(Par Sabine BLANC)
GENOLIER (Suisse) (TICsanté) - Avec l'arrivée de l'intelligence artificielle (IA), "il faut complètement changer la façon d'enseigner", a estimé le Dr Arnaud Beddok, oncologue radiothérapeute à l'Institut Godinot, le centre de lutte contre le cancer (CLCC) de Reims, lors d'un voyage de presse organisé le 15 janvier par la fédération Unicancer et Accuray, au Genolier Innovation Hub en Suisse.
Même le "travail inutile" (tout dépend de la dose) peut être... utile, car en s'ennuyant ou en étant confronté à des problèmes que l'on est créatif.
L'IA tue la créativité, mais c'est juste un argument supplémentaire, on le savait déjà. (Permalink)
[Encore un discours sans concessions][1] -ni à Trump, ni à nous autres européens... surtout à nous autres européens- de Claude Malhuret, le sénateur préférés des américains non-trumpistes.
Une fois encore, il se contente d'énoncer des faits -on est dans la merde- et des solutions -il faut se sortir les doigts et il faut du courage politique- avec quelques tacles bien sentis énoncés d'une vois égale.
On n'en parle pas beaucoup -pas assez du moins- à cause de l'agitation de la carotte malade, mais ce qu'il vient de sa passer à Jérusalem est gravissime : Israël a rasé le siège d'une institution de l'ONU, qu'il accuse toujours, malgré l'inanité de la chose, d'être complice des attentats du 7 octobre. On est dans la méthode fasciste de Trump, mais appliquée par quelqu'un de parfaitement raisonnable et pas du tout délirant.
C'est absolument terrifiant. Parce que Trump, qui tente de saborder l'ONU avec son "Conseil de la paix" où il faut débourser 1mds de $ pour avoir droit à un siège permanent, saura parfaitement utiliser son ambassadeur à l'ONU pour bloquer le moindre sanction contre Israël. (Permalink)
La collective Girlxcott, née des mobilisations qui ont abouti à l’annulation du Festival international de la BD d’Angoulême 2026, propose, en remplacement de celui-ci, plusieurs événements disséminés en France, en Belgique et en Espagne pour célébrer la BD « sous toutes ses formes, en ouvrant des espaces joyeux et inclusifs ». La collective précise que chaque événement, […]
Alors que, partout en Europe, des dirigeants d’extrême droite arrivent aux responsabilités, les électeurs portugais ont placé le socialiste António José Seguro en tête du premier tour de la présidentielle. Il devance de 8 points le candidat populiste André Ventura, qui réalise néanmoins une progression historique. Le second tour aura lieu le 8 février. Son résultat est […]
Apple vient de remporter des manches dans deux batailles judiciaires. La première en France, sur son dispositif App Tracking Transparency qu’elle peut continuer à utiliser. La seconde aux États-Unis, avec un recours collectif sur la collecte de données personnelles, qui prend (encore) du plomb dans l’aile. C’est une victoire pour Apple : le tribunal judiciaire […]
Cette série documentaire en 6 épisodes va à la rencontre de dix magistrats et magistrates. Sont-ils ces juges « politiques » qu’on jette en pâture à l’opinion publique ? La projection d’extraits de la série sera suivie d’un débat animé par Pierre Jacquemain, codirecteur de Politis, avec : Pour assister à la soirée, réservation obligatoire par courriel à […]
Salle trop petite, public jeune et attaques frontales contre le Parti socialiste. Mardi 20 janvier, La France insoumise a lancé à Strasbourg la campagne municipale de Florian Kobryn en liant l’actualité nationale à la situation locale.
Salle trop petite, public jeune et attaques frontales contre le Parti socialiste. Mardi 20 janvier, La France insoumise a lancé à Strasbourg la campagne municipale de Florian Kobryn en liant l'actualité nationale à la situation locale.
Out CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was stunned by a New York Times report that found Donald Trump’s personal wealth has grown by over $1.4 billion since he took office for the second time.
The estimate by the Times editorial board included earnings from cryptocurrency investments, licensing of Trump’s name, Amazon’s documentary on the first lady, and overseas real estate ventures.
