In a recent article published in the New York Times, author Casey Michael Henry argues that today's tech industry keeps borrowing dystopian sci-fi aesthetics and ideas -- often the parts that were meant as warnings -- and repackages them as exciting products without recognizing that they were originally cautionary tales to avoid. "The tech industry is delivering on some of the futuristic notions of late-20th-century science fiction," writes Henry. "Yet it seems, at times, bizarrely unaware that many of those notions were meant to be dystopian or satirical -- dismal visions of where our worst and dumbest habits could lead us." Here's an excerpt from the report: You worry that someone in today's tech world might watch "Gattaca" -- a film that features a eugenicist future in which people with ordinary DNA are relegated to menial jobs -- and see it as an inspirational launching point for a collaboration between 23andMe and a charter school. The material on Sora, for instance, can feel oddly similar to the jokes about crass entertainment embedded in dystopian films and postmodern novels. In the movie "Idiocracy," America loved a show called "Ow! My Balls!" in which a man is hit in the testicles in increasingly florid ways. "Robocop" imagined a show about a goggle-eyed pervert with an inane catchphrase. "The Running Man" had a game show in which contestants desperately collected dollar bills and climbed a rope to escape ravenous dogs. That Sora could be prompted to imagine a game show in which Michel Foucault chokeslams Ronald Reagan, or Prince battles an anaconda, doesn't feel new; it feels like a gag from a 1990s writer or a film about social decay. The echoes aren't all accidental. Modern design has been influenced by our old techno-dystopias -- particularly the cyberpunk variety, with its neon-noir gloss and "high tech, low life" allure. From William Gibson novels to films like "The Matrix," the culture has taken in countless ruined cityscapes, all-controlling megacorporations, high-tech body modifications, V.R.-induced illnesses, deceptive A.I. paramours, mechanical assassins and leather-clad hacker antiheroes, navigating a dissociative cyberspace with savvily repurposed junk-tech. This was not a world many people wanted to live in, but its style and ethos seem to reverberate in the tech industry's boldest visions of the future.

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Mark Zuckerberg opened an unlicensed school named after the family's pet chicken -- and it was the final straw for his neighbors, writes Slashdot reader joshuark, citing a report from Wired. The magazine obtained 1,665 pages of documents about the neighborhood dispute -- "including 311 records, legal filings, construction plans, and emails." Here are excerpts from the report: The documents reveal that the school may have been operating as early as 2021 without a permit to operate in the city of Palo Alto. As many as 30 students might have enrolled, according to observations from neighbors. [...] Over time, neighbors became fed up with what they argued was the city's lack of action, particularly with respect to the school. Some believed that the delay was because of preferential treatment to the Zuckerbergs. "We find it quite remarkable that you are working so hard to meet the needs of a single billionaire family while keeping the rest of the neighborhood in the dark," reads one email sent to the city's Planning and Development Services Department in February. "Just as you have not earned our trust, this property owner has broken many promises over the years, and any solution which depends on good faith behavioral changes from them is a failure from the beginning." [...] In order for the Zuckerbergs to run a private school on their land, which is in a residential zone, they need a "conditional use" permit from the city. However, based on the documents WIRED obtained, and Palo Alto's public database of planning applications, the Zuckerbergs do not appear to have ever applied for or received this permit. Per emails obtained by WIRED, Palo Alto authorities told a lawyer working with the Zuckerbergs in March 2025 that the family had to shut down the school on its compound by June 30. [...] However, Zuckerberg family spokesperson Brian Baker tells WIRED that the school didn't close, per se. It simply moved. It's not clear where it is now located, or whether the school is operating under a different name. [...] Most of the Zuckerbergs' neighbors did not respond to WIRED's request for comment. However, the ones that did clearly indicated that they would not be forgetting the Bicken Ben saga, or the past decade of disruption, anytime soon.

