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404 Media – “The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced Monday that the General Services Administration converted 14,000 magnetic to digital records, and claimed the process saved a million dollars a year. The problem is, magnetic tapes are regarded by storage and archivist professionals as being a stable, reliable, and safe medium for long-term data …
MacWorld – Autocompleting addresses and address suggestions are powerful shortcuts that can easily bite you. You are likely not planning a military action in another country, but the accidental inclusion of unintended invitees to a group text, email, or other discussion could still prove a problem—from embarrassment to losing friends, causing a family rift, or …
karpathy – “Every now and then I get reminded about the vast fraud apparatus of the internet, re-invigorating my pursuit of basic digital hygiene around privacy/security of day to day computing. The sketchiness starts with major tech companies who are incentivized to build comprehensive profiles of you, to monetize it directly for advertising, or sell …
Reuters – “Trump administration officials have told some U.S. government employees that Elon Musk’s DOGE team of technologists is using artificial intelligence to surveil at least one federal agency’s communications for hostility to President Donald Trump and his agenda, said two people with knowledge of the matter. While much of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency …
404 Media: “Almost two dozen repositories of research and public health data supported by the National Institutes of Health are marked for “review” under the Trump administration’s direction, and researchers and archivists say the data is at risk of being lost forever if the repositories go down. “The problem with archiving this data is that …
Bloomberg – no paywall – “The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is poised to eliminate most websites tied to its research division under plans for the cancellation of a cloud web services contract, a move that could snarl operations at several labs. A contract for the services across NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric …
EFF: Court Confirms That, If Proven, DOGE’s Ongoing Access to Personnel Records Is Illegal. A lawsuit seeking to stop the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) from disclosing tens of millions of Americans’ private, sensitive information to Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) can continue, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Judge Denise L. Cote …
Gizmodo: “Key parts of the Social Security website have proven inaccessible over the past week, and the agency now says that it is probing the cause of the service disruptions. The problems come not long after the agency compelled retirees to seek help more exclusively online, as it attempts to downsize its phone operations. Last …
Follow up to Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal – the Washington Post [no paywall] – “The inquiry follows revelations that top administration officials used the unclassified messaging platform to coordinate military strikes in Yemen…The Pentagon inspector general’s office said Thursday that it will scrutinize disclosures made by Defense Secretary …
LLRX.com March 2025 Issue Censor, purge, defund: how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook on science and universities – Professor of Operational Research Christina Pagel Climate and DEI Deleted From Government Websites, Federal Workers Fired, Colleges Erase Programs, Law Firms Blackballed, Holocaust Denied – This March 27, 2025 update by Sabrina I. Pacifici chronicles Trump’s …
BoingBoing: “Starting May 7, 2025, I’ll need a REAL ID to fly from Houston to New Orleans. Apparently, my current driver’s license — you know, the one issued by my state government — isn’t “real” enough anymore. Remember when we used to mock totalitarian regimes for requiring “internal passports?” Now we get to mock ourselves! …
Via LLRX – Censor, purge, defund: how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook on science and universities – Professor of Operational Research Christian Pagel has mapped 35 of the Trump administration’s attacks on science and universities to the authoritarian playbook – and considers what it means for attacks still to come. Pagel states that the …