“This amount is really greater than the sum total of everything he made from his inheritance, from being on The Apprentice, and from all the licensing deals while he was on The Apprentice.”
“And this is just the first year,” Cooper pointed out. “They’re open for business.”
Cryptocurrency investments, Buettner said, have been the Trump family’s biggest earners, estimating the Trumps have raked in about $800 million from those investments this year alone.
Buettner also pointed out the many conflicts of interest related to these earnings. “The cryptocurrency money comes to them anonymously… most of it comes from overseas entities.” He pointed out that a big deal with the United Arab Emirates utilized a Trump cryptocurrency to pay for a $2 billion investment.
“It was brand new and struggling and unproven, and they did that, that will put about 80 to 100 million dollars a year in the pockets of the Trumps.”
He said that after that, within a few weeks, Trump overturned a policy that “had long rejected the UAE’s pleas to get AI computer chips from us because they were thought to be too close to China.”
“He just did away with that,” Buettner said, “and then pardoned the fellow who was on the other end of the deal.”
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Older fiber optic lamps use a dim filament lamp or halogen lamp to light them up. They also often feature a spinning color disk to vary the light patterns, which does have the side effect of absorbing some of the already-limited light output.
When it came to upgrading his own decades-old lamp, [Braniac75] decided to initially stick within the specs of the original halogen lamp. The fixture was rated for 12 volts at 5 watts, with a GU4/GZ4 compatible base, and white light was desired so the color wheel could still do its thing. Swapping out the original 5 W halogen for a 2.5 W LED unit brought a big upgrade in brightness, since the latter is roughly equivalent to a 20 W halogen in light output. Upgrading to a 4.2 W LED pushed things even further, greatly improving the look of the lamp.
The video also explores modding a modern fiber optic lamp, too. It was incredibly cheap, running off batteries and using a single color-changing LED to illuminate the fibers. [Braniac75] decided to try illuminating the plastic fibers with an RGB stage lighting laser rig—namely, the LaserCube Ultra 7.5 W from Wicked Lasers. With this kind of juice, the fiber lamp is eye-searingly bright, quite literally, and difficult to film. However, with the laser output dialed way down, the lamp looks amazing—with rich saturated colors dancing across the fiber bundle as the lasers do their thing.
The tenth and final season of the hit Netflix show debuted on the streaming service on Wednesday (21 January). It sees Brown, along with Antoni Porowski, Tan France, Jonathan Van Ness, and Jeremiah Brent take to Washington, DC to makeover a new crop of ‘heroes’ and bring their warmth and positivity to the US capital.
However, things seem chilly off screen. In addition to skipping interviews with the rest of the cast on Tuesday (20 January) Brown, Queer Eye‘s culture expert, has now unfollowed most of his cast mates on Instagram.
The cast of Queer Eye season 10. (Netflix)
At the time of writing, Brown has unfollowed Porowski, the food and drink expert, France, the style expert, and Jonathan Van Ness, the hair and grooming expert. However, he’s still following Brent, the interior design expert, as well as Bobby Berk, Brent’s predecessor.
Van Ness, Porowski, and France are all still following everyone except Brown and Berk. Meanwhile, Brent is following everyone except Berk.
Having commented on Brown’s absence while appearing on CBS Mornings on Tuesday no one, with the exception of Porowski, in the cast has addressed things further.
On Wednesday, Porowski alluded to the drama by posting an image to his Instagram stories of the Fab Five (not including Berk) with the caption: “when life hands u lemons, u make some thyme and rosemary infused lemonade.”
On Tuesday, Brown cited being “mentally and emotionally abused for years” as a reason for missing interviews. CBS Mornings host Gayle King reported her team had been informed “less than an hour” before the interview commenced that Brown would not be taking part.
A statement from Brown read: “I hope everyone remembers the main theme I have tried to teach them over the past decade, which is to focus on and to protect their mental health/peace from people or a world who seek to destroy it, which is why I can’t be there today.”