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alternative_right shares a report from The Conversation: Countries around the world have been discussing the need to rein in climate change for three decades, yet global greenhouse gas emissions -- and global temperatures with them -- keep rising. When it seems like we're getting nowhere, it's useful to step back and examine the progress that has been made. Let's take a look at the United States, historically the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter. Over those three decades, the U.S. population soared by 28% and the economy, as measured by gross domestic product adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. Yet U.S. emissions from many of the activities that produce greenhouse gases -- transportation, industry, agriculture, heating and cooling of buildings -- have remained about the same over the past 30 years. Transportation is a bit up; industry a bit down. And electricity, once the nation's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, has seen its emissions drop significantly. Overall, the U.S. is still among the countries with the highest per capita emissions, so there's room for improvement, and its emissions (PDF) haven't fallen enough to put the country on track to meet its pledges under the 10-year-old Paris climate agreement. But U.S. emissions are down about 15% over the past 10 years. The report mentions how the U.S. managed to replace coal with cheaper, more efficient natural-gas plants while rapidly scaling wind, solar, and battery storage as their costs fell. At the same time, major gains in appliance, lighting, and building efficiency flattened per-capita power use. This also coincided with improved vehicle fuel economy that helped keep transportation emissions in check.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Ford executives are considering scrapping the electric version of the F-150 pickup truck as losses, supply setbacks, slow sales, and the arrival of a cheaper midsize EV truck undermine the business case for its full-size electric pickup. Reuters reports: Last month, a union official told Reuters that Ford was pausing production at the Dearborn, Michigan, plant that makes its F-150 Lightning electric pickup due to a fire at a supplier's aluminum factory. "We have good inventories of the F-150 Lightning and will bring Rouge Electric Vehicle Center back up at the right time, but don't have an exact date at this time," Ford said in a statement on Thursday. The WSJ report added that General Motors executives have discussed discontinuing some electric trucks, citing people familiar with the matter. The Detroit three, which includes Ford, GM and Chrysler-parent Stellantis, have rolled back their ambitious plans for EVs in the United States, pivoting to their gasoline-powered models.

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BrianFagioli writes: Google has released Magika 1.0, a stable version of its AI-based file type detection tool, and rebuilt the entire engine in Rust for speed and memory safety. The system now recognizes more than 200 file types, up from about 100, and is better at distinguishing look-alike formats such as JSON vs JSONL, TSV vs CSV, C vs C++, and JavaScript vs TypeScript. The team used a 3TB training dataset and even relied on Gemini to generate synthetic samples for rare file types, allowing Magika to handle formats that don't have large, publicly available corpora. The tool supports Python and TypeScript integrations and offers a native Rust command-line client. Under the hood, Magika uses ONNX Runtime for inference and Tokio for parallel processing, allowing it to scan around 1,000 files per second on a modern laptop core and scale further with more CPU cores. Google says this makes Magika suitable for security workflows, automated analysis pipelines, and general developer tooling. Installation is a single curl or PowerShell command, and the project remains fully open source. The project is available on GitHub and documentation can be found here.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: What did Ilya see?" Two years ago, it was the meme seen 'round the world (or at least 'round the tech industry). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had been briefly ousted in November 2023 by members of the company's board of directors, including his longtime collaborator and fellow cofounder Ilya Sutskever. The board claimed Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board," undermining their confidence in him. He was out for less than a week before being reinstated after hundreds of employees threatened to resign. But observers wondered: What hadn't Altman been candid about? And what led Sutskever to turn against him? Now, new details have come to light in a legal deposition involving Sutskever, part of Musk's ongoing lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI. For nearly 10 hours on October 1st, bookended by repeated sniping between Musk's and Sutsever's attorneys, Sutskever answered questions about the turmoil around Altman's ouster, from conflicts between executives to short-lived merger talks with Anthropic. He testified that from personal experience and documentation he'd viewed, he'd seen Altman pit high-ranking executives against each other and offer conflicting information about his plans for the company, telling people what they wanted to hear. The testimony paints a picture of a leader who could be manipulative and chameleon-like in the relentless pursuit of his own agenda -- though Sutskever expressed hesitation about his reliance on some of the secondhand accounts later in testimony, saying he "learned the critical importance of firsthand knowledge for matters like this." In a statement toThe Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said that "The events of 2023 are behind us. These claims were fully examined during the board's independent review, which unanimously concluded Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI." The comment echoes a 2024 statement by board chair Bret Taylor, following an investigation conducted by the company. Altman "exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another," reads a quote from the memo Sutskever. Altman told him and Jakub Pachocki, who is now OpenAI's chief scientist, "conflicting things about the way the company would be run," leading to internal conflict and repeated undermining. Sutskever said he also faulted Altman for "not accepting or rejecting" former OpenAI research executive Dario Amodei Dario's conditions when he wanted to run all research and fire OpenAI president Greg Brockman, implying Altman played both sides. Furthermore, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati surfaced claims that Altman left Y Combinator for "similar behaviors. He was creating chaos, starting lots of new projects, pitting people against each other, and thus was not managing YC well."

