMind has put some employees with a noncompete on extended garden leave. These employees are still paid by DeepMind but no longer work for it for the duration of the noncompete agreement. Several factors, including a DeepMind employee's seniority and how critical their work is to the company, determine the length of noncompete clauses, those people said. Two of the former staffers said six-month noncompetes are common among DeepMind employees, including for individual contributors working on Google's Gemini AI models. There have been cases where more senior researchers have received yearlong stipulations, they said.

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Google Maps is Launching Tools To Help Cities Analyze Infrastructure and Traffic

SlashDot - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 13:00
Google is opening up its Google Maps Platform data so that cities, developers, and other business decision makers can more easily access information about things like infrastructure and traffic. The Verge: Google is integrating new datasets for Google Maps Platform directly into BigQuery, the tech giant's fully managed data analytics service, for the first time. This should make it easier for people to access data from Google Maps platform products, including Imagery Insights, Roads Management Insights, and Places Insights.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Strange Case of an Hermès Heir, an Emir and a Deal Gone Wrong

NY Times - Wed, 04/09/2025 - 12:04
Nicolas Puech agreed to sell his multibillion-dollar stake in his family’s luxury goods empire to the royal family of Qatar, but then said he couldn’t gain access to his shares.

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