Separately on Today host Sheinelle Jones read aloud comments from Brown’s assistant’s that said: “Karamo has felt mentally and emotionally abused for years and he has been advised by his therapist to protect himself and his peace by not attending.”
Porowski described Brown’s absence on Tuesday as a surprise, adding: “Families are complicated and we’re definitely not excluded from that.” And Van Ness praised Brown for his work on the show and said: “We do need to centre what’s best for us sometimes. My hat off to him for doing that today.”
AI darling on neighborly charm offensive amid datacenter backlash
OpenAI wants every Stargate datacenter campus to come with its own community plan reflecting "local concerns," including a commitment not to cause a hike in electricity prices, minimizing water use, and protecting local ecosystems.…
After Russia drama and NASA's on-again-off-again romance, rover shows it still has legs... four of them
The European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled a full-scale structural mock-up of the landing platform for its long-delayed ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover.…
LastPass is warning of a new phishing campaign disguised as a maintenance notification from the service, asking users to back up their vaults in the next 24 hours. [...]
Please prepare and PM submissions by March 23rd (or just post yourself on the carnival on April 1st). The topic: Why are different languages better than each other?
Do you want to definitively prove Lisp's superiority, through song?
Have you worked on metrics of measuring superior language or DSL fit to find the ultimate notation and thus tool of thought?
Are you tired of people badmouthing PHP while you're too tired to defend its honor, because you're actually shipping stuff?
Hell, do you have a good argument why Neolatino's better than Esperanto?
Do you have an even handed framework for actually picking the best tool for the job and not literally hitting everything with your hammer du jour?
Every time an extremist politician attacks a transgender kid to score political points, they are counting on silence. They expect no one to fight back. They assume cruelty will go unanswered.
Transgender Americans make up roughly one percent of the U.S. population, yet in a moment defined by economic anxiety and political dysfunction, the trans community, especially kids, has been turned into a punching bag by extremist politicians. In 2025 alone, more than 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in state legislatures. These are coordinated attempts to legislate fear, erase dignity, and villainize trans people out of public life.
Elected officials who claim to believe in the sanctity of human life – in freedom, in liberty, and in justice for all – continue to deny transgender Americans basic freedoms and rights. And the consequences are deadly. Between November 2023 and November 2024, at least 36 transgender and gender-expansive people were killed. Half of them were Black trans women. Further, transgender youth report significantly increased rates of depression and suicidality compared to their cisgender peers. These attacks are not abstract cultural debates; they are creating a measurable crisis in people’s lives.
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That crisis is why we decided to fight back.
I am part of a team of political strategists who launched Fight for Our Rights PAC to defeat anti-LGBTQ+ bullies where it hurts them most: at the ballot box. This organization seeks to defeat candidates who proudly run on transphobic hate – those who sponsor bans on gender-affirming care, who push so-called “parents’ rights” bills designed to isolate trans kids, and who use their platforms to demean and dehumanize people simply trying to live.
This is a moral fight, and it goes beyond transphobia. We know that those who seek to remove what little protections the transgender community has secured will not stop there. These same factions are already setting their sights on marriage equality and beyond, but our strategy is working.
In 2025, Republicans spent millions of dollars on anti-trans ads. The Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, Winsome Earle-Sears, spent a whopping 57% of her entire media budget on them.
The attack lines were familiar: fearmongering about bathrooms, sports, and kids who just want to exist. And voters rejected it. Every one of the six bullies on the ballots we targeted in Virginia and New Jersey – including Mark Earley Jr., uno, Nancy Muñoz, and Michele Matsikoudis – lost and were replaced by equality supporters. Voters in those states sent a clear message: They want leaders who protect kids, not politicians who pick on them.
From the beginning, we deliberately chose not to center our campaigns on trans people as a political debate. Extremist politicians want that fight. They flood the airwaves with fear because they believe it will distract voters from their own records. We refused to help them do that.
Instead, we focused on accountability. Voters consistently prioritized affordability, health care, and economic security over culture-war attacks, even in races saturated with anti-trans messaging. Many of the lawmakers attacking trans kids had long voting records that were deeply out of step with their districts. By focusing on those records, we kept the conversation on leadership, competence, and the issues voters face every day.