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Microsoft is launching a new MAI Superintelligence Team under Mustafa Suleyman to build practical, controllable AI aimed at digital companions, medical diagnostics, and renewable-energy modeling. "We are doing this to solve real concrete problems and do it in such a way that it remains grounded and controllable," Suleyman wrote. "We are not building an ill-defined and ethereal superintelligence; we are building a practical technology explicitly designed only to serve humanity." CNBC reports: The new Microsoft AI research group will focus on providing useful companions for people that can help in education and other domains, Suleyman wrote in his blog post. It will also pursue narrow areas in medicine and in renewable energy production. "We'll have expert level performance at the full range of diagnostics, alongside highly capable planning and prediction in operational clinical settings," Suleyman wrote. As investors and analysts are increasingly voicing their concerns about overspending on AI without a clear path to profits, Suleyman said he wants "to make clear that we are not building a superintelligence at any cost, with no limits."

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Japan's new competition rules are forcing Apple to open the iPhone to third-party app stores, and iOS 26.2 will quietly flip that switch ahead of the December deadline. MacRumors reports: According to a post shared on X by @Tzzlala, iPhones running the beta in Japan are able to install alternative app stores like AltStore PAL and Epic Games, and download apps from them, though Fortnite in-app purchases are currently region-blocked by Epic. [...] The guidelines are set to come into effect by December 18, 2025, while Apple is expected to release iOS 26.2 in December, sometime between December 9 and December 16. Epic Games has already announced plans to bring Fortnite and its game store platform to iOS in Japan by late 2025.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In a submission for the 2026 National Trade Estimate Report (PDF), Cloudflare warns the U.S. government that site blocking efforts cause widespread disruption to legitimate services. The complaint points to Italy's automated Piracy Shield system, which reportedly blocked "tens of thousands" of legitimate sites. Meanwhile, overbroad IP address blocks in Spain and new automated blocking proposals in France are serious concerns that harm U.S. business interests, Cloudflare reports. [...] Cloudflare urges the USTR to take these concerns into account for its upcoming National Trade Estimate Report. Ideally, it wants these trade barriers to be dismantled. These calls run counter to requests from rightsholders, who urge the USTR to ensure that more foreign countries implement blocking measures. With potential site-blocking legislation being considered in U.S. Congress, that may impact local lobbying efforts as well. If and how the USTR will address these concerns will become clearer early next year, when the 2026 National Trade Estimate Report is expected to be published.

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A curious engineer discovered that his iLife A11 smart vacuum was remotely "killed" after he blocked it from sending data to the manufacturer's servers. By reverse-engineering it with custom hardware and Python scripts, he managed to revive the device to run fully offline. Tom's Hardware reports: An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device. That's when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer -- something he hadn't consented to. The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers' IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after. After a lengthy investigation, he discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device. He sent it to the service center multiple times, wherein the technicians would turn it on and see nothing wrong with the vacuum. When they returned it to him, it would work for a few days and then fail to boot again. After several rounds of back-and-forth, the service center probably got tired and just stopped accepting it, saying it was out of warranty. Because of this, he decided to disassemble the thing to determine what killed it and to see if he could get it working again. [...] So, why did the A11 work at the service center but refuse to run in his home? The technicians would reset the firmware on the smart vacuum, thus removing the kill code, and then connect it to an open network, making it run normally. But once it connected again to the network that had its telemetry servers blocked, it was bricked remotely because it couldn't communicate with the manufacturer's servers. Since he blocked the appliance's data collection capabilities, its maker decided to just kill it altogether. "Someone -- or something -- had remotely issued a kill command," says Harishankar. "Whether it was intentional punishment or automated enforcement of 'compliance,' the result was the same: a consumer device had turned on its owner." In the end, the owner was able to run his vacuum fully locally without manufacturer control after all the tweaks he made. This helped him retake control of his data and make use of his $300 software-bricked smart device on his own terms. As for the rest of us who don't have the technical knowledge and time to follow his accomplishments, his advice is to "Never use your primary WiFi network for IoT devices" and to "Treat them as strangers in your home."

