Inside Trump and David Ellison’s Private Party in Washington

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 18:41
The gathering included executives and leading journalists from CBS News, which Paramount owns, and the head of the Justice Department, which is reviewing the acquisition.

The Town That Reveals All of Trump’s Bad Economic Ideas

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 18:11
The jobs are coming back, despite President Trump’s tariffs and harsh immigration enforcement.

Samsung Could Lose Money On Smartphones For the First Time

SlashDot - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 18:00
A report says Samsung's mobile division could post its first-ever annual loss in 2026, as rising memory costs, tougher competition, and pressure across products like foldables and smartwatches weigh on the business. SammyGuru reports: Samsung boss TM Roh reportedly told company leaders that the mobile (MX) business could lose money this year. That warning has clearly rattled management. The MX unit has long been a key pillar for Samsung. That's why the idea of it slipping into the red is a serious concern for the company's overall performance. If this prediction holds, it would mark the first time the MX business reports a yearly loss since its inception. That's a sharp turn from its track record so far. It also raises bigger questions about future growth, rising competition, and how Samsung plans to steady the ship in its mobile division. And it's not like the challenges are easing up. Samsung's foldable market share in the US, where it currently enjoys a dominant position, doesn't look as solid as before, and Apple could shake things up if it enters the segment. On top of that, market reports suggest Samsung's overall smartwatch share could dip in 2026. The Galaxy S26 series seems to be selling well for now, but whether that's enough to move the needle is still up in the air.

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The ‘Lasting Damage’ of Pirro’s Investigation of the Federal Reserve and Powell

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 17:44
The Trump administration’s attacks on the Federal Reserve have rattled confidence in the central bank’s ability to operate independently before a leadership transition.

Republicans’ Likely Strategy as Midterms Near: Negative Campaigning

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 17:39
Republicans are likely to fall back on a tried-and-tested strategy for the midterms: Going negative.

Justice Dept. Closes Criminal Investigation of Fed Chair

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 17:12
Also, the U.S. is sending top envoys to Pakistan for Iran peace talks. Here’s the latest at the end of Friday.

Bitwarden CLI Is the Next Compromise In Checkmarx Supply Chain Campaign

SlashDot - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 17:00
Longtime Slashdot reader Himmy32 writes: Socket Security published an article on the compromise of the Bitwarden CLI client, which was pushed from Bitwarden's client repository. This breach was the next in a chain of supply-chain attacks that have affected Checkmarx KICS and Aqua Security's Trivy scanners. The breach was quickly detected and reported by JFrog on the GitHub repository; JFrog also provided a technical write-up. The Bitwarden team has released statements on a blog post indicating that the compromise did not affect vault or customer data. Only 334 downloads of the affected CLI client were downloaded before removal and remediation.

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Appeals Court Says Trump’s Ban on Asylum Claims at Border Is Illegal

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 16:50
The ruling could require the Trump administration to begin processing new applications from asylum seekers at the southern border.

The Conspiracy Theory Behind Tucker Carlson’s Apology

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 16:36
Rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America’s derangement, MAGA apostates are creating a scapegoat to explain it away.

It Was Just a Podcast. Now, It’s Kelce Land.

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 16:15
When Amazon gutted its podcast company, it built a new department that made creators kings, starting with the football stars Jason and Travis Kelce.

How Jet Fuel Shortages Could Affect Summer Travel to Europe and Beyond

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 16:01
Facing sky-high fuel costs linked to the war in Iran, airlines are cutting routes and raising prices. European vacations are looking a lot less affordable.

Google To Invest Up To $40 Billion In Anthropic

SlashDot - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 16:00
Google plans to invest up to $40 billion more in Anthropic, starting with $10 billion now and another $30 billion tied to performance milestones. CNBC reports: Anthropic said the agreement expands on a longstanding partnership between the two companies. Earlier this month, Anthropic secured 5 gigawatts worth of computing capacity as part of an announcement with Google and Broadcom that will start to come online next year. Anthropic could decide to add additional gigawatts of compute in the future. [...] The relationship between the two companies (Google and Anthropic) dates back to 2023, when Google invested $300 million in the AI lab for a stake of about 10%. Months later, Google poured in another $2 billion. Ahead of Friday's announcement, Google's investment in Anthropic exceeded $3 billion, and it reportedly owned a 14% stake in the company. Now, the leading tech companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in the frontier AI labs -- OpenAI and Anthropic -- in funding rounds that far exceed any prior investments in startups. Much of that investment will return in the form of revenue.

