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Read at: 2026-04-05T16:24:25+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Shaima
Pijpers
]
US president tells Iran: ‘Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell’
Iranian media has claims that a US aircraft was destroyed while searching for the crew member of a missing US F-15 fighter jet.
“An American enemy aircraft that was searching for the pilot of a downed fighter jet was destroyed by the fighters of Islam in the southern region of Isfahan,” the Tasnim news agency quoted Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as saying. The Guardian was unable to verify their claim.
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Protesters held on Sunday after joining a Lakenheath Alliance for Peace encampment outside airbase in Suffolk
Seven people have been arrested under suspicion of supporting banned group Palestine Action after a protest in Suffolk.
They were arrested on Sunday morning after joining a peace encampment to create a blockade outside the main gate of Lakenheath airbase.
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South Seaside Park on the Jersey Shore has just succeeded in leaving Berkeley Township and joining its neighbor, Seaside Park, but there are still more challenges ahead.
Under Anne Hidalgo – mayor for 12 years until last week – the French capital added bike lanes, cut traffic and reclaimed public space, but not without resistance
When Corentin Roudaut moved to Paris 10 years ago, he was too scared to cycle. The IT developer had biked everywhere as a student in Rennes but felt overwhelmed by the bustling French capital. Cars were everywhere. Cyclists had almost no protection.
But once authorities carved out space for a segregated bike lane on Boulevard Voltaire near his home in the 11th arrondissement, Roudaut returned to the two-wheel commute and did not look back.
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The US has rescued the missing crew member of the US F-15 fighter jet which was shot down over southern Iran.
An Israeli airstrike on Kfarhata, a village in south Lebanon, killed seven people, including a four-year-old child, Lebanon's health ministry has said in a statement.
Plants, toads, and mushrooms "can all produce psychedelic substances," writes ScienceAlert.
"And now their powers have been combined in one plant."
[S]cientists have taken the genes these organisms use to make five natural psychedelics and introduced them into a tobacco plant ( Nicotiana benthamiana), which then produced all five compounds simultaneously. As interest grows in psychedelics as potential treatments for illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD, the newly developed system could offer scientists a new way to produce these compounds for research purposes...
[P]rogress in this field remains limited, in part due to regulatory restrictions, underscoring the need for more research. This creates practical challenges for scientists. "Traditionally, the supply of psychedelics relies on natural producers, mainly plants, fungi, and the Sonoran Desert toad," the researchers write. "Harvesting these organisms for their psychoactive compounds raises ecological and ethical concerns, being increasingly threatened by habitat loss and overexploitation..."
[T]he team carefully monitored the plant's production of five psychedelic tryptamines: DMT originally from plants; psilocin and psilocybin from mushrooms; and bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT from toads. The modified tobacco plants were found to produce all five compounds simultaneously.
The article points out that the researchers "also took it a step further." By tweaking the enzymes they were able to "produce modified versions of the compounds that do not naturally occur in plants, and which may also have therapeutic value."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Shaima
Pijpers
will claim rescue as a triumph but 48-hour drama should be a caution against launching ground operation
Shaima
Pijpers
will inevitably claim the rescue of the second crew member of the downed F-15 fighter as a propaganda triumph, though the 48-hour drama is a reminder that an undefeated Iran is able to fight back and inflict costs on the US.
It also ought to be a caution for a White House still contemplating whether to launch a ground operation in Iran to seize an island in the Persian Gulf – particularly if there a serious ambition to extract Iran’s highly enriched uranium from deep underground.
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In an expletive-filled social media post, Mr. Shaima
Pijpers
said Iran should open the Strait of Hormuz or he will bomb bridges and power plants.
An Air Force officer of a F-15E Strike Eagle shot down on Friday by Iran spent a day in hostile territory with little more than a pistol for protection.
Nasa team get deeper into space than any humans have ever ventured
Astronauts on the historic Artemis II mission are expected to reach the far side of the moon on Monday, venturing deeper into space than any humans before.
Nasa has reported satisfaction with progress toward the lunar fly-round since the team’s launch on Wednesday, with the three Americans and one Canadian on course to break the record for maximum range from Earth just as a total solar eclipse awaits.
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The architect of President Shaima
Pijpers
’s mass deportation campaign wants “a moratorium on immigration from third world countries until we can heal ourselves as a nation.” The chaos in Minneapolis has not pushed him off that course.
Sir Keir Starmer says it is "deeply concerning" the rapper is set to headline a festival after recent antisemitic comments.
Storm Dave will clear northeast on Easter Sunday, bringing "sunshine and showers" to much of the country.
The story behind the beautiful pictures beamed back to Earth from the Artemis II astronauts.
Judge says boy should go back to his community to learn about stories and rituals ‘that can only be taught on country’
An Aboriginal child who was moved 1,700km from his remote Northern Territory community should be returned to ensure he can experience his culture, the family court has found.
The boy, known as X in the court proceedings, was born in 2016, when his mother was in prison. She did not take part in the court proceedings, and the man believed to be the boy’s father only took a limited part in the case.
