Here’s Where the National Fight Over Gerrymandered Maps Stands

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 22:42
With Virginia’s vote on Tuesday, Democrats pulled close to even with Republicans, who may have further cards to play in the race to gain extra House seats.

Here’s What the New Virginia House Map Looks Like

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 21:52
Democrats now hold six of the state’s 11 seats in the U.S. House, but the new map could allow the party to win 10 of them.

With $116 Million Gift, National Gallery Will Send Its Art Around Nation

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 21:34
The large contribution from the billionaire collector Mitchell P. Rales is enabling long-term loans to smaller museums in perpetuity.

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Texas Ten Commandments Law

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 21:04
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said the law does not violate the Constitution. The plaintiffs said they planned to ask the Supreme Court to reverse the decision.

Serial Rapist Pleads Guilty to 2 Murders After Chewed Gum Links DNA to Crimes

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 21:01
Mitchell A. Gaff, 68, acknowledged killing two women who were sexually assaulted before being found dead in their Washington State apartments in the 1980s.

SpaceX Strikes Deal With Cursor for $60 Billion

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 20:22
The potential acquisition comes as Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker, which has been emphasizing artificial intelligence, is preparing to go public.

Justice Dept. Charges Prominent Civil Rights Group With Financial Crimes

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 20:06
Republicans have accused the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is best known for investigating hate groups, of unfairly targeting conservative and Christian organizations.

Proposed Lifetime Smoking Ban to Become Law in Britain

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 19:38
The proposal, which was approved by Parliament on Tuesday, will ban the supply or sale of tobacco products to anyone born in 2009 or after, permanently.

A.I. ‘Hallucinations’ Created Errors in Court Filing, Top Law Firm Says

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 19:32
Sullivan & Cromwell apologized for submitting a court document that had fake citations created by artificial intelligence.

What I Saw Crossing Into South Lebanon

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 19:27
Our visual journalist David Guttenfelder traveled with displaced people returning to their homes in southern Lebanon, as a cease-fire paused the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Florida Launches Criminal Investigation Into ChatGPT Over School Shooting

SlashDot - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 19:00
Florida's attorney general has launched a criminal investigation into OpenAI over allegations that the accused gunman in a shooting at Florida State University last year used ChatGPT to help plan the attack. OpenAI says the chatbot is "not responsible for this terrible crime" and only provided factual information available from public sources. NPR reports: The Republican attorney general, James Uthmeier, said at a press conference in Tampa on Tuesday that accused gunman Phoenix Ikner consulted ChatGPT for advice before the shooting, including what type of gun to use, what ammunition went with it, and what time to go to campus to encounter more people, according to an initial review of Ikner's chat logs. "My prosecutors have looked at this and they've told me, if it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder," Uthmeier said. "We cannot have AI bots that are advising people on how to kill others." Uthmeier's office is issuing subpoenas to OpenAI seeking information about its policies and internal training materials related to user threats of harm and how it cooperates with and reports crimes to law enforcement, dating back to March 2024. At the press conference, Uthmeier acknowledged the investigation is entering into uncharted territory and is uncertain about whether OpenAI has criminal liability. "We are going to look at who knew what, designed what, or should have done what," he said. "And if it is clear that individuals knew that this type of dangerous behavior might take place, that these types of unfortunate, tragic events might take place, and nevertheless still turned to profit, still allowed this business to operate, then people need to be held accountable." [...] Ikner, 21, is facing multiple charges of murder and attempted murder for the April 2025 shooting near the student union on FSU's Tallahassee campus, where he was a student at the time. His trial is set to begin on Oct. 19. According to court filings, more than 200 AI messages have been entered into evidence in the case.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tucker Carlson Says He Is ‘Tormented’ by His Past Support for Trump

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 18:54
“I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people,” said the conservative commentator, who has broken sharply with the president over the war with Iran.

