Axios reports that the NSA is using Anthropic's restricted Mythos Preview model despite the Pentagon insisting the company poses a "supply chain risk." Axios reports: The government's cybersecurity needs appear to be outweighing the Pentagon's feud with Anthropic. The department moved in February to cut off Anthropic and force its vendors to follow suit. That case is ongoing. The military is now broadening its use of Anthropic's tools while simultaneously arguing in court that using those tools threatens U.S. national security. Two sources said the NSA was using Mythos, while one said the model was also being used more widely within the department. It's unclear how the NSA is currently using Mythos, but other organizations with access to the model are using it predominantly to scan their own environments for exploitable security vulnerabilities. Anthropic restricted access to Mythos to around 40 organizations, contending that its offensive cyber capabilities were too dangerous to allow for a wider release. Anthropic only announced 12 of those organizations. One source said the NSA was among the unnamed agencies with access. The NSA's counterparts in the U.K. have said they have access to the model through the country's AI Security Institute. Anthropic's CEO met with top U.S. officials on Friday to discuss "opportunities for collaboration," according to a White House spokesperson, "as well as shared approaches and protocols to address the challenges associated with scaling this technology."

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Children from New York schools are consistently winning national chess championships, and programs dedicated to teaching young people the game are booming.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The winning runner at a Beijing half-marathon for humanoid robots finished the race today in 50 minutes and 26 seconds -- significantly faster than the human world record of 57 minutes recently set by Jacob Kiplimo. [...] [T]he winning time is a massive improvement over last year's race, when the fastest robot finished in two hours and 40 minutes. The Associated Press reports that this year's winner was built by Chinese smartphone maker Honor. It seems the winning robot wasn't actually the fastest, as a different Honor robot finished in 48 minutes and 19 seconds. But that one was remote controlled -- the 50:26 robot was autonomous and won due to weighted scoring. About 40% of participating robots competed autonomously, while the remaining 60% were remote controlled, according to Beijing's E-Town tech hub. Not all of them did as well as Honor's robots, with one robot falling at the starting line and another hitting a barrier.

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There's been a few complaints about Amazon's drone delivery service. "The automated mailmen are dropping off packages from 10 feet in the air," reports the New York Post, "rendering the contents of each box susceptible to crashing and smashing." One example? Tamara Hancock filmed a drone delivering a bottle of Torani flavoring syrup to her home in Arizona (as a test of how Amazon handled fragile items). It was delivered it in a plastic bottle — not glass — but the massive drone drops the drone from so high that the impact cracked the bottle's cap. (In the video Hancock opens her delivery to find leaked flavoring syrup "everywhere.") The delivery was hard to film, Hancock says, because "If the drone sees me in the back yard, it will not drop, because it is worried about hurting humans or animals." The Post notes Amazon's "AI-charged fleet" of drones are "Outfitted with industry-leading 'sense and avoid' technology, the aerodynamic machines are equipped to drop off eligible items, weighing a maximum of five pounds, at designated areas in 60 minutes or less." The high-tech, however, apparently does not ensure gentle landings. Collisions, including a recent crash-and-burn into a Texas building, as well as several mid-flight malfunctions in rainy weather, have abounded since the drones' inaugural launch.... Tasha, a separate Amazon user, spotted the drone plunging a package near the paved driveway of a neighbor's yard. Unfortunately, its propellers caused other, previously delivered parcels to blow away, sending one into the street... In a statement to The Post, Amazon said it apologized for one of the "rare instances when products don't arrive as expected." Amazon's drone fleet has been running since late 2024, the Post adds, and are now offering "ultra-fast" shipping in U.S. states including Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Kansas and Texas. The machines do seem massive. I'm surprised neighbors aren't complaining about the noise...

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A decade after Mohammed bin Salman unveiled his “Vision 2030” program to transform the country’s economy, the kingdom is facing financial strains and reassessing its trajectory.

Helped by a favorable national environment and strong candidate recruitment, Democrats are tied or ahead in four Republican-held seats, polls show.

The autobiographical novella, first published 50 years ago, arguably created a new type of guy: the literary fly fisherman.

