Trump Reposts Anti-Immigrant Tirade Calling China and India ‘Hellhole’ Places

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 20:42
The president touched off a furor with his post sharing a podcast episode in which the host referred to China and India as “hellhole” places.

Apple Stops Weirdly Storing Data That Let Cops Spy On Signal Chats

SlashDot - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 19:00
Apple has fixed a bug that could cause parts of Signal notifications to remain stored on iPhones even after messages disappeared and the app was deleted. "Affected users concerned about push notifications can update their devices to stop what Apple characterized as 'notifications marked for deletion' that 'could be unexpectedly retained on the device,'" reports Ars Technica. "According to Apple, the push notifications should never have been stored, but a 'logging issue' failed to redact data." From the report: Vulnerable users hoping to evade law enforcement surveillance often use encrypted apps like Signal to communicate sensitive information. That's why users felt blindsided when 404 Media reported that Apple was unexpectedly storing push notifications displaying parts of encrypted messages for up to a month. This occurred even after the message was set to disappear and the app itself was deleted from the device. 404 Media flagged the issue after speaking to multiple people who attended a hearing where the FBI testified that it "was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant's iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device's push notification database." The shocking revelation came in a case that 404 Media noted was "the first time authorities charged people for alleged 'Antifa' activities after President Trump designated the umbrella term a terrorist organization." "We're grateful to Apple for the quick action here, and for understanding and acting on the stakes of this kind of issue," Signal's post said. "It takes an ecosystem to preserve the fundamental human right to private communication." In their post, Signal confirmed that after users update their devices, "no action is needed for this fix to protect Signal users on iOS. Once you install the patch, all inadvertently-preserved notifications will be deleted and no forthcoming notifications will be preserved for deleted applications."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel’s Revenues Soar, Aided by A.I. Boom

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 18:35
The chip maker reported a 7 percent rise to $13.6 billion in its latest quarter, more than $1 billion more than Wall Street expected.

Doug Allan, Polar Cameraman for David Attenborough’s Films, Dies at 74

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 18:16
He was renowned for his skill at capturing candid scenes of penguins, polar bears and other cold-weather creatures — and for his ability to tolerate extreme discomfort.

Warner Bros Shareholders Approve Paramount's $81 Billion Takeover

SlashDot - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 18:00
Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders have approved Paramount Skydance's takeover bid, moving the massive Hollywood merger a step closer to completion. It's not a done deal quite yet, though, as it still faces regulatory scrutiny and fierce opposition from critics who warn it will further concentrate media power. The Associated Press reports: Per a preliminary vote count Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery said the overwhelming majority of its stakeholders voted in support of selling the entire business to Skydance-owned Paramount for $31 a share. Including debt, the deal is valued at nearly $111 billion based on Warner's current outstanding shares. That means Warner-owned HBO Max, cult-favorite titles like "Harry Potter" and even CNN could soon find themselves under the same roof with Paramount's CBS, "Top Gun" and the Paramount+ streaming service. David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a statement that stockholder approval marks "another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction." Paramount added that it looks forward to closing in the coming months, and "realizing the creation of a next-generation media and entertainment company." [...] Meanwhile, Warner shareholders rejected a separate measure Thursday outlining post-merger payments for company executives.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How the Iran War Is Morphing Into a Volatile Standoff in the Strait of Hormuz

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 17:59
The conflict has morphed into a volatile standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, as the economic costs mount and President Trump faces a political backlash at home.

Communication Failures Preceded Deadly Crash at LaGuardia, N.T.S.B. Says

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 17:32
The report focuses on the lack of transponders in the fire trucks, which investigators suggested could have allowed an automatic warning system to alert the controller of an imminent collision.

OpenAI Says Its New GPT-5.5 Model Is More Efficient and Better At Coding

SlashDot - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 17:00
OpenAI released its new GPT-5.5 model today, which the company calls its "smartest and most intuitive to use model yet, and the next step toward a new way of getting work done on a computer." The Verge reports: OpenAI just released GPT-5.4 last month, but says that the new GPT-5.5 "excels" at tasks like writing and debugging code, doing research online, making spreadsheets and documents, and doing that work across different tools. "Instead of carefully managing every step, you can give GPT-5.5 a messy, multi-part task and trust it to plan, use tools, check its work, navigate through ambiguity, and keep going," according to OpenAI. The company also notes that GPT-5.5 will have its "strongest set of safeguards to date" and can use "significantly fewer" tokens to complete tasks in Codex. GPT-5.5 is rolling out on Thursday for Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise ChatGPT tiers and Codex, with GPT-5.5 Pro coming to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trump’s Dreams for a Battleship Led to His Navy Secretary’s Ouster

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 16:51
The Navy secretary, John Phelan, was supposed to deliver the first of the president’s ships by 2028. The timeline was nearly impossible.