We showed voters the full record. In Virginia, that meant exposing lawmakers who sided with Big Pharma to keep prescription drug prices high, voted against paid family and medical leave, and pushed extreme abortion bans with no exceptions. In New Jersey, it meant holding candidates accountable for aligning with far-right agendas while ignoring local priorities. Once voters saw that pattern, the culture-war rhetoric lost its power.
These victories were not accidents, but rather the results of disciplined strategy: anticipating attacks, testing messaging, responding clearly and immediately, and then turning the conversation back to what voters actually care about – safety, the economy, stability, and freedom.
While too many candidates still freeze or fumble when asked about trans people, our allies showed what courage looks like: refusing to take the bait, refusing to backpedal, and refusing to let extremists define the narrative. That is how you beat bullies.
And to the young trans people reading this: You are not alone.
There are adults across this country waking up every morning determined to make life safer for you. We are fighting for your dignity, your joy, your future. This fight is unfortunately far from over, but we will not stop.
Chris Cormier Maggiano, President and Founder of Cormier & Company, advises funders, issue advocates, and movement leaders to achieve their policy, political, and philanthropic goals. As a donor advisor and political strategist, Chris specializes in the intersection of progressive public policy, national campaigns, and funder engagement. Chris serves on the board of the Movement Advancement Project and lives in New York City with his husband, daughter, and squirrel-obsessed Pointer Hound, Easton. Chris holds a bachelor’s in architecture from Carnegie Mellon University and is an avid New England sports fan.
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Recently, our team came across an infection attempt that stood out—not for its sophistication, but for how determined the attacker was to take a “living off the land” approach to the extreme.
The end goal was to deploy Remcos, a Remote Access Trojan (RAT), and NetSupport Manager, a legitimate remote administration tool that’s frequently abused as a RAT. The route the attacker took was a veritable tour of Windows’ built-in utilities—known as LOLBins (Living Off the Land Binaries).
Both Remcos and NetSupport are widely abused remote access tools that give attackers extensive control over infected systems and are often delivered through multi-stage phishing or infection chains.
Remcos (short for Remote Control & Surveillance) is sold as a legitimate Windows remote administration and monitoring tool but is widely used by cybercriminals. Once installed, it gives attackers full remote desktop access, file system control, command execution, keylogging, clipboard monitoring, persistence options, and tunneling or proxying features for lateral movement.
NetSupport Manager is a legitimate remote support product that becomes “NetSupport RAT” when attackers silently install and configure it for unauthorized access.
Let’s walk through how this attack unfolded, one native command at a time.
Stage 1: The subtle initial access
The attack kicked off with a seemingly odd command:
At first glance, you might wonder: why not just run mshta.exe directly? The answer lies in defense evasion.
By roping in forfiles.exe, a legitimate tool for running commands over batches of files, the attacker muddied the waters. This makes the execution path a bit harder for security tools to spot. In essence, one trusted program quietly launches another, forming a chain that’s less likely to trip alarms.
Stage 2: Fileless download and staging
The mshta command fetched a remote HTA file that immediately spawned cmd.exe, which rolled out an elaborate PowerShell one-liner:
PowerShell’s built-in curl downloaded a payload disguised as a PDF, which in reality was a TAR archive. Then, tar.exe (another trusted Windows add-on) unpacked it into a randomly named folder. The star of this show, however, was glaxnimate.exe—a trojanized version of real animation software, primed to further the infection on execution. Even here, the attacker relies entirely on Windows’ own tools—no EXE droppers or macros in sight.
Stage 3: Staging in plain sight
What happened next? The malicious Glaxnimate copy began writing partial files to C:\ProgramData:
SETUP.CAB.PART
PROCESSOR.VBS.PART
PATCHER.BAT.PART
Why .PART files? It’s classic malware staging. Drop files in a half-finished state until the time is right—or perhaps until the download is complete. Once the coast is clear, rename or complete the files, then use them to push the next payloads forward.
