Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a major federal campaign to promote wearable health tech, aiming for every American to adopt a device within four years as part of a broader effort to "Make America Healthy Again." Gizmodo reports: RFK Jr. announced the initiative Tuesday afternoon during a House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee meeting to discuss the HHS' budget request for the upcoming fiscal year. In response to a question from representative Troy Balderson (R-Ohio) about wearables, Kennedy revealed that HHS will soon conduct one of the agency's largest ever advertising campaigns to promote their use. He added that in his ideal future, every American will be donning a wearable within the next four years. "It's a key part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again," RFK Jr. stated in an X post following the question.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Time Magazine: While AI could offer transformative benefits, without proper safeguards it could facilitate nuclear and biological threats and cause "potentially irreversible harms," a new report commissioned by California Governor Gavin Newsom has warned. "The opportunity to establish effective AI governance frameworks may not remain open indefinitely," says the report, which was published on June 17 (PDF). Citing new evidence that AI can help users source nuclear-grade uranium and is on the cusp of letting novices create biological threats, it notes that the cost for inaction at this current moment could be "extremely high." [...] "Foundation model capabilities have rapidly advanced since Governor Newsom vetoed SB 1047 last September," the report states. The industry has shifted from large language AI models that merely predict the next word in a stream of text toward systems trained to solve complex problems and that benefit from "inference scaling," which allows them more time to process information. These advances could accelerate scientific research, but also potentially amplify national security risks by making it easier for bad actors to conduct cyberattacks or acquire chemical and biological weapons. The report points to Anthropic's Claude 4 models, released just last month, which the company said might be capable of helping would-be terrorists create bioweapons or engineer a pandemic. Similarly, OpenAI's o3 model reportedly outperformed 94% of virologists on a key evaluation. In recent months, new evidence has emerged showing AI's ability to strategically lie, appearing aligned with its creators' goals during training but displaying other objectives once deployed, and exploit loopholes to achieve its goals, the report says. While "currently benign, these developments represent concrete empirical evidence for behaviors that could present significant challenges to measuring loss of control risks and possibly foreshadow future harm," the report says. While Republicans have proposed a 10 year ban on all state AI regulation over concerns that a fragmented policy environment could hamper national competitiveness, the report argues that targeted regulation in California could actually "reduce compliance burdens on developers and avoid a patchwork approach" by providing a blueprint for other states, while keeping the public safer. It stops short of advocating for any specific policy, instead outlining the key principles the working group believes California should adopt when crafting future legislation. It "steers clear" of some of the more divisive provisions of SB 1047, like the requirement for a "kill switch" or shutdown mechanism to quickly halt certain AI systems in case of potential harm, says Scott Singer, a visiting scholar in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a lead-writer of the report. Instead, the approach centers around enhancing transparency, for example through legally protecting whistleblowers and establishing incident reporting systems, so that lawmakers and the public have better visibility into AI's progress. The goal is to "reap the benefits of innovation. Let's not set artificial barriers, but at the same time, as we go, let's think about what we're learning about how it is that the technology is behaving," says Cuellar, who co-led the report. The report emphasizes this visibility is crucial not only for public-facing AI applications, but for understanding how systems are tested and deployed inside AI companies, where concerning behaviors might first emerge. "The underlying approach here is one of 'trust but verify,'" Singer says, a concept borrowed from Cold War-era arms control treaties that would involve designing mechanisms to independently check compliance. That's a departure from existing efforts, which hinge on voluntary cooperation from companies, such as the deal between OpenAI and Center for AI Standards and Innovation (formerly the U.S. AI Safety Institute) to conduct pre-deployment tests. It's an approach that acknowledges the "substantial expertise inside industry," Singer says, but "also underscores the importance of methods of independently verifying safety claims."

