It got the facts right but the story wrong.
by using this client YOU CAN SYNCHRONIZE YOUR CAPS LOCK STAte with everyone elsE USING THIS CLIENT. WHENEVER I PRESS CAPSLOck it is pressed for you and VICE-VERSA. NO MORE DISAGREEING ABOUT WHEN TO USE CAPS LOCK. NOw we can all share a siNGLE KEY!
(will this break MY COMPUTER? IDK JUST MAKE SURE YOU KNOW how to stop a procesS BEFORE RUNNING IT.)
[globalcapslock.com]
Contrary to earlier reports, Wired (in a story since confirmed by other reporters) says that a member of Elon Musk’s pseudo-department has:
“the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a top-secret mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.”
In other words, a budget passed by democratically elected US lawmakers could — reportedly, in theory — be overruled by a Big Tech lackey.
Despite no public announcement yet on the expected tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and maybe China, Canadian officials tell reporters they’ve been notified President Donald Trump is imposing a 25 percent tariff on most goods and a 10 percent tariff on energy products (i.e. oil). Tariffs were supposed to go into force today, but they’re now apparently supposed to hit Tuesday, at least in Canada. A response from Canada is expected later today.
This Texas Monthly piece on the Dune Express is a really interesting infrastructure story, but I’m not gonna lie, I mainly want to post this paragraph:
They considered a swarm of drones, helicopters hauling buckets, and a pipeline carrying a sand-and-water slurry. But a conveyor belt was deemed the least expensive and most reliable option.
And a picture of a 42-mile-long conveyor belt.
Many SFF readers know of Harlan Ellison’s development-hell anthology The Last Dangerous Visions, which was posthumously released to tepid reviews last year. Paul Kincaid’s recent essay delves into the cultural impact of Ellison’s earlier Dangerous Visions books and the broader transformation of science fiction — as well as how Ellison’s own (checkered, though it’s not a major theme here) position in the genre shaped both.
[strangehorizons.com]
Ars Technica explains why even as off-the-cuff maybe-trolling, Musk’s recent comments about the ISS crew put a strain on NASA. Here’s the crux:
The “stranded” astronauts on the space station probably could come home as early as next week. But if they were to do so, it would create a lot of headaches for NASA, its international partners, and probably even for Musk’s human spaceflight team at SpaceX.
You know the phrase “a scrambled egg makes all happy”? No? Neither did game maker Neven Mrgan when Apple’s search bar suggested it, maybe because it doesn’t exist. A couple of followup posts get to the bottom of this little data artifact mystery — or you can skip to the answer right away.
As The Verge’s policy editor, I know how exhausting the Trump administration news firehose can be. There’s truly need-to-know stuff like the future of the Paris climate agreement and the TikTok ban. But we’re now collecting some updates in a stream whose posts won’t all appear on the front page, so readers get a break from the full weight of Trump’s random off-the-cuff proposals and his regulators’ antics. That said, we’re entering a new era in tech policy, so I hope you’ll periodically check it out!