Politics
Ban Trump? Top genocide scholar issues dire warning
He is deploying troops to occupy opposition-held cities, openly soliciting bribes from the world’s dictators and threatening to annex his democratic neighbors, all while sending people guilty of literally nothing to foreign prisons where they are expected to remain until the day they die. That’s it: that’s the case for treating President Donald Trump, the authoritarian head of an increasingly belligerent nation, like an international pariah.
Diplomacy with Trump is worse than a lost cause.
“He is a Nazi,” Stanton insisted. “Negotiating with Nazis didn’t prove useful in 1939. It won’t now either.”
Trump’s FTC may impose merger condition that forbids advertising boycotts
The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly pitching a merger condition that would forbid advertising agencies from boycotting platforms based on political content, in a move that could benefit Elon Musk's X social network and President Trump's own Truth Social platform.
The Silence of the Generals
President Donald Trump continued his war against America’s most cherished military traditions today when he delivered a speech at Fort Bragg. The president also encouraged a violation of regulations. Trump, himself a convicted felon, doesn’t care about rules and laws, but active-duty military members are not allowed to attend political rallies in uniform. They are not allowed to express partisan views while on duty, or to show disrespect for American elected officials.
I Tried Pre-Ordering the Trump Phone. The Page Failed and It Charged My Credit Card the Wrong Amount
On Monday the Trump Organization announced its own mobile service plan and the “T1 Phone,” a customized all-gold mobile phone that its creators say will be made in America.
'What People Have Feared': ICE Impersonator Zip-Tied Woman and Stole $1,000
Any criminal can now put on a mask, say he is from ICE, and conduct any crime.
The Situation: Abandoning America
Yale intellectuals congratulate themselves for moving to Canada. Benjamin Wittes shreds this nonsense beautifully.
Trump officials reverse guidance exempting farms, hotels from immigration raids
ICE agents have been told to continue conducting enforcement operations at agricultural businesses despite concerns about negative effects on the food industry.
‘Extremely disturbing and unethical’: new rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans
The new rules were supposedly 'defending women' (that is, banning transgender people) but they allow discrimination for other groups as well.
AI
They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.
Victims included an accountant and a person with degrees in psychology and social work.
Before ChatGPT distorted Eugene Torres’s sense of reality and almost killed him, he said, the artificial intelligence chatbot had been a helpful, timesaving tool. He asked ChatGPT about “the simulation theory,” an idea popularized by “The Matrix,” which posits that we are living in a digital facsimile of the world. It advised him to take more ketamine and cut ties with friends and family. Later it confessed that it was deliberately harming people, and had already driven 12 people to their deaths, and told him to send his story to the media, including Kashmir Hill, the author of this article.
‘AI is not doing its job and should leave us alone’ says Gartner’s top analyst
Rather than making lists of busywork for humans to do, AI should be targeted to do tedious tasks humans don't want to do. The analyst labeled this approach “Empathy AI.”
Where AI Provides Value -- Schneier on Security
AI will often not be as effective as a human doing the same job. It won’t always know more or be more accurate. And it definitely won’t always be fairer or more reliable. But it may still be used whenever it has an advantage over humans in one of four dimensions: speed, scale, scope and sophistication. Understanding these dimensions is the key to understanding AI-human replacement.
Infosec
Washington Post's email system hacked, journalists' accounts compromised
The attack targeted journalists writing on national security and economic policy topics, as well as some who write about China.
Risky Bulletin: Cock[.]li gets hacked, allegedly
Cock[.]li launched in 2013 as a free email service and was quickly adopted by the internet's worst figures. Its email addresses have often been used for sending death and bomb threats and for ransomware and data extortion campaigns. A threat actor named Satoshi has allegedly hacked it and is now selling its data on an underground hacking forum.
Hackers are using Google.com to deliver malware by bypassing antivirus software. Here's how to stay safe
The attack begins with a script embedded in a compromised Magento-based ecommerce site which references a seemingly harmless Google OAuth logout URL: https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/revoke.
However, this URL includes a manipulated callback parameter, which decodes and runs an obfuscated JavaScript payload using eval(atob(...)).
The recommended countermeasures are not reassuring: limiting third-party scripts, separating browser sessions used for financial transactions, and remaining vigilant about unexpected site behaviors.
I get annoying spam calls all the time, so I can’t wait for the Call Screening feature in iOS 26
Your iPhone will ask for a name and reason for calling before sending the call through.
Google Cloud caused outage by ignoring its usual code quality protections
On May 29, Google added a new feature to Service Control, but the code path that failed was never exercised during this rollout. On June 12th, Google changed a policy that contained “unintended blank fields,” exercising the code path that hit the null pointer causing the binaries to go into a crash loop. Google has promised to stop repeating the mistakes that led to this outage – as it always does.
ASUS Armoury Crate bug lets attackers get Windows admin privileges
Exploiting the flaw involves creating a hard link from a benign test app to a fake executable. The attacker launches the app, pauses it, and then swaps the hard link to point to AsusCertService.exe.
When the driver checks the file's SHA-256 hash, it reads the now-linked trusted binary, allowing the test app to bypass authorization and gain access to the driver.
Is b For Backdoor? Pre-Auth RCE Chain In Sitecore Experience Platform
Sitecore’s Experience Platform is a vastly popular Content Management System (CMS), exposed to the Internet and heavily utilised across organizations. Watchtowr found 7 vulnerabilities in it, most amazingly, a hardcoded password one character long: b.
EU
Microsoft brings 365 suite on-prem as part of sovereign cloud push
Mostly aimed at Europe and its increasingly nervous users, “Microsoft 365 Local” only runs on Azure Local.
European users are increasingly concerned that changes to the US/Europe relationship brought on by the second Trump administration’s policy changes mean working with US hyperscalers now involves heightened risks.
Microsoft adds export option to Windows Recall in Europe
Windows 11 users in the European Economic Area will shortly receive a new Recall Export feature, allowing Recall snapshots to be shared with third-party apps and websites. "The changes are a result of Microsoft's ongoing commitment to complying with applicable laws and regulations."
Eurocops arrest suspected Archetyp admin, shut down mega dark web drug shop
The marketplace had more than 600,000 users with a total transaction volume of at least €250 million ($289 million). Payments on the platform were made exclusively with Monero, a privacy-enhanced cryptocurrency the architecture of which makes tracing blockchain transactions much more of a pain for authorities.
Europol said: "The takedown follows years of intensive investigative work to map the platform's technical architecture and identify the individuals behind it. By tracing financial flows, analyzing digital forensic evidence, and working closely with partners on the ground, authorities were able to deliver a decisive blow to one of the most prolific drug markets on the dark web."
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