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President Trump will extend the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. operations by another 90 days, marking the third extension since taking office. The extension aims to prevent a TikTok ban while negotiations with potential buyers like Oracle and Project Liberty continue. CNBC reports: "President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. "As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure." ByteDance was nearing the deadline of June 19, to sell TikTok's U.S. operations in order to satisfy a national security law that the Supreme Court upheld just a few days before Trump's second presidential inauguration. Under the law, app store operators like Apple and Google and internet service providers would be penalized for supporting TikTok. ByteDance originally faced a Jan. 19 deadline to comply with the national security law, but Trump signed an executive order when he first took office that pushed the deadline to April 5. Trump extended the deadline for the second time a day before that April mark. Trump told NBC News in May that he would extend the TikTok deadline again if no deal was reached, and he reiterated his plans on Thursday.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has lost another senior leader: executive director Bridget Bean departed on Wednesday. Bean, who served as the de facto agency boss for five months between former CISA director Jen Easterly's departure in January and Madhu Gottumukkala's appointment to the deputy director post last month, said she was "officially retiring from Federal service once again" in a LinkedIn post. "My time at CISA has been truly remarkable," she wrote. "Having had the privilege to serve as the Senior Official Performing the Duties of Director of CISA for 5 months has been a profound honor." CISA's executive leadership page now lists Gottumukkala as its acting director, and the agency remains without a Senate-confirmed leader. President Trump nominated Sean Plankey to serve as the agency's director, and his nomination is scheduled for consideration (PDF) by the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today. However, his appointment still requires a full Senate vote. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has said he will continue to block Plankey's confirmation until CISA releases an unclassified report on American telecommunications networks' weak security. At the time of her departure, Bean had spent three and a half years with CISA and more than three decades with the federal government, including a job as the Federal Emergency Management Agency's third-ranking official. Before accepting the executive director post, she was CISA's first chief integration officer. In this position, she "led the integration of the agency's operations and ensured CISA's frontline of regional staff seamlessly supported the critical infrastructure that Americans rely on every hour of every day," according to her bio on the agency's website. [...] Bean's retirement comes during a talent exodus from CISA -- and other federal government agencies -- with some folks getting fired and others taking the Trump administration's buyout offer to resign from public service. As of May 30, the heads of five of CISA's six operational divisions and six of its 10 regional offices had left the agency, and around 1,000 people, nearly one-third of its total staff, have reportedly left CISA since Trump took office.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from The New York Times: Russian counterintelligence agents are analyzing data from the popular Chinese messaging and social media app WeChat to monitor people who might be in contact with Chinese spies, according to a Russian intelligence document obtained by The New York Times. The disclosure highlights the rising level of concern about Chinese influence in Russia as the two countries deepen their relationship. As Russia has become isolated from the West over its war in Ukraine, it has become increasingly reliant on Chinese money, companies and technology. But it has also faced what the document describes as increased Chinese espionage efforts. The document indicates that the Russian domestic security agency, known as the F.S.B., pulls purloined data into an analytical tool known as "Skopishche" (a Russian word for a mob of people). Information from WeChat is among the data being analyzed, according to the document... One Western intelligence agency told The Times that the information in the document was consistent with what it knew about "Russian penetration of Chinese communications...." By design, [WeChat] does not use end-to-end encryption to protect user data. That is because the Chinese government exercises strict control over the app and relies on its weak security to monitor and censor speech. Foreign intelligence agencies can exploit that weakness, too... WeChat was briefly banned in Russia in 2017, but access was restored after Tencent took steps to comply with laws requiring foreign digital platforms above a certain size to register as "organizers of information dissemination." The Times confirmed that WeChat is currently licensed by the government to operate in Russia. That license would require Tencent to store user data on Russian servers and to provide access to security agencies upon request.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from SFGate about a lawsuit alleging a "warrantless drone surveillance program" that's "trampling residents' right to privacy": Sonoma County has been accused of deploying hundreds of drone flights over residents in a "runaway spying operation"... according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. The North Bay county of Sonoma initially started the 6-year-old drone program to track illegal cannabis cultivation, but the lawsuit alleges that officials have since turned it into a widespread program to catch unrelated code violations at residential properties and levy millions of dollars in fines. The program has captured 5,600 images during more than 700 flights, the lawsuit said... Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, said in a Wednesday news release that the county "has hidden these unlawful searches from the people they have spied on, the community, and the media...." The lawsuit says the county employees used the drones to spy on private homes without first receiving a warrant, including photographing private areas like hot tubs and outdoor baths, and through curtainless windows. One plaintiff "said the county secretly used the drone program to photograph her Sonoma County horse stable and issue code violations," according to the article. She only discovered the use of the drones after a county employee mentioned they had photos of her property, according to the lawsuit. She then filed a public records request for the images, which left her "stunned" after seeing that the county employees were monitoring her private property including photographing her outdoor bathtub and shower, the lawsuit said.