Mozilla Uses Anthropic's Mythos To Fix 271 Bugs In Firefox

SlashDot - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 18:00
BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla says it used an early version of Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview to comb through Firefox's code, and the results were hard to ignore. In Firefox 150, the team fixed 271 vulnerabilities identified during this effort, a number that would have been unthinkable not long ago. Instead of relying only on fuzzing tools or human review, the AI was able to reason through code and surface issues that typically require highly specialized expertise. The bigger implication is less about one release and more about where this is heading. Security has long favored attackers, since they only need to find a single flaw while defenders have to protect everything. If AI can scale vulnerability discovery for defenders, that dynamic could start to shift. It does not mean zero days disappear overnight, but it suggests a future where bugs are found and fixed faster than attackers can weaponize them. "Computers were completely incapable of doing this a few months ago, and now they excel at it," says Mozilla in a blog post. "We have many years of experience picking apart the work of the world's best security researchers, and Mythos Preview is every bit as capable. So far we've found no category or complexity of vulnerability that humans can find that this model can't." The company concluded: "The defects are finite, and we are entering a world where we can finally find them all."

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How Tim Cook’s Tech Uniform Helped Make Apple Trillions

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 17:39
The unassuming look of the outgoing Apple chief executive was an asset, as he navigated pop culture, the president and following Steve Jobs.

Trump Is Said to Be in Talks to Send Afghans Who Aided U.S. Forces to Congo

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 17:36
A U.S. aid worker said that the Afghans, who were evacuated to Qatar, would face a choice between moving to the Democratic Republic of Congo and living under the Taliban.

D.H.S. Will Run Out of Money for Paychecks in May, Secretary Says

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 17:17
The issue threatens to renew chaos at airports as lawmakers remain divided over a deal to end the two-month shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

RFK Jr. Refused to Commit to Backing New CDC Director on Vaccines

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 17:05
In a tense congressional hearing, the health secretary also said he bore no responsibility for the measles outbreak in the United States.

How to Save Academia

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 17:00
A Yale report offers some honest self-reflection on where the university went wrong.

How Israel Lost Its Way and How Trump Can Save Lebanon

NY Times - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 17:00
The smashing of a statue of Jesus by an Israeli soldier and the founding of four provocative settlements together show Israel’s thoughtless path forward.

Framework Laptop 13 Pro Is a Major Overhaul For the Modular, Upgradeable Laptop

SlashDot - Tue, 04/21/2026 - 17:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Framework has been selling and shipping its modular, repairable, upgradable Laptop 13 for five years now, and in that time, it has released six distinct versions of its system board, each using fresh versions of Intel and AMD processors (seven versions, if you count this RISC-V one). The laptop around those components has gradually gotten better, too. Over the years, Framework has added higher-resolution screens in both matte and glossy finishes, a slightly larger battery, and other tweaked components that refine the original design. But so far, all of those parts have been totally interchangeable, and the fundamentals of the Laptop 13 design haven't changed much. That changes today with the Framework Laptop 13 Pro, which, despite its name, is less an offshoot of the original Laptop 13 and closer to a ground-up redesign. It includes new Core Ultra Series 3 chips (codenamed Panther Lake), Framework's first touchscreen, a new black aluminum color option, a larger battery, and other significant changes. And while it sacrifices some component compatibility with the original Laptop 13, displays and motherboards remain interchangeable, so Framework Laptop owners can buy the new Core Ultra board and owners of older Framework Laptop boards can pop one into a Pro to benefit from the new battery and screen. At 1.4kg (about 3 pounds), the Laptop 13 Pro is slightly heavier than the Laptop 13's 1.3kg, but it still stacks up well against the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro (1.55kg, or 3.4 pounds). The Framework Laptop Pro will start at $1,199 for a DIY edition with a Core Ultra 5 325 processor, and no RAM, SSD, or operating system. A prebuilt version with Ubuntu Linux installed will start at $1,499, and Windows 11 will cost another $100 on top of that. A Core Ultra X7 358H version starts at $1,599 for a DIY edition, and a "limited batch" Core Ultra X9 388H version starts at $1,799. A bare motherboard with the Core Ultra 5 325 starts at $449, while a Core Ultra X7 358H board will cost $799. Pre-orders are available now, and begin shipping in June.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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