New Gene Therapy Enables Children With a Rare Form of Deafness to Hear

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 16:38
The treatment, the first of its kind, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday. “Our baby was born deaf, and now he can hear,” said one parent.

Two Litigation Partners Depart Paul Weiss

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 16:35
Kannon Shanmugam and Masha Hansford are the latest in a string of litigators who have left the influential New York law firm.

Meta to Lay Off 10 Percent of Work Force in A.I. Push

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 16:20
The layoffs affect about 8,000 employees, with Meta also planning to close 6,000 open roles, as the company focuses on artificial intelligence.

Tim Cook Did Wonders for Apple. He Also Did a Lot for Xi Jinping.

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 16:10
He made his company a juggernaut, but he did so by risking America’s economic and political security.

Saudis Withdraw Offer of Millions to Metropolitan Opera

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 16:00
The arrangement would have brought up to $200 million to the Metropolitan Opera, which has suffered a series of financial setbacks.

Meta Is Laying Off 10% of Its Workforce

SlashDot - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 16:00
Meta is reportedly cutting about 10% of its workforce, or roughly 8,000 jobs, while closing thousands of open roles it had intended to fill. "We're doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we're making," said Janelle Gale, Meta's chief people officer. The company had almost 79,000 employees at the start of the year. Quartz reports: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has poured resources into building out AI capabilities, directing spending toward model development, chatbot products, and the engineering talent to support them. Meta set its 2026 capital expenditure guidance at $115 billion to $135 billion, almost double the $72 billion it spent in 2025. Employees have been encouraged to use AI agents internally for tasks such as writing code. The early disclosure, Gale explained, was prompted by the fact that information about the cuts had already made its way into press reports before the company was ready to announce. "I know this is unwelcome news and confirming this puts everyone in an uneasy state, but we feel this is the best path forward, given the circumstances," she wrote. According to the memo, severance for affected workers in the United States will cover 18 months of COBRA health insurance premiums, along with a base pay component of 16 weeks that increases by two weeks for each year of service. Departing employees will have access to job placement assistance and, where applicable, help navigating immigration status. Packages outside the U.S. will vary by country. Meta cut between 10% and 15% of its Reality Labs workforce in January, shut down several VR game studios, and shed about 700 positions across at least five divisions in March.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How Dermatologists Are Helping People Who’ve Been Sex Trafficked

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 15:00
People who are sex trafficked are often branded with names and symbols. Free removal programs are helping them move on.

France Confirms Data Breach At Government Agency That Manages Citizens' IDs

SlashDot - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 15:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The French government agency that handles the issuing and management of citizens' identity documents, including national IDs, passports, and immigration documents, confirmed Wednesday that it experienced a data breach. In an announcement, the Agence Nationale des Titres Securises (ANTS) said the data stolen in the breach could include full names, dates and places of birth, mailing and email addresses, and phone numbers on an undisclosed number of citizens. ANTS said the investigation to determine how the breach happened and its impact is ongoing, and people whose data was affected are being notified. ANTS, which said it detected the attack on April 15, did not specify how many people were affected by the breach. But some reporting suggests millions may have had some of their personal information stolen. According to Bleeping Computer, a hacker has advertised the stolen data on a hacking forum, claiming to have a database with 19 million records. The hacker's forum post referenced the same kind of stolen information as mentioned in ANTS' announcement and was published before ANTS publicly disclosed the breach on April 20.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Touring Africa, Pope Leo Raised His Voice, but Didn’t Like the Echo

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 14:49
On his recent trip abroad, Leo XIV made some of his most forthright comments since becoming pope last year, but grew uncomfortable at how that criticism was interpreted.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s Epic Fight Heads to Court

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 14:40
A jury trial that is set to start on Monday could shift the course of the A.I. race, with Mr. Musk seeking billions of dollars in damages from Mr. Altman’s OpenAI.

And Then There Were None, Trump Administration Edition

NY Times - Thu, 04/23/2026 - 14:17
Normal language is inadequate and precedents are irrelevant when it comes to appraising the senior administration officials of the president’s second term.

Pages

Back to top