In Colombia, a Right-Wing Wildcard Rises

NY Times - Tue, 06/23/2026 - 01:00
A right-wing victory in Latin America’s third-largest country could ripple across the region.

Trump’s Iran Debacle Could Be a Gift for America

NY Times - Tue, 06/23/2026 - 01:00
There is at least a chance that America will not return to war with Iran, but find a way to turn the page on 47 years of animosity and confrontation.

Those British Strawberries Are Being Picked by Central Asian Workers

NY Times - Tue, 06/23/2026 - 00:01
Ten years after Brexit, most seasonal workers in Britain are from countries such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Without them, agricultural chiefs say, many farms would fail.

Brexit Has Cost the UK Growth, Analysts Say, in the Decade Since the Vote

NY Times - Tue, 06/23/2026 - 00:00
Citing lower trade and investment, analysts broadly agree that Britain’s economy is smaller than it would have been if the country had stayed in the E.U.

GM Installs Robots At Flagship EV Factory After Laying Off 1,300 Workers

SlashDot - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 23:30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of new robot arms have been installed at General Motors' flagship electric vehicle factory in Detroit -- even as 1,300 workers remain out of work following what was supposed to be a temporary layoff. The latest automation push has spurred union pushback over a potentially existential issue for automakers and their workers. General Motors installed approximately 50 robot arms at GM's Factory Zero plant in Detroit, Michigan, according to reporting by Crain's Detroit Business. Made by the Japanese robotics company FANUC, the robots are designed to help attach various components to vehicles during the assembly line process. But leaders at United Auto Workers (UAW), the primary US union for autoworkers, reacted with anger to the new robotic presence, given how GM has not yet called back any of the workers affected by supposedly temporary layoffs in March. More than 1,000 union members are still "laid off indefinitely," James Cotton, president of UAW Local 22, told The Detroit News. He said that the company could bring some of those members back to work instead of installing the 50 robots. The temporary layoffs were preceded by permanent layoffs involving another 1,200 workers at GM's Factory Zero in October 2025. Many automakers, including Stellantis NV and Ford Motor Company, have deployed assembly-line robots, such as Fanuc robot arms, as they push to automate more of their US operations. Hyundai Motor Company plans to deploy Atlas humanoid robots made by Boston Dynamics -- which Hyundai acquired in 2020 -- to start working in the automaker's flagship EV facility in Georgia by 2028. "Technological development has the capability of making work safer for the working class and enabling workers to have a shorter work week without losing pay," said Andrew Bergman, a Local 22 member and union organizer who was among those laid off by GM. "But in the bosses' and billionaires' hands it's used to pad profits and lay off workers."

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Dark Smoke in a Sunny Place: Neighbors of L.A. Fire Struggle for Breath

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 22:52
The plume from the stubborn blaze in a cold-storage facility has dissipated, but people in the Boyle Heights neighborhood say they are in a toxic miasma.

As Vance Leads Iran Negotiations, Trump Creates Disruptions in His Path

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 22:00
Vice President JD Vance is in a politically precarious spot.

Trump on the Shabby Condition of the Reflecting Pool: Not My Fault

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 21:45
President Trump said the blooms of green algae and the peeling polyurethane had nothing to do with the rushed $16.4 million makeover he had ordered.

Judge Blocks Bans on Using Food Stamps for Sugary Drinks and Candy

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 21:16
A federal judge ruled that the Agriculture Department lacked the authority to approve state waivers that restrict what SNAP participants can buy with their benefits.

Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, Architect of Cuba’s Surveillance State, Dies at 94

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 20:34
Considered the country’s most powerful leader after the Castro brothers, he was the first director of the Interior Ministry, keeping a close eye on dissent.

Looking Back on the U.S.A.’s Many Founders, 250 Years In

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 19:54
In the past 50 years, the way we tell the story of the Revolution has become dramatically more complex. Can it still inspire us all?

Microsoft Accidentally Breaks Replying To an Email On Outlook

SlashDot - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 19:00
Microsoft has accidentally introduced a bug in Outlook for Mac that omits the original message from email replies, making it difficult for recipients to follow conversation history. Until Microsoft releases a fix, its suggested workaround is to roll back from version 16.110 and disable automatic updates, which is "great for users in full control of their devices -- not so good for anyone with a managed device," notes The Register. "Administrators with fleets of Macs running Outlook should brace for helpdesk tickets." From the report: In some instances, having a user copy and paste the salient bits of the email they are responding to might not be such a bad thing. We've all had emails that required epic amounts of scrolling to find what started the conversation, so forcing users to think about what they actually need to include is no bad thing. However, disrupting user workflows without warning -- well, that is undoubtedly a bad thing. This is, after all, one of the most basic things an email client needs to do, so shipping a product with a bug that breaks this functionality says more about Microsoft's approach to quality than anything else.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following User Outcry, AMD Reinstates Memory Encryption In Consumer CPUs