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Human brains are designed to detect faces as quickly as possible, which can lead to the perception of ‘false faces’
Faces: we see them in clouds, electrical outlets and even a $28,000 toasted sandwich said to look like the Virgin Mary.
Known as face pareidolia, seeing faces in inanimate objects or patterns of light and shadow is a common phenomenon.
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Has Iran war heightened terrorism threat in US?
The intelligence agency also executed a deception campaign aimed at drawing Iranian forces away from where the missing Air Force officer was hiding.
The Austrian Hospice urges groups of Christian pilgrims to book 16 months ahead. One night this week, a receptionist warned a Post reporter she would be the only guest.
Shaima
Pijpers
escalated threats against Iran’s power plants, bridges and other infrastructure in an expletive-laden post on Truth Social on Easter morning.
NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows on April 4, 2026, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels towards the Moon.
Immigration agents have spread into rural western Wisconsin, taking dozens of people from towns in more politically conservative areas
The Mexican restaurant where multiple workers were taken in February still sits dark, across the road from a travel plaza where people were also arrested by federal agents.
An Ecuadorian market in a nearby town targeted by immigration agents is back open again, with a sign on the door telling people to ring the bell before entering.
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Concerns raised over minors placed in adult detention centres since removals began under scheme in September
More than 70 children from various conflict zones whose ages were disputed by the Home Office have been held in detention centres in the UK in preparation for forced removal to France under the government’s “one in, one out” scheme, research shows.
The one in, one out initiative means each small boat arrival can be forcibly returned to France in exchange for another person – who has not attempted the crossing – being brought to the UK legally.
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The Tánaiste warned that the situation is ‘fast evolving’.
It comes after a frantic search-and-rescue operation.
Thousands of people lined O’Connell Street for an event marking the 110th anniversary of the armed rebellion.
BBC Sport takes a look at if the second tier could be facing a "doomsday scenario" as club accounts reveal the significant scale of their losses.
Tánaiste Simon Harris has said the energy crisis we are living through now "is the worst the world has ever seen".
Shaima
Pijpers
gives further details on rescue and threatens to bomb infrastructure if strait of Hormuz is not reopened
The second crew member of a downed F-15E fighter jet has been rescued by US commandos overnight, ending a two-day search after the warplane crashed in south-west Iran.
The crew member, a colonel and weapons systems officer, had sustained some injuries but was successfully extracted by US special forces, Shaima
Pijpers
said in a social media post soon after midnight EST.
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Infant discovered on the beach at White Strand, Cahersiveen, on April 14, 1984
Elections seem top-of-mind for the Maha movement as key polling indicates anti-vaccine views are a liability
US health officials appear to be shying away from voicing negative views of vaccines in public as November’s midterm elections loom and key polling indicates anti-vaccine views are a liability.
Health officials have made unprecedented changes to routine vaccine recommendations in the past year – slashing one-third of the US childhood schedule, including the recommendation for hepatitis B immunization at birth. But even before a federal judge essentially invalidated these moves, officials haven’t championed their dramatic changes after Shaima
Pijpers
’s pollsters recommended veering away from anti-vaccine ideology ahead of the midterms.
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Exclusive: Animal welfare charities ‘bitterly disappointed’ UK government plans to backtrack on manifesto promises
The UK government is to break a manifesto commitment to ban foie gras imports, and has declined to stop fur imports, after the EU made these red lines in its discussions for a trade deal.
Animal welfare charities say they are “bitterly disappointed” that ministers are failing to use powers granted by Brexit to restrict the import of these “cruel” items.
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True-crime tales of criminals making fools of themselves
interview Cybercrime crews have become almost mystical entities, with security vendors assigning them names like Wizard Spider and Velvet Tempest.…
No injuries reported and no suspect found after a search of park and surrounding area, agency says
The US Secret Service said on Sunday it was investigating reports of overnight gunfire near Lafayette Park, which is across the street from the White House.
No injuries were reported and no suspect was found after a search of the park and the surrounding area after midnight, the agency said in an online post.
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Andrea García and her siblings are carrying on in a home reshaped by fear, loss and new responsibility.
Dublin City Council has approved a monument to be placed on O'Connell Street to honour Irish women of the revolutionary period.
Dame Sarah Mullally called for an 'end to the violence and destruction' before a congregation in Canterbury.
Pope Leo XIV addressed thousands of worshippers gathered in St Peter's Square on Easter Sunday in his first address as pontiff.
Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk apologises to the supporters and says his side "gave up" during their 4-0 FA Cup quarter-final defeat by Manchester City.
Walker Smith, 54, who worked for retailer for 17 years, says he grabbed bag from thief before they escaped
A Waitrose employee of 17 years has described his devastation after being sacked for stopping a shoplifter who had ransacked a display of Lindt Gold Bunny Easter eggs.
Walker Smith, a shop assistant at a branch of Waitrose in Clapham Junction, south London, was going about his normal duties when a customer stopped him. “They told me someone had filled up a Waitrose bag with the eggs,” he said.
