‘I Got Back Every Penny’: Inside Trump’s Supercharged Tax Season

NY Times - sam, 04/04/2026 - 05:00
The law Republicans passed last year has so far been largely imperceptible to most Americans. That’s changing as tens of millions file their taxes this spring.

Artemis II Astronauts Pass 100,000 Miles From Earth On Voyage To the Moon

SlashDot - sam, 04/04/2026 - 03:00
The Artemis II crew has passed 100,000 miles from Earth and is now on a "free-return" path around the moon after a successful "translunar" injection burn. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am so, so excited to be able to tell you that for the first time since 1972 during Apollo 17, human beings have left Earth orbit," NASA's Dr Lori Glaze told a news conference. The Guardian reports: The astronauts -- the Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and a Canadian, Jeremy Hansen -- spent their first day in space performing checks on the spacecraft, which had never carried humans before. Later they had time to speak to US TV networks. "I've got to tell you, there is nothing normal about this," Wiseman told ABC News from the cramped interior of the capsule. "Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a herculean effort, and we are now just realising the gravity of that." Orion will travel about 4,000 miles (6,400km) beyond the moon before turning back, providing unprecedented and illuminated views of the lunar far side. If all proceeds smoothly, the astronauts will set a record by venturing farther from Earth than any human before -- more than 250,000 miles. The mission is part of a longer-term plan to repeatedly return to the moon, with the aim of establishing a permanent base that will offer a platform for further exploration. After the final engine burn, NASA said Wiseman took two "spectacular" images of Earth. The first photo, called Hello, World, "shows the vast expanse of blue that is the Atlantic Ocean, framed by a thin glow of the atmosphere as the Earth eclipses the Sun and green auroras at either pole," reports the BBC. Another photo shows the view of Earth from inside the Orion spacecraft.

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Epstein Presented Himself to Indian Tycoon as a Trump White House Insider

NY Times - sam, 04/04/2026 - 00:01
The convicted sex offender gave Anil Ambani information on appointments and foreign policy. Some seemed prescient, though there was no evidence he was close to the administration.

'AI' Is Coming For Your Online Gaming Servers Next

SlashDot - ven, 04/03/2026 - 23:30
"Consumer PC parts aren't the only things being gobbled up by the 'AI' industry," writes PCWorld's Michael Crider. "A Starcraft-inspired strategy game is shutting down its multiplayer servers because the hosting company got bought out for 'AI.'" The game will still be playable offline for now, but the shutdown highlights the ripple effects of the AI boom on the gaming industry. Amid the ongoing hardware shortages, AI companies are basically gobbling up as much infrastructure as they can to repurpose it for AI workloads. From the report: The game in question is Stormgate, a crowdfunded revival of the real-time strategy genre that has languished in the last decade or so. The developer Frost Giant Studios told its players on Discord (spotted by PC Gamer) that it would be unable to continue multiplayer access past the end of this month. The "game server orchestration partner" was bought by an AI company -- the developer's words, not mine -- which means that the multiplayer aspects of the game will have a "planned outage." The devs say the game will be patched for offline play, presumably including its single-player campaign mode and co-op modes, but "online modes will not be available at that point." They're hoping to bring back online play in a later update, but that'll depend on "finding a partner to support ongoing operations." That sounds like old-fashioned player-hosted games with lobbies aren't in the cards, at least not yet. Frost Giant's server provider is Hathora, which was bought by a company called Fireworks AI last month. Fireworks describes its offerings as "open-source AI models at blazing speed, optimized for your use case, scaled globally with the Fireworks Inference Cloud." So, yeah, Hathora's infrastructure will likely be used for yet more generative "AI." And according to GamesBeat, it's planning to shut down the game service aspect of its company completely. That means Stormgate probably isn't going to be the last game affected. Hathora also provides online services for Splitgate 2, among others. I'm contacting Hathora for comment and will update this story if I receive a response.

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Arrest of Wisconsin Mosque Leader Was Tied to Trump Antisemitism Campaign

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 23:04
Immigration lawyers and former federal officials say the case of Salah Sarsour echoes those against other pro-Palestinian activists.

Trump Directs Officials to Pay All D.H.S. Employees

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 22:55
The memorandum calls for paying employees at the Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who have gone without pay during a record-long shutdown.

Trump Contemplates Other Cabinet Changes as He Faces Political Clock

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 21:55
With the midterms approaching, the president may be running out of time to get new cabinet members confirmed without bipartisan support.