SlashDot - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 18:00
Last week, AMD was found to have stripped memory encryption from its consumer CPUs without any warning or notice. Now, following a wave of backlash on social media, the chipmaker has now reinstated the protection, though it still hasn't explained why the safeguard was disabled in the first place. Ars Technica reports: Following the revelation, social media was deluged by comments from AMD consumers decrying the move. They noted that AMD's quiet removal of TSME after supporting it for so long seemed underhanded. The move came solely as a result of firmware changes made in a recent update. With no physical changes required to silicon, continued support was largely, if not purely, a matter of will rather than a necessity required by changes to hardware. The critics called on AMD to reverse the move. Over the weekend, AMD said it planned to do just that in a firmware update scheduled for release next month. More often than not, the chipmaker refers to TSME as Memory Guard. "Regarding certain non-PRO Ryzen 9000-series desktop processors, a BIOS option to enable Memory Guard was previously available but was removed in a recent update," AMD said in an email. "Based on valuable community feedback, we will reinstate this option in an upcoming BIOS release in July." The company has yet to explain why it removed the protection. Critics speculate that AMD dropped it in an attempt to steer customers toward more costly CPUs. It's possible, though, that there were less nefarious reasons, such as the difficulty of continued support as chip designs changed. Another possibility is that AMD made the move for performance reasons. Encrypting and decrypting data in memory creates latency. Slowdowns are the enemy of gamers, one of the more popular customer segments using the 9000-line of Ryzen processors. Since many gamers already voluntarily disabled TSME and had little need for it in the first place, AMD may not have considered the change of much consequence.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Why Older People Are Divorcing More Than They Used To

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 17:55
Rates of gray divorce have risen sharply over the past few decades — and experts have a few theories as to why.

Federal Citizenship Data Tool Cannot Be Used to Screen Voters, Judge Rules

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 17:33
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s providing federal data to states to check and purge their voter rolls violated several laws prohibiting the disclosure.

Keir Starmer Resigns as UK Prime Minister

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 17:31
His departure in the coming weeks clears a path for Andy Burnham, a popular Labour Party mayor, to become the country’s seventh prime minister in a decade.

U.S. Temporarily Lifts Oil Sanctions Against Iran, Citing ‘Productive’ Talks

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 17:00
President Trump and Vice President JD Vance pointed to progress on Iran’s nuclear program, but officials in Tehran said “no new commitments” had been made.

Doctors Thought It Was Asthma. A.I. Flagged a Serious Heart Problem.

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 17:00
Artificial intelligence programs can spot patterns in electrocardiograms that humans miss. Now, one program is going to be widely available — for free — to doctors.

Valve Will Finally Let You Build Your Own Steam Machine With SteamOS For Desktop

SlashDot - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 17:00
With the price of the new Steam Machine starting at $1,049, you might want to consider making your own Steam Machine instead. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Valve says that "starting with the SteamOS 3.8 release, you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want." SteamOS 3.8.10 launched last week with a slew of updates, including "improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms." Alongside that improved compatibility, Valve is giving gamers the green light to install SteamOS on their own desktops. In an interview with The Verge, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais said Valve has been "rolling out improvements to [SteamOS] so it's more compatible with desktop hardware," including eventual support for Nvidia graphics. Griffais says Valve has "a growing team" working on Nvidia driver support for SteamOS, adding, "We're collaborating with Nvidia very closely." While he mentioned that Nvidia support might not come this year, Griffais emphasized that "it's certainly something that we're working on in the background." It's technically been possible to run SteamOS on your own hardware for a while now, but compatibility has been mostly limited to AMD systems. So far installing it has also required using a Steam Deck recovery image, a process that, speaking from experience, is much less straightforward than the installation process for most other Linux distributions. Trying to run SteamOS on Intel or Nvidia hardware has not been easy so far. According to Griffais, Valve is working to change that, which could mean that down the line, you'll be able to run SteamOS on just about any gaming PC hardware you want, including Nvidia. For the more immediate future, Griffais says SteamOS in its current state should offer a "good experience" on console-like PC setups: "If you have something that is similar to the use case of a Steam Machine, where you have a PC that's gonna be plugged into a TV, and has a single hard drive that you're not going to try and dual boot [] you can put SteamOS on there, and you'll have an experience that is very similar to a Steam Deck docked or a Steam Machine, with some caveats, of course," like a lack of HDMI-CEC support. But "the core bits of the experience are there. The SteamOS graphics driver, the shader precompilation [...] you can get at all of that with the SteamOS." Griffais says SteamOS does not yet offer an easy way to dual-boot alongside Windows or another operating system, but envisions "a time where it's a better experience to install on your desktop and have it coexist with a different operating system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Demining the Strait of Hormuz

NY Times - Mon, 06/22/2026 - 16:59
Our reporter John Ismay, who served as a Navy explosive ordnance disposal officer and deep-sea diver for eight years, explains why mines in the Strait of Hormuz may outlast the war. This video was originally published June 19 and was updated on June 22 to reflect news developments.

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