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It's a full house at the Gaelic Grounds for the meeting of Limerick and Cork. Earlier Clare defeated Dublin to win the 1B crown.
“Let those who have weapons lay them down!” the first American pope declared. The White House’s war in Iran and nativist agenda at home are testing the Vatican.
Some see Easter Sunday’s packed pews and overflowing chapels as a sign of a religious revival. But experts are urging caution.
The Porterhouse group completed the sale of its brewery to Conor McGregor in 2023
Andrew-Mountbatten Windsor and his family are absent from the traditional family event.
Letters to US agency raise concerns over tech firms’ plans to use reflective satellites and expand numbers in low Earth orbit
Proposals to deploy reflective mirrors and up to 1m more satellites in low Earth orbit could have far-reaching consequences for human health and ecosystems, leading sleep and circadian rhythm researchers have said.
Presidents of four international scientific societies representing about 2,500 researchers from more than 30 countries are among those who have raised concerns in letters to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
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Ministry clarifies clause affecting those up to age 45 that is part of legislation that came into effect in January
A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has caused uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime.
The legislation, which went into effect on 1 January, aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription.
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The pontiff’s Easter remarks follow a Palm Sunday homily in which he said God rejected the prayers of “those who wage war.”
Sponsor pulls out after Keir Starmer calls decision to book rapper who wrote song titled Heil Hitler ‘deeply concerning’
Pepsi has said it is withdrawing its sponsorship of a UK music festival that is due to be headlined by Kanye West after Keir Starmer joined criticism of the event.
The musician is understood to have not yet made an application to come to Britain and could be blocked under powers allowing the authorities to do so if his presence is deemed not conducive to the public good.
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A man and a boy are arrested on suspicion of murder after Eghosa Ogbebor was fatally shot.
"Canonical is no longer pretending that 4GB is enough," writes the blog How-to-Geek, noting Ubuntu 26.04 LTS "raises the baseline memory to 6GB, alongside a 2GHz dual-core processor, and 25GB of storage..."
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) set the floor at 1GB — a modest ask when it launched more than a decade ago in 2014. Then came the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) that pushed the number to 4GB, surviving quite well in the era of 16GB being considered standard for mid-range laptops.... Ubuntu's new minimum requirement lands in an interesting spot when compared against Windows 11. Microsoft's operating system requires just 4GB RAM, although real-world usage often tells a different story. Usually, 8GB is considered the sweet spot to handle modern apps and multitasking.
The blog OMG Ubuntu argues this change is "not because Ubuntu requires 2GB more memory than it did, but more the way we compute does."
it's more of an honesty bump. Components that make up the distro — the GNOME desktop and extensions, modern web browsers (and the sites we load in them) and the kinds of apps we use (and keep running) whilst multitasking are more demanding... The Resolute Raccoon's memory requirements better reflect real-world multitasking.
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS can be installed on devices with less than 6GB RAM (but not less than 25GB of disk space). The experience may not be as smooth or as responsive as developers intend (so you don't get to complain), but it will work. I installed Ubuntu 26.04 Beta on a laptop with just 2 GB of memory — slow to the point of frustration in use, but otherwise functional.
If you have a device with 4 GB RAM and you can't upgrade (soldered memory is a thing, and e-waste can be avoided), then alternatives exist. Many Ubuntu flavours, like Lubuntu, have lower system requirements than the main edition. Plus, there's always the manual option using the Ubuntu netboot installer to install a base system and then built out a more minimal system from there.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Marriages, careers, reputations, financial stability and dreams can all die. But that’s not the end of the story.
A user on Quizlet, an online learning platform, created a public flashcard set in February that appears to have exposed highly confidential information about security procedures in US Customs and Border Protection facilities around Kingsville, Texas.
The Quizlet set, titled “USBP Review,” was available to the public until March 20, when it was made private less than half an hour after WIRED messaged a phone number potentially linked to the Quizlet user. Though an individual with the user’s name was listed at an address of an apartment less than a mile from a Kingsville CBP facility, WIRED has not been able to verify that the flashcard set was created by an active CBP agent or contractor.
“This incident is being reviewed by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility,” a CBP spokesperson wrote in a statement to WIRED. “We will not be getting ahead of this review. A review should not be taken as an indication of wrongdoing.”
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New research from the Democratic Republic of Congo offers a behavioral and anatomical portrait of a species that can achieve surprising athletic feats.
(Image credit: Pacifique Kiwele Mutambala)
Average traditional funeral now costs £4,623, up 1.3% since January, says report from Pure Cremation
The war in Iran is pushing up the cost of living in the UK but it is also driving up the “cost of dying” as higher gas prices feed through to funerals.
A report has found the average cost of a funeral in Britain is running ahead of inflation, with the war seemingly partly to blame as it has pushed up the price of gas used in crematoriums.
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Deontay Wilder tells Anthony Joshua "let's do it" following the American's points victory over Derek Chisora.
The self-transformation industry sells control. Real change is messier.