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With over 200 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by population. Now it's testing a program that will allow Brazilians "to manage, own, and profit from their digital footprint," according to RestOfWorld.org — "the first such nationwide initiative in the world." The government says it's partnering with California-based data valuation/monetization firm DrumWave to create "data savings account" to "transform data into economic assets, with potential for monetization and participation in the benefits generated by investing in technologies such as AI LLMs." But all based on "conscious and authorized use of personal information." RestOfWorld reports: Today, "people get nothing from the data they share," Brittany Kaiser, co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation and board adviser for DrumWave, told Rest of World. "Brazil has decided its citizens should have ownership rights over their data...." After a user accepts a company's offer on their data, payment is cashed in the data wallet, and can be immediately moved to a bank account. The project will be "a correction in the historical imbalance of the digital economy," said Kaiser. Through data monetization, the personal data that companies aggregate, classify, and filter to inform many aspects of their operations will become an asset for those providing the data... Brazil's project stands out because it brings the private sector and the government together, "so it has a better chance of catching on," said Kaiser. In 2023, Brazil's Congress drafted a bill that classifies data as personal property. The country's current data protection law classifies data as a personal, inalienable right. The new legislation gives people full rights over their personal data — especially data created "through use and access of online platforms, apps, marketplaces, sites and devices of any kind connected to the web." The bill seeks to ensure companies offer their clients benefits and financial rewards, including payment as "compensation for the collecting, processing or sharing of data." It has garnered bipartisan support, and is currently being evaluated in Congress... If approved, the bill will allow companies to collect data more quickly and precisely, while giving users more clarity over how their data will be used, according to Antonielle Freitas, data protection officer at Viseu Advogados, a law firm that specializes in digital and consumer laws. As data collection becomes centralized through regulated data brokers, the government can benefit by paying the public to gather anonymized, large-scale data, Freitas told Rest of World. These databases are the basis for more personalized public services, especially in sectors such as health care, urban transportation, public security, and education, she said. This first pilot program involves "a small group of Brazilians who will use data wallets for payroll loans," according to the article — although Pedro Bastos, a researcher at Data Privacy Brazil, sees downsides. "Once you treat data as an economic asset, you are subverting the logic behind the protection of personal data," he told RestOfWorld. The data ecosystem "will no longer be defined by who can create more trust and integrity in their relationships, but instead, it will be defined by who's the richest." Thanks to Slashdot reader applique for sharing the news.

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Journalists from Der Spiegel and Danwatch were able to use proxy servers in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia to circumvent network restrictions and access documents about Russia's nuclear weapon sites, reports Cybernews.com. "Data, including building plans, diagrams, equipment, and other schematics, is accessible to anyone in the public procurement database." Journalists from Danwatch and Der Spiegel scraped and analyzed over two million documents from the public procurement database, which exposed Russian nuclear facilities, including their layout, in great detail. The investigation unveils that European companies participate in modernizing them. According to the exclusive Der Spiegel report, Russian procurement documents expose some of the world's most secret construction sites. "It even contains floor plans and infrastructure details for nuclear weapons silos," the report reads. Some details from the Amsterdam-based Moscow Times: Among the leaked materials are construction plans, security system diagrams and details of wall signage inside the facilities, with messages like "Stop! Turn around! Forbidden zone!," "The Military Oath" and "Rules for shoe care." Details extend to power grids, IT systems, alarm configurations, sensor placements and reinforced structures designed to withstand external threats... "Material like this is the ultimate intelligence," said Philip Ingram, a former colonel in the British Army's intelligence corps. "If you can understand how the electricity is conducted or where the water comes from, and you can see how the different things are connected in the systems, then you can identify strengths and weaknesses and find a weak point to attack." Apparently Russian defense officials were making public procurement notices for their construction projects — and then attaching sensitive documents to those public notices...