Scripting the core elements of infection
Stage 4: Scripting the launch
Malware loves a good script—especially one that no one sees. Once fully written, Windows Script Host was invoked to execute the VBScript component:
Use the expand utility to extract all the contents of the previously dropped setup.cab archive into ProgramData—effectively unpacking the NetSupport RAT and its helpers.
Stage 5: Hidden persistence
To make sure their tool survived a restart, the attackers opted for the stealthy registry route:
Unlike old-school Run keys, UserInitMprLogonScript isn’t a usual suspect and doesn’t open visible windows. Every time the user logged in, the RAT came quietly along for the ride.
Final thoughts
This infection chain is a masterclass in LOLBin abuse and proof that attackers love turning Windows’ own tools against its users. Every step of the way relies on built-in Windows tools: forfiles, mshta, curl, tar, scripting engines, reg, and expand.
So, can you use too many LOLBins to drop a RAT? As this attacker shows, the answer is “not yet.” But each additional step adds noise, and leaves more breadcrumbs for defenders to follow. The more tools a threat actor abuses, the more unique their fingerprints become.
Stay vigilant. Monitor potential LOLBin abuse. And never trust a .pdf that needs tar.exe to open.
Despite the heavy use of LOLBins, Malwarebytes still detects and blocks this attack. It blocked the attacker’s IP address and detected both the Remcos RAT and the NetSupport client once dropped on the system.
We don’t just report on threats—we remove them
Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.
Green MP and former Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer was “heckled” in parliament when asking a question about LGBTQ+ inclusive relationships and sex education in primary schools.
During oral questions on Monday (19 January) Denyer, who is bisexual and represents Bristol Central, told the House she had heard from constituents who are worried the updated guidance on relationships and sex education “does not actually require primary schools to teach about same-sex relationships”.
“Will the Minister set out how she will ensure that all children learn, in an age-appropriate way, about a diverse range of relationships if it is left to schools’ discretion?” Denyer asked Georgia Gould, Minister of State for School Standards
“The charity Just Like Us found that only 19 per cent of LGBT parents say their child’s school openly discusses diverse relationships.”
As Denyer sat down to give way for Gould’s response, a voice can be heard saying “they’re primary school kids”.
In response to Denyer’s question, Gould said: “The new guidance sets out inclusion for all children and the recognition of those relationships.
“As the hon. Member will know, that is mandatory in secondary school, and we continue to take that work forward.”
Taking to social media afterwards, Denyer shared the clip and said she was “sickened but not really surprised that homophobia is alive and well on the bench behind me”.
“‘They’re primary school kids’ he says – as if no primary school kids have lesbian or gay parents!” Denyer added.
I was heckled by another MP while asking about inclusive relationship education in schoolsSickened but not really surprised that homophobia is alive and well on the bench behind me'They're primary school kids' he says – as if no primary school kids have lesbian or gay parents!
The Department for Education (DfE) finally published its long-awaited, updated statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) back in July 2024, and set to come into force from 1 September 2026.
The guidance states sex education in primary school is “not compulsory” but recommends primaries teach sex education in years 5 and/or 6.
The curriculum for relationships education at primary level focuses “on teaching the skills and knowledge that form the building blocks of all positive relationships” with schools told to be “sensitive to pupils’ circumstances” and the different family types they can come from, including single-parent families, same-sex parent families and foster parents/carers.
“Teaching should illustrate a wide range of family structures in a positive way, and care should be taken to ensure that children are not stigmatised based on their home circumstances,” the guidance states.
Relationships and sex education is, however, compulsory in secondary school where it should “provide a clear progression from primary relationships education”.
The guidance was immediately criticised for telling schools to be “mindful” that there is “significant debate” about transgender identities, and staff “should be careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact”. Critics likened such avoidant language to that of the much reviled, Thatcher-era Section 28, which banned the “promotion” of homosexuality in classrooms in England and Wales from 1988 until 2003.
Within the 42-page document, points 67 to 72 – equal to around a page in length – outline guidance that relates to “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender content”. However, the word “transgender” does not appear anywhere else in the document.