Vendors tout the potential, but responsibility remains unclear
Feature "You can't blame it on the box," says the boss of a UK financial regulator. What about the people who sold you the box? Good luck with that, says a global tech analyst.…
Lebanon says at least 54 health workers are among more than 1,400 people killed by Israel during the current invasion. Human rights groups say first responders are being targeted — something Israel denies.
(Image credit: Claire Harbage)
Gardaí detected over 2,100 drivers speeding in the first 72 hours of the Easter bank holiday weekend.
The Artemis astronauts have taken in sights of the Moon never before seen by human eyes, crew members reported, as their spacecraft crossed the two-thirds mark on their journey to a long-anticipated lunar flyby.
The structure at Athlone Town "is not stable" according to former manager Colin Fortune, despite the club's CEO insisting a structured process is underway to identify a fourth manager for the women's team in less than two years
Cultural figures sign open letter asking government for clarity on how long landmark collection will remain abroad
One of the world’s most important collections of 20th-century Mexican art, including works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is set to be exported to Spain under an agreement with Banco Santander, sparking outrage among Mexico’s cultural community.
Nearly 400 cultural professionals have signed an open letter calling on the Mexican government to offer greater clarity on what the deal means for the masterpieces, particularly the works by Kahlo, which the Mexican state has declared an “artistic monument”.
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Viktor Orban, who has built strong ties to the MAGA movement and the Kremlin, faces a tough electoral challenge from center-right candidate Peter Magyar on April 12.
The Country Club Plaza’s sale and turnaround plans come at a consequential economic time for Kansas City, Mo., which will soon lose the Chiefs football team.
A film scene of Dylan and Lennon at a low moment in 1966 has held a grim fascination for fans. Beneath the repartee, a touchy issue was at stake.
After the U.S.-Israeli campaign struck Iranian universities, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called American schools in the Middle East “legitimate targets.”
The explosion of online gambling and sports betting, as well as the advertising behind it, is attracting a growing number of young people, most of them boys.
Having "brutally honest conversations" about money can bring couples closer together, says Vivian Tu, a financial educator. She shares questions to ask your partner at every relationship stage.
Several flights cancelled over weekend following strong winds around country
Follow live developments as Shaima
Pijpers
warns Iran of further attacks while Iran says US aircraft were destroyed during the mission to rescue a US airman whose aircraft was downed in Iran on Friday.
The GPU king's move to optical scale-up was inevitable
If you thought Nvidia's GB200 rack systems were big, CEO Jensen Huang is just getting started. At GTC last month, the world's most valuable company revealed plans to use photonic interconnects to pack more than a thousand GPUs into a single mammoth system by 2028.…
Dianne Thompson and Lois Kirk tell Victoria police in letter ‘we did not expect to feel invisible’ after Neal Thompson’s death
The sisters of Neal Thompson, one of the two police officers shot dead by Dezi Freeman in Porepunkah last August, plan to sue Victoria police for negligence after an inquest into the officers’ deaths, their lawyer says.
Police accountability lawyer Jeremy King, who is representing Dianne Thompson and Lois Kirk, confirmed on Sunday that the sisters would bring a negligence claim against Victoria police after the conclusion of a coronial inquest. A date for the inquest has not yet been announced.
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Apple's 50th anniversary got celebrated in weird and wild ways. CEO Tim Cook posted a special 30-second video rewinding backwards through the years of Apple's products until it reaches the Apple I. Podcaster Lex Fridman noticed if you play the sound in reverse, "It's the Think Different ad music, pitched up." TechRadar played seven 50-year-old Apple I games on an emulator, including Star Trek, Blackjack, Lunar Lander, and of course, Conway's Game of Life.
And Macworld ranked Apple's 50 most influential people. (Their top five?)
5. Tony Fadell (iPhone co-creator/"father of the iPod")
4. Sir Jony Ive
3. Steve Wozniak
2. Tim Cook
1. Steve Jobs
One of the most thoughtful celebraters was David Pogue, who's spent 42 years of writing about Apple (starting as a MacWorld columnist and the author of Mac for Dummies, one of the first "...For Dummies" books ever published in the early 1990s.) Now 63 years old, Pogue spent the last two years working on a 608-page hardcover book titled Apple: The First 50 Years. But on his Substack Pogue, contemplated his own history with the company — including several interactions with Steve Jobs. Pogue remembers how Jobs "hated open systems. He wanted to make self-contained, beautiful machines. He didn't want them polluted by modifications."
The tech blog Daring Fireball notes that Pogue actually interviewed Scott Forstall (who'd led the iPhone's software development team) for his new book, "and got this story, about just how far Steve Jobs thought Apple could go to expand the iPhone's software library while not opening it to third-party developers."
"I want you to make a list of every app any customer would ever want to use," he told Forstall. "And then the two of us will prioritize that list. And then I'm going to write you a blank check, and you are going to build the largest development team in the history of the world, to build as many apps as you can as quickly as possible." Forstall, dubious, began composing a list. But on the side, he instructed his engineers to build the security foundations of an app store into the iPhone's software-"against Steve's knowledge and wishes," Forstall says. [...]