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sinij shares a report from the BBC: France's National Assembly has voted to abolish low-emission zones, a key measure introduced during President Emmanuel Macron's first term to reduce city pollution. So-called ZFEs (zones a faibles emissions) have been criticized for hitting those who cannot afford less-polluting vehicles the hardest. A handful of MPs from Macron's party joined opposition parties from the right and far right in voting 98-51 to scrap the zones, which have gradually been extended across French cities since 2019. [...] The low-emission zones began with 15 of France's most polluted cities in 2019 and by the start of this year had been extended to every urban area with a population of more than 150,000, with a ban on cars registered before 1997. Those produced after 1997 need a round "Crit'Air" sticker to drive in low-emission zones, and there are six categories that correspond to various types of vehicle. The biggest restrictions have been applied in the most polluted cities, Paris and Lyon, as well as Montpellier and Grenoble. The BBC notes that while the abolition is expected to pass France's Senate, it must still be included in a broader bill approved by the lower house in June and cleared by the Constitutional Council, which isn't guaranteed.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report : Washington is joining a growing list of states trying to tear down barriers for consumers who want to repair their electronics rather than buy new ones. Gov. Bob Ferguson last week signed the state's new "Right to Repair" policy, House Bill 1483, into law. It was a yearslong effort to get the law approved. "This is a win for every person in Washington state," said the bill's prime sponsor, Rep. Mia Gregerson, D-SeaTac. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission reported that consumers with broken electronics don't have much choice but to replace them because repairs require specialized tools, unique parts and inaccessible proprietary software. And those restrictions, the FTC found, disproportionately burden communities of color and low-income communities. Some companies engage in a practice called "parts pairing" that can make replacing parts of a device impossible. Washington's new law would largely outlaw this tactic. Starting Jan. 1, 2026, the law will require manufacturers to make tools, parts and documentation needed for diagnostics and maintenance available to independent repair businesses. The requirement applies to digital electronics, like computers, cellphones and appliances, sold in Washington after July 1, 2021. Manufacturers won't be able to use parts that inhibit repairs. The state attorney general's office could enforce violations of the new law under the Consumer Protection Act.

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"Do we need publicly-owned social networks to escape Silicon Valley?" asks an opinion piece in Spain's El Pais newspaper. It argues it's necessary because social media platforms "have consolidated themselves as quasi-monopolies, with a business model that consists of violating our privacy in search of data to sell ads..." Among the proposals and alternatives to these platforms, the idea of public social media networks has often been mentioned. Imagine, for example, a Twitter for the European Union, or a Facebook managed by media outlets like the BBC. In February, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for "the development of our own browsers, European public and private social networks and messaging services that use transparent protocols." Former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — who governed from 2004 until 2011 — and the left-wing Sumar bloc in the Spanish Parliament have also proposed this. And, back in 2021, former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn made a similar suggestion. At first glance, this may seem like a good idea: a public platform wouldn't require algorithms — which are designed to stimulate addiction and confrontation — nor would it have to collect private information to sell ads. Such a platform could even facilitate public conversations, as pointed out by James Muldoon, a professor at Essex Business School and author of Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech (2022)... This could be an alternative that would contribute to platform pluralism and ensure we're not dependent on a handful of billionaires. This is especially important at a time when we're increasingly aware that technology isn't neutral and that private platforms respond to both economic and political interests. There's other possibilities. Further down they write that "it makes much more sense for the state to invest in, or collaborate with, decentralized social media networks based on free and interoperable software" that "allow for the portability of information and content." They even spoke to Cory Doctorow, who they say "proposes that the state cooperate with the software systems, developers, or servers for existing open-source platforms, such as the U.S. network Bluesky or the German firm Mastodon." (Doctorow adds that reclaiming digital independence "is incredibly important, it's incredibly difficult, and it's incredibly urgent." The article also acknowledges the option of "legislative initiatives — such as antitrust laws, or even stricter regulations than those imposed in Europe — that limit or prevent surveillance capitalism." (Though they also figures showing U.S. tech giants have one of the largest lobbying groups in the EU, with Meta being the top spender...)