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China has delayed the return of its Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft after it was suspected to have been struck by space debris while docked at the Tiangong space station. "The Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft is suspected of being struck by a small piece of space debris, and impact analysis and risk assessment are underway," the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) statement Nov. 5 read. "To ensure the safety and health of the astronauts and the complete success of the mission, it has been decided that the Shenzhou-20 return mission, originally scheduled for Nov. 5, will be postponed." SpaceNews reports: CMSEO did not specify the location of the suspected strike, the extent of any damage, or the data that indicated an impact. No potential dates were noted for a return to Earth. The Shenzhou-20 spacecraft launched April 24, carrying three astronauts -- commander Chen Dong and crewmates Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie -- to the Tiangong space station. The spacecraft docked at the radial port of Tiangong's Tianhe core module. The crew have completed their six-month-long mission in orbit, and had handed over control of the space station to the newly-arrived Shenzhou-21 crew Nov. 4. Checks on the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft could include telemetry and leak tests, verifying guidance and propulsion systems, and screening for impacts in accelerometer and acoustic sensor data. A key concern would be potential damage to the spacecraft's thermal protection system or parachute deployment structures, both critical for safe atmospheric reentry and landing. Tiangong features a 10-meter-long robotic arm, capable of crawling, and a smaller, more precise arm. These could be employed to position cameras and provide closeup imagery of a potential impact. Crews may be able to conduct an extravehicular activity (EVA) to assess the situation. Tiangong crews have recently added debris shields during a number of EVAs; the same procedures, tools, and arm support can be adapted for a Shenzhou inspection.

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A new study challenges the Nobel-winning theory that the universe's expansion is accelerating, suggesting instead that it may be slowing down as dark energy weakens -- potentially leading to a future "big crunch" where the cosmos collapses back in on itself. "Our study shows that the universe has already entered a phase of decelerated expansion at the present epoch and that dark energy evolves with time much more rapidly than previously thought," said Prof Young-Wook Lee, of Yonsei University in South Korea, who led the work. "If these results are confirmed, it would mark a major paradigm shift in cosmology since the discovery of dark energy 27 years ago." The Guardian reports: The latest work focuses on the reliability of observations of distant supernovae (exploding stars) that led to the discovery of dark energy, work that was awarded the 2011 Nobel prize in physics. [...] By estimating the ages of 300 host galaxies using a different method, the team concluded that there are simply variations in the properties of stars in the early universe that mean they produce, on average, fainter supernovae. Correcting for this systematic bias still results in an expanding universe, but suggests that the expansion has slowed down and that dark energy is waning, the analysis concluded. If dark energy keeps decreasing to the point where it becomes negative, the universe is theoretically predicted to end in a big crunch. The findings are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: The US- and UK-based company Quantinuum today unveiled Helios, its third-generation quantum computer, which includes expanded computing power and error correction capability. Like all other existing quantum computers, Helios is not powerful enough to execute the industry's dream money-making algorithms, such as those that would be useful for materials discovery or financial modeling. But Quantinuum's machines, which use individual ions as qubits, could be easier to scale up than quantum computers that use superconducting circuits as qubits, such as Google's and IBM's. "Helios is an important proof point in our road map about how we'll scale to larger physical systems," says Jennifer Strabley, vice president at Quantinuum, which formed in 2021 from the merger of Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum. Honeywell remains Quantinuum's majority owner. Located at Quantinuum's facility in Colorado, Helios comprises a myriad of components, including mirrors, lasers, and optical fiber. Its core is a thumbnail-size chip containing the barium ions that serve as the qubits, which perform the actual computing. Helios computes with 98 barium ions at a time; its predecessor, H2, used 56 ytterbium qubits. The barium ions are an upgrade, as they have proven easier to control than ytterbium. These components all sit within a chamber that is cooled to about 15 Kelvin (-432.67 ), on top of an optical table. Users can access the computer by logging in remotely over the cloud. [...] Helios is noteworthy for its qubits' precision, says Rajibul Islam, a physicist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who is not affiliated with Quantinuum. The computer's qubit error rates are low to begin with, which means it doesn't need to devote as much of its hardware to error correction. Quantinuum had pairs of qubits interact in an operation known as entanglement and found that they behaved as expected 99.921% of the time. "To the best of my knowledge, no other platform is at this level," says Islam. [...] Besides increasing the number of qubits on its chip, another notable achievement for Quantinuum is that it demonstrated error correction "on the fly," says David Hayes, the company's director of computational theory and design, That's a new capability for its machines. Nvidia GPUs were used to identify errors in the qubits in parallel. Hayes thinks that GPUs are more effective for error correction than chips known as FPGAs, also used in the industry. Quantinuum has used its computers to investigate the basic physics of magnetism and superconductivity. Earlier this year, it reported simulating a magnet on H2, Quantinuum's predecessor, with the claim that it "rivals the best classical approaches in expanding our understanding of magnetism." Along with announcing the introduction of Helios, the company has used the machine to simulate the behavior of electrons in a high-temperature superconductor. Quantinuum is expanding its Helios line with a new system in Minnesota. It's also started developing its fourth-generation quantum computer, Sol, set for 2027 with 192 qubits. Then, a fifth-generation system, Apollo, is expected in 2029 with thousands of qubits and full fault tolerance.