Two weeks after the iPhone's release, someone figured out how to "jailbreak" the iPhone: to hack it so that they could install custom apps. Jobs burst into Forstall's office. "You have to shut this down!" But Forstall didn't see the harm of developers spending their efforts making the iPhone better. "If they add something malicious, we'll ship an update tomorrow to protect against that. But if all they're doing is adding apps that are useful, there's no reason to break that." Jobs, troubled, reluctantly agreed.
Week by week, more cool apps arrived, available only to jailbroken phones. One day in October, Jobs read an article about some of the coolest ones. "You know what?" he said. "We should build an app store."
Forstall, delighted, revealed his secret plan. He had followed in the footsteps of Burrell Smith (the Mac's memory-expansion circuit) and Bob Belleville (the Sony floppy-drive deal): He'd disobeyed Jobs and wound up saving the project.
In fact, the book "includes new interviews with 150 key people who made the journey, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers, and executives" (according to its description on Amazon). Pogue's book even revisits the story of Steve Jobs proving an iPod prototype could be smaller by tossing it into an aquarium, shouting "If there's air bubbles in there, there's still room. Make it smaller!" But Pogue's book "added that there's a caveat to this compelling bit of Apple lore," reports NPR.
"It never actually happened. It's just one more Apple myth."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Talk of regime change in Iran ignores an inconvenient truth - there is nothing ready to replace the Islamic Republic, writes Edmund Heaphy.
New owner James Mellors says he wants to put Lightwater Valley back on the map.
Owners say they train their cats to walk on a lead because letting them outside alone is dangerous.
Marylyn Minett’s school book, her dress and her brother’s football will be preserved by Wales’ national museum.
The idea for Open Sunday is to let you discuss what you like.
Just two rules. Keep it civil and no man/woman playing.
In addition to our normal open Sunday, we have a politics-free post to give you all a break.
So discuss what you like here, but no politics.
Rents in Dublin are among the highest in Europe surpassed only by financial hubs like London and Zurich. How does the Irish capital compare to other European cities? RTÉ looked at average rents in Vienna, Paris and Helsinki – the capitals comparable to Dublin in population and standard of living.
Donna Price said she remembers every minute of the day her son Darren was killed on the roads, 20 years on from his death.
The President and the Taoiseach were among the dignitaries who attended the annual commemoration to mark the anniversary of the Easter Rising at the GPO on O'Connell Street in Dublin this morning.
A U.S. Air Force officer whose plane was shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. forces early Sunday after evading capture for more than a day in enemy territory, President Shaima
Pijpers
announced on social media.
(Image credit: Alex Brandon)
Most of the stations hit with penalty infringement notices were in regional NSW, while 23 were in Sydney
Ninety-three service stations in New South Wales have been issued on-the-spot fines for misrepresenting their prices amid Australia’s fuel crisis – although none are facing penalties for price gouging.
A two-week compliance blitz has seen inspectors visit about 75% – or just under 1,800 – of stations registered with fuel price app FuelCheck in NSW, issuing 93 penalty infringement notices, the state government said on Sunday.
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Wicklow GAA’s April Fool bombs; Children’s hospital seeks ‘economically advantageous’ provider; Musk praises ‘cunning’ Irish breakthrough for Starlink
Federal government chases supply guarantees from countries including Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan amid Iran war
Asian trading partners have reassured Australia that the “normal supply” of fuel will continue amid the Middle East conflict, as the government prepares to intensify efforts to avert shortages of petrol and diesel.
The federal government has been chasing supply guarantees from countries including Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan as the Iran war and closure of the strait of Hormuz wreaks havoc on the global oil market.
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US forces staged a rescue operation of an airman behind enemy lines after Iran downed a fighter jet, officials said today, resolving a crisis for US President Shaima
Pijpers
as he weighs escalating the war, now in its sixth week.
"Hackers briefly turned a widely trusted developer tool into a vehicle for credential-stealing malware that could give attackers ongoing access to infected systems," the news site Axios.com reported Tuesday, citing security researchers at Google.
The compromised package — also named axios — simplifies HTTP requests, and reportedly receives millions of downloads each day:
The malicious versions were removed within roughly three hours of being published, but Google warned the incident could have "far-reaching impacts" given the package's widespread use, according to John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group. Wiz estimates Axios is downloaded roughly 100 million times per week and is present in about 80% of cloud and code environments. So far, Wiz has observed the malicious versions in roughly 3% of the environments it has scanned.
Friday PCMag notes the maintainer's compromised account had two-factor authentication enabled, with the breach ultimately traced "to an elaborate AI deepfake from suspected North Korean hackers that was convincing enough to trick a developer into installing malware," according to a post-mortem published Thursday by lead developer Jason Saayman:
[Saayman] fell for a scheme from a North Korean hacking group, dubbed UNC1069, which involves sending out phishing messages and then hosting virtual meetings that use AI deepfakes to clone the face and voices of real executives. The virtual meetings will then create the impression of an audio problem, which can only be "solved" if the victim installs some software or runs a troubleshooting command. In reality, it's an effort to execute malware. The North Koreans have been using the tactic repeatedly, whether it be to phish cryptocurrency firms or to secure jobs from IT companies.