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Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares a press release from the White House, outlining a series of executive orders that overhaul the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and speed up deployment of new nuclear power reactions in the U.S.. From a report: The NRC is a 50-year-old, independent agency that regulates the nation's fleet of nuclear reactors. Trump's orders call for a "total and complete reform" of the agency, a senior White House official told reporters in a briefing. Under the new rules, the commission will be forced to decide on nuclear reactor licenses within 18 months. Trump said Friday the orders focus on small, advanced reactors that are viewed by many in the industry as the future. But the president also said his administration supports building large plants. "We're also talking about the big plants -- the very, very big, the biggest," Trump said. "We're going to be doing them also." When asked whether NRC reform will result in staff reductions, the White House official said "there will be turnover and changes in roles." "Total reduction in staff is undetermined at this point, but the executive orders do call for a substantial reorganization" of the agency, the official said. The orders, however, will not remove or replace any of the five commissioners who lead the body, according to the White House. Any reduction in staff at the NRC would come at time when the commission faces a heavy workload. The agency is currently reviewing whether two mothballed nuclear plants, Palisades in Michigan and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, should restart operations, a historic and unprecedented process. [...] Trump's orders also create a regulatory framework for the Departments of Energy and Defense to build nuclear reactors on federal land, the administration official said. "This allows for safe and reliable nuclear energy to power and operate critical defense facilities and AI data centers," the official told reporters. The NRC will not have a direct role, as the departments will use separate authorities under their control to authorize reactor construction for national security purposes, the official said. The president's orders also aim to jump start the mining of uranium in the U.S. and expand domestic uranium enrichment capacity, the official said. Trump's actions also aim to speed up reactor testing at the Department of Energy's national laboratories.

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Quebec Culture Minister Mathieu Lacombe has introduced Bill 109, which would require streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify to feature and prioritize French-language content. CBC.ca reports: Bill 109 has been in the works for over a year. It marks the first time that Quebec would set a "visibility quota" for French-language content on major streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney and Spotify. [...] The legislation, titled An Act to affirm the cultural sovereignty of Quebec and to enact the Act respecting the discoverability of French-language cultural content in the digital environment, would apply to every digital platform that offers a service for watching videos or listening to music and audiobooks online. Those include Canadian platforms such as Illico, Crave and Tou.tv. It would amend the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to enshrine "the right to discoverability of and access to original French-language cultural content." If the bill is adopted, streaming platforms and television manufacturers would be forced to present interfaces for screening online videos in French by default. Those interfaces would need to provide access to platforms that offer original French-language cultural content based on the government's pending criteria. Financial penalties would be imposed on companies that don't follow the rules. If the business models of some companies prevent them from keeping to the letter of the proposed law, companies would be allowed to enter into an agreement with the Quebec government to set out "substitute measures" to fulfil Bill 109 obligations differently. "We don't want to exempt them. We're telling them, 'let's negotiate substitute measures,'" Lacombe told reporters.

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Qatar is gifting Trump a $400 million luxury 747 to serve as a temporary Air Force One, but experts warn that retrofitting it to meet presidential security standards could take years, cost hundreds of millions more, and risk national security due to potential embedded surveillance. The Register's Iain Thomson reports: The current VC-25s aren't just repainted 747s. They're a pair of flying fortresses that must be capable of allowing the president to run the country, survive wartime conditions (even nuclear), and be totally secure from outside influence or intrusion. While the precise details of the current airframe are a tightly guarded secret, some details are included on government fact sheets or have been revealed in various media reports. For a start, it must have an in-flight refueling capability so the president can go anywhere in the world and stay up as long as needed. Retrofitting this to an existing 747 would be very expensive, as the feds would need to strengthen portions of the hull to handle the refueling system and reconfigure the fuel tanks to handle trim issues. Then there's the hull, which is known to be armored, and the windows are also thicker than you'd find on a normal flight. The government would also need to build in weapons systems like the chaff rockets used against radar-guided missiles, flares against heat seekers, and AN/ALQ-204 Matador Infrared Countermeasure systems, or similar to try and confuse incoming missiles. Next up, the engines and electrical systems would have to be replaced. The electronics in the current VC-25s are hardened as much as possible against an electromagnetic pulse that would be generated by a nuclear detonation. There are also claims that the aircraft have extra shielding in the engines to help against missile fragments should a physical attack happen. Next up are communications. Air Force One has air-to-ground, air-to-air, and satellite comms systems that are thought to be the equal of what's in the White House. There are at least two separate internal phone systems - one open and the other highly secure - that would need to be installed and checked as well. Then there are incidentals. Contrary to what films will tell you, there is no escape capsule on the current Air Force One, nor a rear parachute ramp, but there is a medical suite with emergency equipment and space for a physician which would already need to be installed, as well as a secured cargo area designed to prevent tampering or unauthorized access. As for the threat of embedded surveillance devices, Richard Aboulafia, managing director of aircraft consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory, said: "You'd have to take it apart piece by piece to stop a professional operator putting in lots of equipment to confuse things, like spare sensors and wiring." "It wouldn't be in the air before 2030 at the earliest, long after he's left office and probably later than the existing planned replacements," said Aboulafia. "It makes no sense on any level, except that he wants a free 747 for himself. Nothing else makes any sense." "What's sort of annoying about the whole thing is I'm not sure what's wrong with the current Air Force One," Aboulafia said. "Maybe if they gave it a gold makeover, he'd like it more."