Zoom "has partnered with World, Sam Altman's iris-scanning identity company (previously known as Worldcoin), " reports Digital Trends, "to add real-time human verification inside meetings." Zoom is now inviting organizations to join the beta version of the rollout, which Digital Trends says "lets hosts confirm that every face on the call belongs to a real person, not an AI-generated imposter. " For those wondering how World's Deep Face technology works, it includes a three-step process. It cross-references a signed image from a user's original Orb registration, a live face scan from the device, and the frame of the video that's visible to the other participants in the meeting. Only when the three samples match does a "Verified Human" badge appear next to the user's name... Hosts can also make Deep Face verification mandatory for joining meetings, preventing unverified participants from joining entirely. Mid-call, on-the-spot checks are also possible...

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The new Title X guidance from the Trump administration mentions contraception only once.

The Brave browser "has introduced Brave Origin, a stripped-down version of its browser that removes built-in monetization features like Rewards and other extras tied to its business model," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli" The stripped-down browser is available either as a separate browser download or as an upgrade to the existing Brave install, unlocked through a one-time purchase that can be activated across multiple devices. The idea is simple on paper: pay once, and you get a cleaner, more minimal browsing experience without the add-ons that fund Brave's ecosystem. What makes the move unusual is the pricing model itself. While paying to support a browser is not controversial, charging users specifically to remove features raises questions about whether those additions are seen as value or clutter. The situation gets even stranger on Linux, where Brave Origin is reportedly available at no cost, creating an uneven experience across platforms and leaving some users wondering why they are being asked to pay for something others get for free.

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The U.S. remains an essential player. The problem, one analyst said, is how to deal effectively with a power that is “indispensable, coercive and unpredictable at the same time.”

The latest attack raised the death toll to at least 180 in the campaign by the United States against people it accuses of smuggling drugs at sea.

SpaceNews reports: Blue Origin's New Glenn suffered a malfunction of its second stage on the rocket's third flight April 19, stranding its payload in an unrecoverable "off-nominal" orbit and dealing the company a setback as it seeks to increase its flight rate... AST SpaceMobile had planned to launch 45 to 60 satellites this year for its D2D constellation, but BlueBird 7 is the first to launch since BlueBird 6 launched on an Indian LVM3 rocket in December. AST SpaceMobile still expects to have 45 satellites in orbit by the end of the year, the article notes. (In an earnings call in March, AST SpaceMobile's CEO had promised they'd soon start "stacking" satellites, "batched in groups of either three, four, six or eight in a single launch.") He'd added that "To support our launch cadence during 2026, we expect the New Glenn booster to be reused every 30 days or less..." There's some good news there, SpaceNews points out, since today saw the first successful reflight of a New Glenn first stage rocket: The booster, called "Never Tell Me The Odds" by Blue Origin, touched down on the company's landing platform, Jacklyn, in the Atlantic Ocean nearly nine and a half minutes after liftoff. The booster launched NASA's ESCAPADE Mars mission on the NG-2 flight in November. However, the booster reuse on NG-3 was only partial since the stage's biggest component, its BE-4 engines, was new. "With our first refurbished booster we elected to replace all seven engines and test out a few upgrades including a thermal protection system on one of the engine nozzles," Dave Limp, chief executive of Blue Origin, said in an April 13 social media post. "We plan to use the engines we flew for NG-2 on future flights." The satellite will now be "de-orbited", AST SpaceMobile said in a statement. (They added that "The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company's insurance policy.") Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

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At churches with connections to Pope Leo and the Trump administration, pastors and parishioners speak out on the feud between the president and the pontiff.

Seven of the eight children killed were the shooter’s own. Two other people were gravely wounded. The gunman, who was struggling with mental health problems, died in a confrontation with police.

The android won a half-marathon for robots (and humans) on Sunday in Beijing, achieving a technological milestone while finishing faster than any person in history.

