Month: May 2025

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that Instacart CEO Fidji Simo will join the maker of ChatGPT as "CEO of Applications" later this year, according to a company blog post. Simo, who has served on the company's board since March 2024, will oversee business and operational teams while continuing to report directly to Altman in the newly created role. Altman will remain the primary CEO of OpenAI.

According to Reuters, Simo spent a decade at Meta, including a stint serving as the head of Facebook from 2019 to 2021. She also currently sits on the board of e-commerce services site Shopify.

The announcement came earlier than planned due to what Altman described as "a leak" that "accelerated our timeline." At OpenAI, Simo will manage what Altman called "traditional company functions" as the organization enters its "next phase of growth." The applications category at OpenAI includes products like ChatGPT, the popular AI assistant.

Read full article

Comments

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, a strong indication that devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years.

Kyle Schutt is a 30-something-year-old software engineer who, according to Dropsite News, gained access in February to a “core financial management system” belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As an employee of DOGE, Schutt accessed FEMA’s proprietary software for managing both disaster and non-disaster funding grants. 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 US.

A steady stream of published credentials

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. Stealer malware typically infects devices through trojanized apps, phishing, or software exploits. 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.

Read full article

Comments

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, a strong indication that devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years.

Kyle Schutt is a 30-something-year-old software engineer who, according to Dropsite News, gained access in February to a “core financial management system” belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As an employee of DOGE, Schutt accessed FEMA’s proprietary software for managing both disaster and non-disaster funding grants. 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 US.

A steady stream of published credentials

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. Stealer malware typically infects devices through trojanized apps, phishing, or software exploits. 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.

Read full article

Comments

The Trump administration's steep staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) triggered shutdowns of several climate-related programs Thursday.

Perhaps most notably, the NOAA announced it would be shuttering the "billion-dollar weather and climate disasters" database for vague reasons. Since 1980, the database made it possible to track the growing costs of the nation's most devastating weather events, critically pooling various sources of private data that have long been less accessible to the public.

In that time, 403 weather and climate disasters in the US triggered more than $2.945 trillion in costs, and NOAA notes that's a conservative estimate. Considering that CNN noted the average number of disasters in the past five years jumped from nine annually to 24, shutting down the database could leave communities in the dark on costs of emerging threats. All the NOAA can likely say is to continue looking at the historic data to keep up with trends.

Read full article

Comments

The Trump administration's steep staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) triggered shutdowns of several climate-related programs Thursday.

Perhaps most notably, the NOAA announced it would be shuttering the "billion-dollar weather and climate disasters" database for vague reasons. Since 1980, the database made it possible to track the growing costs of the nation's most devastating weather events, critically pooling various sources of private data that have long been less accessible to the public.

In that time, 403 weather and climate disasters in the US triggered more than $2.945 trillion in costs, and NOAA notes that's a conservative estimate. Considering that CNN noted the average number of disasters in the past five years jumped from nine annually to 24, shutting down the database could leave communities in the dark on costs of emerging threats. All the NOAA can likely say is to continue looking at the historic data to keep up with trends.

Read full article

Comments

The US Senate today voted along party lines to kill a Federal Communications Commission program to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren, with Democrats saying the Republican-led vote will make it harder for kids without reliable Internet access to complete their homework.

The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify the hotspot rule, which was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2024 under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The program would be eliminated if the House version passes and President Trump signs the joint resolution of disapproval.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced the plan in January, saying the FCC program would "imped[e] parents' ability to decide what their kids see by subsidizing unsupervised access to inappropriate content." He also alleged that the hotspot program would shift control of Internet access from parents to schools and thus "heightens the risk of censoring kids' exposure to conservative viewpoints."

Read full article

Comments

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has reportedly overhauled a historically wonky Department of Defense-designed tool that automates layoffs of federal workers.

Expected to expedite DOGE's already rushed efforts to shrink the government, the redesigned software could make it easier for DOGE to quickly dismantle the biggest agencies in a blink, sources familiar with the revamp told Reuters.

Developed more than two decades ago, AutoRIF (short for automated reductions in force) was deemed too "clunky" to use across government, sources told Reuters. In a 2003 audit, the DOD's Office of the Inspector General noted, for example, that "specialized reduction-in-force procedures needed for the National Guard technicians made the module impractical." Basically, each department needed to weigh its cuts differently to avoid gutting essential personnel. Despite several software updates since then, Wired reported, the tool remained subject to errors, sources told Reuters, requiring most federal agencies to continue conducting firings manually rather than risk work stoppages or other negative outcomes from sloppy firings.

Read full article

Comments

When Microsoft announced new Surface devices earlier this week, we noted that there wasn't a lot of daylight between the starting prices of the new but lower-end devices ($799 for the 12-inch Surface Pro, $899 for the 13-inch Surface Laptop) and the starting prices of the older-but-higher-end Surfaces from last spring ($999 for both).

It appears Microsoft has quietly solved this problem by discontinuing the 256GB versions of the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 and the 13-inch Surface Pro 11. Microsoft's retail pages for both devices list only 512GB and 1TB configurations, with regular prices starting at $1,199. Though not technically a price hike—the 512GB versions of both devices also cost $1,199 before—it does amount to an effective price increase for last year's Surface hardware, especially given that both devices have user-replaceable storage that can easily be upgraded for less than the $200 that Microsoft charged for the 256GB-to-512GB upgrade.

The upshot is that the new Surface PCs make more sense now than they did on Tuesday in relative terms, but it's only because you'll pay more to buy a Surface Pro 11 or Surface Laptop 7 than you would before. The 15-inch version of the Surface Laptop 7 still lists a 256GB configuration and a $1,299 starting price, but the 256GB models are currently out of stock.

Read full article

Comments

For more than two months, the Trump administration has been subject to a federal court order stopping it from cutting funding related to gender identity and the provision of gender-affirming care in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

Lawyers for the federal government have repeatedly claimed in court filings that the administration has been complying with the order.

But new whistleblower records submitted in a lawsuit led by the Washington state attorney general appear to contradict the claim.

Read full article

Comments

For more than two months, the Trump administration has been subject to a federal court order stopping it from cutting funding related to gender identity and the provision of gender-affirming care in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

Lawyers for the federal government have repeatedly claimed in court filings that the administration has been complying with the order.

But new whistleblower records submitted in a lawsuit led by the Washington state attorney general appear to contradict the claim.

Read full article

Comments