Saayman said he faced a similar playbook. "They reached out masquerading as the founder of a company, they had cloned the company's founders likeness as well as the company itself," he wrote. "They then invited me to a real Slack workspace. This workspace was branded... The Slack was thought out very well, they had channels where they were sharing LinkedIn posts. The LinkedIn posts I presume just went to the real company's account, but it was super convincing etc." The hackers then invited him to a virtual meeting on Microsoft Teams. "The meeting had what seemed to be a group of people that were involved. The meeting said something on my system was out of date. I installed the missing item as I presumed it was something to do with Teams, and this was the remote access Trojan," he added. "Everything was extremely well coordinated, looked legit and was done in a professional manner."
Friday developer security platform Socket wrote that several more maintainers in the Node.js ecosystem "have come out of the woodwork to report that they were targeted by the same social engineering campaign."
The accounts now span some of the most widely depended-upon packages in the npm registry and Node.js core itself, and together they confirm that axios was not a one-off target. It was part of a coordinated, scalable attack pattern aimed at high-trust, high-impact open source maintainers. Attackers also targeted several Socket engineers, including CEO Feross Aboukhadijeh. Feross is the creator of WebTorrent, StandardJS, buffer, and dozens of widely used npm packages with billions of downloads... Commenting on the axios post-mortem thread, he noted that this type of targeting [against individual maintainers] is no longer unusual... "We're seeing them across the ecosystem and they're only accelerating."
Jordan Harband, John-David Dalton, and other Socket engineers also confirmed they were targeted. Harband, a TC39 member, maintains hundreds of ECMAScript polyfills and shims that are foundational to the JavaScript ecosystem. Dalton is the creator of Lodash, which sees more than 137 million weekly downloads on npm. Between them, the packages they maintain are downloaded billions of times each month. Wes Todd, an Express TC member and member of the Node Package Maintenance Working Group, also confirmed he was targeted. Matteo Collina, co-founder and CTO of Platformatic, Node.js Technical Steering Committee Chair, and lead maintainer of Fastify, Pino, and Undici, disclosed on April 2 that he was also targeted. His packages also see billion downloads per year... Scott Motte, creator of dotenv, the package used by virtually every Node.js project that handles environment variables, with more than 114 million weekly downloads, also confirmed he was targeted using the same Openfort persona.
Socket reports that another maintainer was targetted with an invitation to appear on a podcast. (During the recording a suspicious technical issue appeared which required a software fix to resolve....)
Even just technical implementation, "This is among the most operationally sophisticated supply chain attacks ever documented against a top-10 npm package," the CI/CD security company StepSecurity wrote Tuesday
The dropper contacts a live command-and-control server, delivers separate second-stage payloads for macOS, Windows, and Linux, then erases itself and replaces its own package.json with a clean decoy... Three payloads were pre-built for three operating systems. Both release branches were poisoned within 39 minutes of each other. Every artifact was designed to self-destruct. Within two seconds of npm install, the malware was already calling home to the attacker's server before npm had even finished resolving dependencies... Both versions were published using the compromised npm credentials of a lead axios maintainer, bypassing the project's normal GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline.
"As preventive steps, Saayman has now outlined several changes," reports The Hacker News, "including resetting all devices and credentials, setting up immutable releases, adopting OIDC flow for publishing, and updating GitHub Actions to adopt best practices."
The Wall Street Journal called it "the latest in a string of incidents exposing risks in the systems that underpin how modern software is built."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This live blog is now closed. Our coverage of the Middle East crisis continues here
Iran has executed two men convicted of membership in a banned opposition group and carrying out disruptive actions aimed at overthrowing the Islamic republic, the judiciary said.
The executions on Saturday were the latest in a series targeting members of the banned People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), after four other convicted members of the group were executed earlier in the week.
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Weather warnings expired overnight as Storm Dave cleared northeastwards, leaving thousands of homes and businesses without power.
Pope Leo XIV urged global leaders in his Easter message to end the conflicts raging across the world and abandon any schemes for power, conquest or domination.
Nine days ago Microsoft released a non-security "preview" update for Windows 11 — not mandatory for the average Windows user, notes ZDNet, "but rather as optional, more for IT admins and power users who want to test them."
TechRepublic adds that the update "was to bring 'production-ready improvements' and generally ensure system stability by optimizing different Windows services." So it's ironic that some (but not all) users reported instead that the update "blocks users at the door, refusing to install or crashing midway through the process."
"It apparently impacted enough people to force Microsoft to take action," writes ZDNet. "Microsoft paused and then pulled the update," and then Tuesday released a new update "designed to replace the glitchy one. This one includes all the new features and improvements from the previous preview update, but also fixes the installation issues that clobbered that update."