After 49 years of space travel, Voyager 1 "is running out of power," reports NPR: The spacecraft runs on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator — a device that converts heat from decaying plutonium into electricity. It carries no solar panels, no rechargeable batteries. Just the slow, steady release of nuclear warmth, which diminishes by about 4 watts each year. After nearly five decades, that decline has become critical. During a routine maneuver in late February, Voyager 1's power levels fell unexpectedly, bringing the probe dangerously close to triggering an automatic fault-protection shutdown — a self-preservation response that would have forced engineers into a lengthy and risky recovery process. The team needed to act first. On April 17, mission engineers sent a sequence of commands to deactivate the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, known as the LECP, which is one of Voyager 1's remaining science instruments. The LECP has measured ions, electrons, and cosmic rays originating from both our solar system and the galaxy beyond it, helping scientists map the structure of interstellar space in a way no other instrument could... Voyager 1 now carries two operational science instruments: one that listens for plasma waves, and one that measures magnetic fields. Engineers believe the latest shutdown could buy the mission roughly another year of breathing room. The team is also developing a more sweeping power conservation plan they informally call "the Big Bang" — a coordinated swap of several powered components all at once, trading older systems for lower-power alternatives. If testing on Voyager 2, planned for May and June 2026, goes well, the same procedure will be attempted on Voyager 1 no sooner than July. If it works, there is even a slim chance the LECP could once more continue to work. The engineers say they hope to keep at least one instrument operating on each spacecraft into the 2030s. It would leave both still reporting from places no machine has ever gone before.111 Voyager 1 is now 15 billion miles from Earth, the article points out. (Radio signals take 23 hours to arrive...) Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the article.

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Live Science spoke with physicist David Gross, who today received the $3 million "Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics". He was part of a trio that won the 2004 physics Nobel prize for research that helped complete the Standard Model of particle physics. But when asked if physics will reach a unified theory of the fundamental forces of nature within 50 years, Gross has a surprising answer. "Currently, I spend part of my time trying to tell people... that the chances of you living 50 [more] years are very small." Cold War estimates for a 1% chance of nuclear war each year seem low, Gross says. "The chances are more likely 2%. So that's a 1-in-50 chance every year." David Gross: The expected lifetime, in the case of 2% [per year], is about 35 years. [The expected lifetime is the average time it would take to have had a nuclear war by then. It is calculated using similar equations as those used to determine the "half-life" of a radioactive material.] Live Science: So what do you suggest as remedies to lower that risk? Gross: We had something called the Nobel Laureate Assembly for reducing the risk of nuclear war in Chicago last year. There are steps, which are easy to take — for nations, I mean. For example, talk to each other. In the last 10 years, there are no treaties anymore. We're entering an incredible arms race. We have three super nuclear powers. People are talking about using nuclear weapons; there's a major war going on in the middle of Europe; we're bombing Iran; India and Pakistan almost went to war. OK, so that's increased the chance [of nuclear war]. I would really like to have a solid estimate — it might be more, and I think I'm being conservative — but a 2% estimate [of nuclear war] in today's crazy world. Live Science: Do you think we'll ever get to a place where we get rid of nuclear weapons? Gross: We're not recommending that. That's idealistic, but yes, I hope so. Because if you don't, there's always some risk an AI 100 years from now [could launch nuclear weapons], but chances of [humanity] living, with this estimate, 100 years, is very small, and living 200 years is infinitesimal. So [the answer to] Fermi's question of "Where are the civilizations, all the intelligent organisms around the galaxy, and why don't they talk to us?" is that they've killed themselves... There are now nine nuclear powers. Even three is infinitely more complicated than two. The agreements, the norms between countries, are all falling apart. Weapons are getting crazier. Automation, and perhaps even AI, will be in control of those instruments pretty soon... It's going to be very hard to resist making AI make decisions because it acts so fast. He points out that with the threat of climate change, "people have done something," even though "It's a much harder argument to make than about nuclear weapons. "We made them; we can stop them." Thanks to hwstar (Slashdot reader #35,834) for sharing the article.

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A fellow student who had witnessed the kidnapping called the police, and other students helped track the girl to a gas station.

Weighed down by President Trump’s approval ratings, some Republican incumbents are struggling to raise money while Democrats look for targets like a Tennessee seat south of Nashville.