The updated guidance states pupils should be taught “the facts and the law about biological sex and gender reassignment” and they should “recognise that people have legal rights by virtue of their biological sex which are different from the rights of those of the opposite sex with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment”.
However, schools should be “mindful” that “beyond the facts and the law about biological sex and gender reassignment there is significant debate”, the guidance says, and “should be careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact”. The guidance goes on to give a specific example that schools should not “teach as fact that all people have a gender identity”.
Kirstie Allsopp has received a wave of transphobic comments after saying that the mocking of trans people “has to stop”.
The Location, Location, Location presenter, 54, took to X/Twitter on Wednesday (21 January) to share her thoughts on the treatment of trans people.
“Somehow, at some point in the last few years it has become acceptable to publicly mock trans people,” Allsopp wrote. “This isn’t about vulnerable women’s spaces, or women’s sport, it’s about delighting in declaring your disgust for a tiny minority of other humans and it has to stop.”
Somehow, at some point in the last few years it has become acceptable to publicly mock trans people. This isn’t about vulnerable women’s spaces, or women’s sport, it’s about delighting in declaring your disgust for a tiny minority of other humans and it has to stop.
Allsopp also responded to someone disparaging her for her compassionate stance on the treatment of trans people. The presenter wrote in reply: “I’m someone who hates to see bullying, I think it is the start of something terrible. I believe we can debate issues without mockery and cruelty.”
I’m someone who hates to see bullying, I think it is the start of something terrible. I believe we can debate issues without mockery and cruelty. https://t.co/yr9uweMUtG
This latest showing of support for the trans community from Allsopp follows the broadcaster recently calling out JK Rowling for being “sad and childish” after the Harry Potter author was blocked by broadcaster India Willoughby.
Allsopp has also found herself in the crosshairs of so-called ‘gender critical’ individuals over her pro-trans allyship before, notably last year after the presenter claimed that Gregg Wallace had made her feel “uncomfortable”.
She also previously defended trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who was enduring a wave of transphobic abuse at the time, after featuring in an advert for beer brand Bud Light.
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
En France, depuis l’année 1989, une histoire s’est écrite en contrechamp. Tandis que le pays célébrait le bicentenaire de la Révolution française, et qu’en Europe la chute du mur de Berlin devait marquer une ère, la France prônait la victoire de son modèle de démocratie, de droits individuels et d’émancipation. C’est dans ce contexte qu’éclate […]
Une semaine que j’attends un colis. Le site du vendeur indique que c’est en livraison.
Je regarde le site de la Poste :
Jeudi 15 janvier à 17h11
L'acheminement de votre Colissimo a été interrompu et il ne vous sera pas livré. Nous vous invitons à vous rapprocher de votre expéditeur.
Jeudi 15 janvier à 16h11
Votre Colissimo subit un incident. Il est en cours de traitement par nos services.
Jeudi 15 janvier à 15h11
Votre colis est en cours d'acheminement vers la plate-forme logistique.
Mercredi 14 janvier à 14h26
Votre Colissimo va bientôt nous être confié ! Il est en cours de préparation chez votre expéditeur.
Et bien-sûr, comme d’hab, c’est à moi d’aller faire les démarches, ça ne leur viendrait jamais à l’idée de me prévenir (ça sert à quoi que je mette mes coordonnées, email et téléphone, si c’est pour m’ignorer ?) et de trouver une solution. Ils cassent tout, mais réparer c’est pas leur problème. Quel mentalité de merde.
Et après on me dit que je suis dur avec eux ? Putain, même déplacer une boîte d’un point A à un point B, ils savent pas le faire, bien que ça soit leur métier et leur expertise. Qu’est-ce que ça serait si ils n’étaient pas experts…
Quant au service client, y en a pas. Leur bouton "aide" ne marche juste pas. Le contraire m’aurait étonné.
Encore heureux j’ai commandé via Amazon, et (eux au moins) ils vont résoudre le problème. Qu’ils en prennent de la graine, au lieu de râler contre le méchant Amazon..