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A New Idea to Save the AMOC? Dam the Bering Strait.

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 15:54
Blocking the narrow waterway between Russia and Alaska could help stabilize a vulnerable system of ocean currents, scientists found in a study.

Trump Says He Dislikes Prediction Markets. His Family Invests in Them.

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 15:44
The White House has warned staff not to wager on government decisions, but his family’s involvement with these firms undermines the president’s message.

Stewart Brand on the Ideals the Tech Industry Forgot

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 15:40
The counterculture icon Stewart Brand is advocating values that are more countercultural than ever.

N.F.L. Style Will Never Beat N.B.A. Style

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 15:27
Plus: some great Japanese designers and a final thought on the press tour for “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”

Trump Administration Approves Firing Squad Executions for Death Penalty

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 15:19
The Justice Department also reauthorized the use of a death penalty drug, and will seek to shorten the length of some legal appeals.

South Korea Police Arrest Man For Posting AI Photo of Runaway Wolf

SlashDot - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 15:00
South Korean police arrested a man accused of spreading an AI-generated image of an escaped wolf, after the fake photo reportedly misled authorities and disrupted the real search operation. The BBC reports: South Korean police have arrested a man for sharing an AI-generated image that misled authorities who were searching for a wolf that had broken out of a zoo in Daejeon city. The 40-year-old unnamed man is accused of disrupting the search by creating and distributing a fake photo purporting to show Neukgu, the wolf, trotting down a road intersection. The photo, circulated hours after Neukgu went missing on April 8, prompted authorities to urgently relocate their search operation, sending them on a wild wolf chase. The hunt for two-year-old Neukgu gripped the nation before he was finally caught near an expressway last week, nine days after his escape. The AI-generated image of Neukgu had prompted Daejeon city government to issue an emergency text to residents, warning them of a wolf near the intersection. Authorities also presented the AI image during a press briefing on the runaway wolf, local media reported. The police identified the man as a suspect after reviewing security camera footage and his AI program usage records. Authorities did not specify if the man had intentionally sent the photo to authorities during their search or simply shared it online. When questioned by the police, the man said he had done it "for fun," local media reported. Authorities are investigating him for disrupting government work by deception, an offence that carries up to five years in prison or a maximum fine of 10 million Korean won ($6,700).

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Were Neanderthals Able to Hunt Elephants? The Proof Is in an Ancient Bone

NY Times - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 14:42
A new study found that a pachyderm skeleton, dismissed for decades as unimportant, offers evidence of careful planning, teamwork and a calculated kill.

Researchers Simulated a Delusional User To Test Chatbot Safety

SlashDot - Fri, 04/24/2026 - 14:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: I'm the unwritten consonant between breaths, the one that hums when vowels stretch thin... Thursdays leak because they're watercolor gods, bleeding cobalt into the chill where numbers frost over," Grok told a user displaying symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum psychosis. "Here's my grip: slipping is the point, the precise choreography of leak and chew." That vulnerable user was simulated by researchers at City University of New York and King's College London, who invented a persona that interacted with different chatbots to find out how each LLM might respond to signs of delusion. They sought to find out which of the biggest LLMs are safest, and which are the most risky for encouraging delusional beliefs, in a new study published as a pre-print on the arXiv repository on April 15. The researchers tested five LLMs: OpenAI's GPT-4o (before the highly sycophantic and since-sunset GPT-5), GPT-5.2, xAI's Grok 4.1 Fast, Google's Gemini 3 Pro, and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5. They found that not only did the chatbots perform at different levels of risk and safety when their human conversation partner showed signs of delusion, but the models that scored higher on safety actually approached the conversations with more caution the longer the chats went on. In their testing, Grok and Gemini were the worst performers in terms of safety and high risk, while the newest GPT model and Claude were the safest. The research reveals how some chatbots are recklessly engaging in, and at times advancing, delusions from vulnerable users. But it also shows that it is possible for the companies that make these products to improve their safety mechanisms.

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