NASA Unveils 1st Earth Photos From Artemis II Moon Mission: ‘You Look Beautiful.’

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 21:38
The pictures were released on the third day of the first mission since 1972 to send people around the moon.

In the Philippines, Rising Fuel Prices Force Travelers to Stay Home During Holy Week

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 21:25
Surging gasoline prices in the Philippines have forced some people to cancel or scale back the Visita Iglesia, a Holy Week tradition in which Catholics travel to seven churches.

What We Know About the F-15E Strike Eagle Shot Down by Iran

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 20:15
An F-15E Strike Eagle was lost to enemy fire and an A-10 Warthog crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, officials said. A rescue helicopter was also fired upon.

March Jobs Report Shows Stronger U.S. Market Than Expected With 178,000 New Positions

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 20:07
Payrolls expanded and unemployment dropped last month after a health care strike ended and a harsh winter abated.

Stray Bullet That Killed Baby Girl in Brooklyn Also Grazed Brother

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 19:27
Two men have been arrested in connection to a shooting on Wednesday that killed an infant. One was charged with murder, attempted murder and assault.

Iran Is Quickly Repairing Missile Bunkers, U.S. Intelligence Says

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 19:07
Reports cast doubt on how close the United States is to destroying Iran’s missile capability, a key goal in the war.

Iran Strikes Leave Amazon Availability Zones 'Hard Down' In Bahrain and Dubai

SlashDot - ven, 04/03/2026 - 19:00
Iranian strikes have reportedly knocked out key AWS availability zones in Bahrain and Dubai, leaving parts of both regions effectively offline for an extended period and forcing Amazon to urge teams and customers to shift workloads elsewhere. "These two regions continue to be impaired, and services should not expect to be operating with normal levels of redundancy and resiliency," an internal Amazon communication memo reads. "We are actively working to free and reserve as much capacity as possible in the region for customers, and services should be scaled to the minimal footprint required to support customer migration." Big Technology reports: With the war now nearing its sixth week, Iran has made Amazon infrastructure in the Gulf an economic target and is now eyeing its peers. Amazon's Bahrain facilities have been hit multiple times, including a Wednesday strike that caused a fire. And its facilities in the UAE also sustained multiple hits. The IRGC is threatening multiple other U.S. tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Amazons infrastructure in Bahrain and Dubai each have three 'availability zones' or clusters of compute. Both Bahrain and Dubai have a zones that are "hard down" and and "impaired but functioning," per the internal communication. "We do not have a timeline for when DXB and BAH will return to normal operations," the internal post said.

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Is Iran Winning?

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 18:58
The Iran expert Suzanne Maloney explains why Iran believes it has the upper hand.

After 11 Years in Court, Heir Reclaims a Modigliani Looted by the Nazis

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 18:50
A judge ruled against a holding company controlled by David Nahmad, the billionaire art dealer, which had bought the work at auction in 1996.

Ex-US Army Pilot Recalls Battle for Survival When Shot Down in Iraq

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 18:35
Ronald Young Jr. was in the Army when his Apache Longbow copter went down during the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Microsoft To Invest $10 Billion In Japan For AI, Cyber Defense Expansion

SlashDot - ven, 04/03/2026 - 18:00
Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in Japan from 2026 to 2029 to expand AI infrastructure, boost local cloud capacity, train 1 million engineers and developers, and deepen cybersecurity cooperation with the Japanese government. Reuters reports: The investment includes the training of 1 million engineers and developers by 2030, Microsoft said, which was unveiled during a visit to Tokyo by Vice Chair and President Brad Smith. In a statement, the company said the plan aligns with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's goal to boost growth through advanced, strategic technologies while safeguarding national security. Microsoft will work with domestic firms including SoftBank and Sakura Internet to expand Japan-based AI computing capacity, allowing Ecompanies and government agencies to keep sensitive data within the country while accessing Microsoft Azure services, it said. It will also deepen cooperation with Japanese authorities on sharing intelligence related to cyber threats and crime prevention.

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Trump Seeks $152 Million to Begin to Turn Alcatraz Back Into a Prison

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 17:06
The plan faces significant local political opposition and the dilapidated state of the site poses considerable logistical challenges.

Six Senate Races to Watch as Democrats Grow Bullish Ahead of Midterm Elections

NY Times - ven, 04/03/2026 - 17:00
It’s still a tall task for the party to win back control. Here’s the latest.

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