Après deux jours d'occupation des alentours du Parlement européen par les agriculteurs, les eurodéputés ont approuvé la saisine de la Cour de justice de l'Union européenne concernant le traité de libre-échange avec les pays du Mercosur ce 21 janvier.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg mocked current Treasury Secretary and former hedge fund manager Scott Bessent for his casual suggestion that retirees own dozens of houses.
Bessent, whose estimated net worth is in the hundreds of millions, was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, talking with Fox host Maria Bartiromo about how the administration will protect “mom and pop” landlords from large investment groups.
“Someone, maybe your parents for their retirement have bought 5, 10, 12 homes,” Bessent said, describing those “mom and pop” landlords.
Good news for the forgotten man. The mom and pop real estate investor who has purchased 12 homes can breathe easy, the Treasury Secretary is looking out for you. https://t.co/3y0O5oLpMA
Buttigieg brought up how Republicans in the Senate aren’t passing legislation to extend tax credits for certain health care plans into the new year, which means that many people will see their premiums increase dramatically. He suggested that the president could push Senate Republicans to vote for such legislation, but has not yet done so.
“Again, the president could dramatically lower health insurance premiums TODAY with one phone call to Senate leadership, but he refuses. Meanwhile, at Davos….” Buttigieg wrote on social media, sharing the video of Bessent.
Again, the president could dramatically lower health insurance premiums TODAY with one phone call to Senate leadership, but he refuses. Meanwhile, at Davos….
As Congress nears a January deadline to pass a continuing resolution and avert a government shutdown, critical health programs hang in the balance. The now-expired Affordable Care Act subsidies and proposed cuts to the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program could undermine access to lifesaving services and medications, including Lenacapavir, a breakthrough drug offering new hope in the fight against HIV.
Encrypted files, Cloudflare sharing, and political outreach surface in DOJ filings
DOGE's mucking around at the Social Security Administration (SSA) has been heavily scrutinized, but now the SSA itself is admitting it slightly underreported the unofficial agency's improper activities within its systems. DOGE employees may have been asked to assist a political advocacy group using SSA data, prompting Hatch Act referrals.…
PyTorch 2.10 is out today as the latest feature update to this widely-used deep learning library. The new PyTorch release continues improving support for Intel GPUs as well as for the AMD ROCm compute stack along with still driving more enhancements for NVIDIA CUDA...
Fortinet customers are seeing attackers exploiting a patch bypass for a previously fixed critical FortiGate authentication vulnerability (CVE-2025-59718) to hack patched firewalls. [...]
If you follow electronics history, few names were as ubiquitous as RCA, the Radio Corporation of America. Yet in modern times, the company is virtually forgotten for making large computers. [Computer History Archive Project] has a rare film from the 1970s (embedded below) explaining how RCA planned to become the number two supplier of business computers, presumably behind behemoth IBM. They had produced other large computers in the 1950s and 1960s, like the BIZMAC, the RCA 510, and the Spectra. But these new machines were their bid to eat away at IBM’s dominance in the field.
RCA had innovative ideas and arguably one of the first demand paging, virtual memory operating systems for mainframes. You can hope they were better at designing computers than they were at making commercials.
The BIZMAC was much earlier and used tubes (public domain).
In 1964, [David Sarnoff] famously said: “The computer will become the hub of a vast network of remote data stations and information banks feeding into the machine at a transmission rate of a billion or more bits of information a second … Eventually, a global communications network handling voice, data and facsimile will instantly link man to machine — or machine to machine — by land, air, underwater, and space circuits. [The computer] will affect man’s ways of thinking, his means of education, his relationship to his physical and social environment, and it will alter his ways of living. … [Before the end of this century, these forces] will coalesce into what unquestionably will become the greatest adventure of the human mind.”
He was, of course, right. Just a little early.
The machines in the video were to replace the Spectra 70 computers, seen here from an RCA brochure.
The machines were somewhat compatible with IBM computers, touted virtual memory, and had flexible options, including a lease that let you own your hardware in six years. They mention, by the way, IBM customers who were paying up to $60,000 / month to IBM. They mentioned that an IBM 360/30 with 65K was about $13,200 / month. You could upgrade with a 360/30 for an extra $3,000 / month, which would double your memory but not double your computing power. (If you watch around the 18-minute mark, you’ll find the computing power was extremely slow by today’s standards.)