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Business Insider tells the story in three bullet points: - Big Tech companies depend on content made by others to train their AI models. - Some of those creators say using their work to train AI is copyright infringement. - The U.S. Copyright Office just published a report that indicates it may agree. The office released on Friday its latest in a series of reports exploring copyright laws and artificial intelligence. The report addresses whether the copyrighted content AI companies use to train their AI models qualifies under the fair use doctrine. AI companies are probably not going to like what they read... AI execs argue they haven't violated copyright laws because the training falls under fair use. According to the U.S. Copyright Office's new report, however, it's not that simple. "Although it is not possible to prejudge the result in any particular case, precedent supports the following general observations," the office said. "Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs — all of which can affect the market." The office made a distinction between AI models for research and commercial AI models. "When a model is deployed for purposes such as analysis or research — the types of uses that are critical to international competitiveness — the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training," the office said. "But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries." The report says outputs "substantially similar to copyrighted works in the dataset" are less likely to be considered transformative than when the purpose "is to deploy it for research, or in a closed system that constrains it to a non-substitutive task." Business Insider adds that "A day after the office released the report, President Donald Trump fired its director, Shira Perlmutter, a spokesperson told Business Insider."

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"Login credentials belonging to an employee at both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Government Efficiency have appeared in multiple public leaks from info-stealer malware," reports Ars Technica, "a strong indication that devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years." As an employee of DOGE, [30-something Kyle] Schutt accessed FEMA's proprietary software for managing both disaster and non-disaster funding grants [to Dropsite News]. Under his role at CISA, he likely is privy to sensitive information regarding the security of civilian federal government networks and critical infrastructure throughout the U.S. According to journalist Micah Lee, user names and passwords for logging in to various accounts belonging to Schutt have been published at least four times since 2023 in logs from stealer malware... Besides pilfering login credentials, stealers can also log all keystrokes and capture or record screen output. The data is then sent to the attacker and, occasionally after that, can make its way into public credential dumps... Lee went on to say that credentials belonging to a Gmail account known to belong to Schutt have appeared in 51 data breaches and five pastes tracked by breach notification service Have I Been Pwned. Among the breaches that supplied the credentials is one from 2013 that pilfered password data for 3 million Adobe account holders, one in a 2016 breach that stole credentials for 164 million LinkedIn users, a 2020 breach affecting 167 million users of Gravatar, and a breach last year of the conservative news site The Post Millennial. The credentials may have been exposed when service providers were compromised, the article points out, but the "steady stream of published credentials" is "a clear indication that the credentials he has used over a decade or more have been publicly known at various points. "And as Lee noted, the four dumps from stealer logs show that at least one of his devices was hacked at some point." Thanks to Slashdot reader gkelley for sharing the news.