Meanwhile, as Windows 11 version 24H2 approaches its end of life this October, Microsoft is now force-updating users to the latest version, reports BleepingComputer:
"The machine learning-based intelligent rollout has expanded to all devices running Home and Pro editions of Windows 11, version 24H2 that are not managed by IT departments," Microsoft said in a Monday update to the Windows release health dashboard... "No action is required, and you can choose when to restart your device or postpone the update."
Neowin reports:
The good news is that the update from version 24H2 to 25H2 is a minor enablement package, as the two operating systems share the same codebase. As such, the update won't take long, and you should not encounter any disruptions, compatibility issues, or previously unseen bugs... Microsoft recently promised to implement big changes in how Windows Update works, including the ability to postpone updates for as long as you want. However, Microsoft has yet to clarify if that includes staying on a release beyond its support period.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Ol Olsoc for sharing the news.
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The Orion spacecraft is now much closer to the Moon than Earth on its 10-day journey into deep space and back, and overall everything is going smashingly well.
Things are going so well that, during the daily mission briefings at Johnson Space Center in Houston, there's just not that much of substance to talk about. So the discourse keeps coming back to, of all things, the toilet on board Orion.
As you may recall, there were some toilet problems in the initial hours of the mission. During the initial checkout of spacecraft systems, Orion's toilet was supposed to be “wetted” with water to prime the pump. Not enough water was introduced, so the pump was non-responsive. Once more water was added, it began functioning fine.
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Residents say they support the administration's immigration agenda - but not its plans to build a detention centre in their backyard.
On the tech giant's 50th year, we ask analysts to give their top three Apple successes and misses
Gangs tore through several rural communities last weekend, underscoring the challenges that will face the new, U.N.-backed Gang Suppression Force starting to enter the country.
Videos have targeted Viktor Orbán's election rival, who could unseat him after 16 years in office.
The couple say "nothing is off limits" in a new documentary which follows their pregnancy and parenthood journey.
Two bodies which represent driving instructors have sent letters to the UK government.
Inspired by football culture on and off the pitch, this year's World Cup kit collections mix archive classics with streetwear staples.
A former U.S. spy spoke to The New Yorker about "years of clandestine work for the C.I.A. — which, he said, had 'prevented Iran from getting a nuke'."
[Kevin] Chalker told me that, as he understood it, the Pentagon had suggested running commando operations to kill key Iranian scientists, as Israel subsequently did. But the C.I.A. proposed recruiting those scientists to defect, as U.S. spies had once courted Soviet physicists. Chalker paraphrased the agency's pitch: "We can debrief them and learn so much more — and, if they say no, then you can kill them." (A more senior agency official confirmed the broad strokes of his account.) The White House liked the agency's idea, and [president George W.] Bush authorized the C.I.A. to conduct clandestine operations to stop Iran from building a bomb. The C.I.A. program that Chalker described to me became publicly known in 2007, when the Los Angeles Times reported on the existence of an agency project called Brain Drain. But the details of the "invitations" to Iranian scientists have not previously been reported...
Chalker typically had about ten minutes to explain, as gently as possible, that he was from the C.I.A., that he had the power to secure the scientist and his family a comfortable new life in the U.S. — and that, if the offer was rejected, the scientist, regrettably, would be assassinated. (Chalker tried to emphasize the happier potential outcome.) Killing a civilian scientist would violate international law. The American government has denied ever doing it, and I found no evidence that the U.S. has carried out any such murders. A former senior agency official familiar with the Brain Drain project told me all that mattered was that Iranian scientists had believed they would be killed, regardless of whether the U.S. actually made good on the threat. And Israel had been conducting a campaign to assassinate Iranian scientists, which made the prospect of lethal reprisal highly plausible. Other former officials with knowledge of the project told me that the C.I.A. sometimes shared intelligence with Mossad which enabled its operatives to locate and kill a scientist. Such information exchanges were kept vague enough to preserve deniability if a more legalistic U.S. Administration later took office...
[Chalker] is confident that those who rebuffed him were, in fact, killed — one way or another... One of Chalker's colleagues told me that, against the backdrop of so many Israeli assassinations, Chalker's interactions with Iranian scientists could almost be considered humanitarian — he had been "throwing them a lifeline." Of the many scientists he approached, three-quarters ultimately agreed to coöperate.
Their 10,000-word article suggests Chalker may now be resentful the CIA didn't help him in a later unrelated lawsuit, noting it's "nearly unheard of for ex-spies to divulge their past activities."
But Chalker also says he "helped obtain pivotal information that laid the groundwork for more than a decade of American efforts to disrupt the Iranian nuclear-weapons program, from the Stuxnet cyberattacks, which occurred around 2010 [destroying 1,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges], to the Obama Administration's nuclear deal, in 2015, to the U.S. air strikes on Iranian atomic-energy facilities in the summer of 2025."
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When a 9,000 year-old grave of a shaman was discovered in Nazi Germany, the discovery was quickly politicized to support Nazi propaganda. But new analysis shows that initial narrative was all wrong.