RCA, of course, had a better deal. The RCA 2 had double the memory and reportedly triple the performance for only $2,000 extra per month. We don’t know what the basis for that performance number was. For $3,500 a month extra, you could have an RCA 3 with the miracle of virtual memory, providing an apparent 2 megabytes per running job.
There are more comparisons, and keep in mind, these are 1970 dollars. In 1970, a computer programmer probably made $10,000 to $20,000 a year while working on a computer that cost $158,000 in lease payments (not to count electricity and consumables). How much cloud computing could you buy in a year for $158,000 today? Want to buy one? They started at $700,000 up to over $1.6 million.
By their release, the systems were named after their Spectra 70 cousins. So, officially, they were Spectra 70/2, 70/3, 70/5, and 70/6.
Despite all the forward-looking statements, RCA had less than 10% market share and faced increasing costs to stay competitive. They decided to sell the computer business to Sperry. Sperry rebranded several RCA computers and continued to sell and support them, at least for a while.
Now, RCA is a barely remembered blip on the computer landscape. You are more likely to find someone who remembers the RCA 1800 family of CPUs than an actual RCA mainframe. Maybe they should have throw in the cat with the deal.
Want to see the IBM machines these competed with? Here you go. We doubt there were any RCA computers in this data center, but they’d have been right at home.
A Somali American woman who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 because she thought he would only attack LGBTQ+ people – and not people like her – now regrets voting for the GOP for the first time in her life.
“I feel as though the weapon I built is coming to kill me and my people,” clothing store owner Sahra Sharif told the Minnesota Reformer, explaining that she voted for Trump because he was “against the LGBTQ agenda.”
The mall her business is in gets few customers, and she only opens her store for several hours a day, hoping to earn enough to pay the rent, as Minneapolis is overrun with ICE agents who have taken to detaining any person of color they find in public alone.
“In my family, people rarely go outside unless it’s absolutely necessary; and if anyone does, it is considered a reckless thing to do,” she said. Several of her family members have been arrested in the ICE raids, including her son, who was deported to Somalia. Sharif herself is a U.S. citizen.
“Would you believe if I told you I voted for this man?” Sharif said. She then recounted how that happened. She didn’t vote in the past, but in 2024, she was visited by some volunteers for the Trump-Vance campaign who told her that “Trump would be good for business and against the LGBTQ agenda.”
“I was immediately hooked,” Sharif said, and she voted for Trump.
But now she has regrets.
“I never thought the man I put in office would come for my family, make me financially struggle, and cause me so much fear that I carry my passport when I go to the bathroom,” she said.
While Trump has expressed contempt for numerous immigrant groups, perhaps none has been the target of his disdain more than Somali Americans recently. This past December, he ranted at a Cabinet meeting about Somali Americans – and Somali American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in particular – calling them “garbage.”
“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” Trump said. “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
“These are people who do nothing but complain,” he complained. “They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing… When they come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but b**ch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
“They all ought to get the hell out of here, they’re bad for our country,” he said.
He said that ICE has “bad public relations people” because they aren’t doing enough to make Americans dislike Somali people. He held up binders labeled “ACCOMPLISHMENTS,” and many of them that he read were just attacks on the Somali American population. He repeated exaggerated claims about Somali people committing fraud and even repeated racist tropes about Somali people having innately low IQs.
“Nineteen billion dollars at a minimum is missing in Minnesota, given to a large degree by Somalians. They’ve taken it,” he said. ”Somalians, can you imagine? And they don’t do it — a lot of very low IQ people. They don’t do it. Other people work it out and they get them money and they go out and buy Mercedes Benzes.”
Also on Tuesday, Trump shared a video on social media of a podcaster who claimed that Somali people “have an average IQ of 68,” a claim that Muslim American organizations have condemned as racist.
One 2024 Bayan Research Center survey of Somali Americans nationwide found that 23% planned to vote for Trump, while 55% planned to vote for Kamala Harris.
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