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A bungled October 18 heist that saw $102 million of crown jewels stolen from the Louvre in broad daylight has exposed years of lax security at the national art museum. From trivial passwords like 'LOUVRE' to decades-old, unsupported systems and easy rooftop access, the job was made surprisingly easy. PC Gamer reports: As Rogue cofounder and former Polygon arch-jester Cass Marshall notes on Bluesky, we owe a lot of videogame designers an apology. We've spent years dunking on the emptyheadedness of game characters leaving their crucial security codes and vault combinations in the open for anyone to read, all while the Louvre has been using the password "Louvre" for its video surveillance servers. That's not an exaggeration. Confidential documents reviewed by Liberation detail a long history of Louvre security vulnerabilities, dating back to a 2014 cybersecurity audit performed by the French Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) at the museum's request. ANSSI experts were able to infiltrate the Louvre's security network to manipulate video surveillance and modify badge access. "How did the experts manage to infiltrate the network? Primarily due to the weakness of certain passwords which the French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) politely describes as 'trivial,'" writes Liberation's Brice Le Borgne via machine translation. "Type 'LOUVRE' to access a server managing the museum's video surveillance, or 'THALES' to access one of the software programs published by... Thales." The museum sought another audit from France's National Institute for Advanced Studies in Security and Justice in 2015. Concluded two years later, the audit's 40 pages of recommendations described "serious shortcomings," "poorly managed" visitor flow, rooftops that are easily accessible during construction work, and outdated and malfunctioning security systems. Later documents indicate that, in 2025, the Louvre was still using security software purchased in 2003 that is no longer supported by its developer, running on hardware using Windows Server 2003.

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A new survey of over 300 US and UK gaming executives found that 72% view Steam as a monopoly. "Furthermore, 88% said that at least three-quarters of their revenue came from Steam, while 37% reported that the platform accounted for 90% of their total revenue," adds Techspot. From the report: Atomik Research conducted the recent survey on behalf of Rokky, a company that helps game publishers minimize the impact of grey market key resellers on prices. In addition to opinions on Steam, developers also answered questions about the PC market's biggest challenges. The increasing popularity of free-to-play games such as Fortnite, DOTA 2, Counter-Strike 2, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Roblox topped the list of concerns for 40% of respondents. Approximately a third mentioned market saturation and discoverability, echoing data that suggests there aren't enough players for the thousands of new titles released on Steam each year. A similar portion of survey respondents also expressed concerns regarding subscription services.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Google Maps is heading in a new direction with artificial intelligence sitting in the passenger's seat. Fueled by Google's Gemini AI technology, the world's most popular navigation app will become a more conversational companion as part of a redesign announced Wednesday. The hands-free experience is meant to turn Google Maps into something more like an insightful passenger able to direct a driver to a destination while also providing nearby recommendations on places to eat, shop or sightsee, when asked for the advice. "No fumbling required -- now you can just ask," Google promised in a blog post about the app makeover. The AI features are also supposed to enable Google Maps to be more precise by calling out landmarks to denote the place to make a turn instead of relying on distance notifications. AI chatbots, like Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT, have sometimes lapsed into periods of making things up -- known as "hallucinations" in tech speak -- but Google is promising that built-in safeguards will prevent Maps from accidentally sending drivers down the wrong road. All the information that Gemini is drawing upon will be culled from the roughly 250 million places stored in Google Maps' database of reviews accumulated during the past 20 years. Google Maps' new AI capabilities will be rolling out to both Apple's iPhone and Android mobile devices.