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Adafruit's managing director Phillip Torrone is also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone. He stopped by Thursday to share what happened after a large portion of a recent import was subjected to a 125% +20% +25% import markup... We're no stranger to tariff bills, although they have definitely ramped up over the last two months. However, this is our first "big bill"... Unlike other taxes like sales tax where we collect on behalf of the state and then submit it back at the end of the month — or income taxes, where we only pay if we are profitable — tariff taxes are paid before we sell any of the products. And they're due within a week of receipt, which has a big impact on cash flow. In this particular case, we're buying from a vendor, not a factory, so we can't second-source the items. (And these particular products we couldn't manufacture ourselves even if we wanted to, since the vendor has well-deserved IP protections). And the products were booked & manufactured many months ago, before the tariffs were in place. Since they are electronics products/components, there's a chance we may be able to request reclassification on some items to avoid the 125% "reciprocal" tariff, but there's no assurance that it will succeed, and even if it does, it is many, many months until we could see a refund. We'll have to increase the prices on some of these products. But we're not sure if people will be willing to pay the higher cost, so we may well be "stuck" with unsellable inventory — that we have already paid a large fee on... Their blog post even includes a photo of the DHL customs invoice with the five-digit duty fee... Share your own stories and experiences in the comments. Any other Slashdot readers being affected by the new U.S. tariffs?

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A Florida bill, which would have required social media companies to provide an encryption backdoor for allowing police to access user accounts and private messages, has failed to pass into law. The Social Media Use by Minors bill was "indefinitely postponed" and "withdrawn from consideration" in the Florida House of Representatives earlier this week. Lawmakers in the Florida Senate had already voted to advance the legislation, but a bill requires both legislative chambers to pass before it can become law. The bill would have required social media firms to "provide a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when law enforcement obtains a subpoena," which are typically issued by law enforcement agencies and without judicial oversight. Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the bill "dangerous and dumb." Security professionals have long argued that it is impossible to create a secure backdoor that cannot also be maliciously abused, and encryption backdoors put user data at risk of data breaches.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday its well-known "billion-dollar weather and climate disasters" database "will be retired," a move that will make it next to impossible for the public to track the cost of extreme weather and climate events. The weather, climate and oceans agency is also ending other products, it has recently announced, due in large part to staffing reductions. NOAA is narrowing the array of services it provides, with climate-related programs scrutinized especially closely. The disasters database, which will be archived but no longer updated beyond 2024, has allowed taxpayers, media and researchers to track the cost of natural disasters -- spanning extreme events from hurricanes to hailstorms -- since 1980. Its discontinuation is another Trump-administration blow to the public's view into how fossil fuel pollution is changing the world around them and making extreme weather more costly. [...] The database vacuums loss information from throughout the insurance industry, among other public and private sources. According to the database, there were 403 weather and climate disasters totally at least $1 billion in the United States since 1980, totaling more than $2.945 trillion. As of April 8, there had not been any confirmed billion-dollar disasters so far in 2025, but it lists four events as having the potential to make the tally, including the Los Angeles-area wildfires in January. Between 1980 and 2024, there were nine such disasters on average each year, though in the past five years, that annual average has jumped to 24. The record for one year was 28 events in 2023. "What makes this resource uniquely valuable is not just its standardized methodology across decades, but the fact that it draws from proprietary and non-public data sources (such as reinsurance loss estimates, localized government reports, and private claims databases) that are otherwise inaccessible to most researchers," Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications for and co-founder of First Street, a climate risk financial modeling firm, told CNN via email. "Without it, replicating or extending damage trend analyses, especially at regional scales or across hazard types, is nearly impossible without significant funding or institutional access to commercial catastrophe models."

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According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration plans to revise a set of chip trade restrictions called the "AI diffusion" rule, which were scheduled to take effect on May 15. CNBC reports: The rule, which was proposed in the last days of the Biden administration, organizes countries into three different tiers, all of which have different restrictions on whether advanced AI chips like those made by Nvidia, AMD, and Intel can be shipped to the country without a license. Chipmakers including Nvidia and AMD have been against the rule. AMD CEO Lisa Su told CNBC on Wednesday that the U.S. should strike a balance between restricting access to chips for national security and providing access, which will boost the American chip industry. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said earlier this week that being locked out of the Chinese AI market would be a "tremendous loss."

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