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A new bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Mark Warner and Josh Hawley would require companies and federal agencies to report quarterly on AI-related workforce changes, including layoffs, new hires, and retraining efforts. The data from the AI-Related Job Impacts Clarity Act (PDF) would then be compiled by the Department of Labor into a publicly available report. "This bipartisan legislation will finally give us a clear picture of AI's impact on the workforce," Warner said in a statement. "Armed with this information, we can make sure AI drives opportunity instead of leaving workers behind."

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A new Activate Consulting report reveals that 43% of Gen Z now prefer YouTube and TikTok over traditional TV or paid streaming. With global media revenues surging and traditional TV viewership collapsing, the average person now spends over 13 hours a day consuming content across platforms, effectively living a "32-hour day" through multitasking. Variety reports: Per the same survey, the popularity of "microdramas" -- one of the latest trends on those platforms, consisting of 1-2 minute scripted episodes of an ongoing storyline -- has been increasing at a fast rate with 28 million U.S. adults (52% aged 18-34) reportedly watching that new form of content. Additional findings include projections for global internet and media revenue to increase by $388 billion by 2029, while average daily time spent streaming video will climb to 4 hours and 8 minutes as time spent watching traditional TV is set to collapse to just 1 hour and 17 minutes. Activate estimates that, as a result, streaming revenues (from ads and subscriptions) will grow 18-19% annually while traditional TV revenues will fall 4-6% year to year.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Authorities in Denmark are urgently studying how to close an apparent security loophole in hundreds of Chinese-made electric buses that enables them to be remotely deactivated. The investigation comes after transport authorities in Norway, where the Yutong buses are also in service, found that the Chinese supplier had remote access for software updates and diagnostics to the vehicles' control systems -- which could be exploited to affect buses while in transit. Amid concerns over potential security risks, the Norwegian public transport authority Ruter decided to test two electric buses in an isolated environment. Bernt Reitan Jenssen, Ruter's chief executive, said: "The testing revealed risks that we are now taking measures against. National and local authorities have been informed and must assist with additional measures at a national level." Their investigations found that remote deactivation could be prevented by removing the buses' sim cards, but they decided against this because it would also disconnect the bus from other systems. Ruter said it planned to bring in stricter security requirements for future procurements. Jenssen said it must act before the arrival of the next generation of buses, which could be even "more integrated and harder to secure." Movia, Denmark's largest public transport company, has 469 Chinese electric buses in operation -- 262 of which were manufactured by Yutong. Jeppe Gaard, Movia's chief operating officer, said he was made aware of the loophole last week. "This is not a Chinese bus problem," he said. "It is a problem for all types of vehicles and devices with Chinese electronics built in."

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President Trump has re-nominated tech billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, reversing his earlier withdrawal over concerns about Isaacman's political affiliations. CBS News reports: Mr. Trump nominated Isaacman to the Senate-confirmed post last year, but announced in late May he had decided to withdraw Isaacman after a "thorough review" of his "prior associations." Weeks after the withdrawal, the president went further in expressing his concerns about Isaacman's credentials. At the time, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he thought Isaacman "was very good," but had been "surprised to learn" that Isaacman was a "blue-blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before." [...] Mr. Trump made no mention of his previous decision to nominate and then withdraw Isaacman in his Tuesday evening announcement of the re-nomination on his Truth Social platform. "This evening, I am pleased to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of NASA," Trump posted. "Jared's passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era."

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