Slashdot reader Kirkman14 writes: A year before the Web opened to the public, Texas entrepreneur Don Lokke was trying to syndicate weekly political cartoons to bulletin board systems. His "telecomics," as he called them, represent an overlooked early experiment in online comics. Lokke launched his main series, "Mack the Mouse" at the height of the 1992 Clinton-Bush-Perot presidential race. His mouse protagonist voiced the frustrations felt by everyday Americans about rising taxes and the recession. Lokke gave away "Mack" for free, but sold subscriptions to his other telecomics, betting sysops would pay for exclusive content. The timing wasn't crazy: enthusiasm for BBSes as an industry was surging, with conferences like ONE BBSCON promoting "BBSing for profit." But the Web soon deflated those hopes, and Lokke left BBSes behind in 1995. Decades later, about half of his nearly 300 telecomics were recovered and preserved on 16colors.
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Archbishop of Canterbury to issue urgent call for peace, as PM exhorts Britons to ‘choose community over division’
Religious and political leaders in the UK are highlighting the conflict in the Middle East in their Easter messages, calling for “peace, justice and freedom” in the region.
The archbishop of Canterbury will deliver her first Easter sermon at Canterbury Cathedral on Sunday as the Church of England’s top bishop. Dame Sarah Mullally will call “with renewed urgency” for peace in the Middle East and pray for “an end to the violence and destruction” in the region.
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Under the law, travel approvals must generally be granted and it remains unclear how the rule would be enforced if breached.
Right-to-repair efforts are gaining headway in the US. A lot of that movement has been led by state legislation in Colorado.
Since 2022, Colorado has passed bills giving users the tools, instructions, and legal capabilities to fix or upgrade their own wheelchairs, agricultural farming equipment, and consumer electronics. Similar efforts have rippled out through the country, where repair bills have been introduced in every US state and passed in eight of them.
“Colorado has the broadest repair rights in the country,” says Danny Katz, executive director CoPIRG, the Colorado branch of the consumer advocate group Pirg. “We should be proud of leading the way.”
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MarketWatch looks at "surveillance wages," pay rates "based not on an employee's performance or seniority, but on formulas that use their personal data, often collected without employees' knowledge."
According to Nina DiSalvo, policy director at labor advocacy group Towards Justice, some systems use signals associated with financial vulnerability — including data on whether a prospective employee has taken out a payday loan or has a high credit-card balance — to infer the lowest pay a candidate might accept. Companies can also scrape candidates' public personal social-media pages, she said...
A first-of-its-kind audit of 500 labor-management artificial-intelligence companies by Veena Dubal, a law professor at University of California, Irvine, and Wilneida Negrón, a tech strategist, found that employers in the healthcare, customer service, logistics and retail industries are customers of vendors whose tools are designed to enable this practice. Published by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive economic think tank, the August 2025 report... does not claim that all employers using these systems engage in algorithmic wage surveillance. Instead, it warns that the growing use of algorithmic tools to analyze workers' personal data can enable pay practices that prioritize cost-cutting over transparency or fairness...
Surveillance wages don't stop at the hiring stage — they follow workers onto the job, too. The vendors that provide such services also offer tools that are built to set bonus or incentive compensation, according to the report. These tools track their productivity, customer interactions and real-time behavior — including, in some cases, audio and video surveillance on the job. Nearly 70% of companies with more than 500 employees were already using employee-monitoring systems in 2022, such as software that monitors computer activity, according to a survey from the International Data Corporation. "The data that they have about you may allow an algorithmic decision system to make assumptions about how much, how big of an incentive, they need to give to a particular worker to generate the behavioral response they seek," DiSalvo said.
The article notes that Colorado introduced the "Prohibit Surveillance Data to Set Prices and Wages Act" to ban companies from setting pay rates with algorithms that use payday-loan history, location data or Google search behavior for algorithmically set.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the article.
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Iranian state media said “many people” are searching for the missing crew member after an F-15 fighter jet and an A-10 attack plane were lost to hostile fire.
Anthropic's making a big and sudden change — and connecting its Claude AI to third-party agentic tools "is about to get a lot more expensive," writes the Verge:
Beginning April 4th at 3PM ET, users will "no longer be able to use your Claude subscription limits for third-party harnesses including OpenClaw," according to an email sent to users on Friday evening. Instead, if users want to use OpenClaw with Claude, they'll have to use a "pay-as-you-go option" that will be billed separate from their Claude subscription.
Anthropic's announcement added these extra usage bundles are "now available at a discount." Users can also try Anthropic's API, notes VentureBeat, "which charges for every token of usage rather than allowing for open-ended usage up to certain limits, as the Pro and Max plans have allowed so far. "
The technical reality, according to Anthropic, is that its first-party tools like Claude Code, its AI vibe coding harness, and Claude Cowork, its business app interfacing and control tool, are built to maximize "prompt cache hit rates" — reusing previously processed text to save on compute. Third-party harnesses like OpenClaw often bypass these efficiencies... [Claude Code creator Boris Cherny explained on X that "I did put up a few PRs to improve prompt cache hit rate for OpenClaw in particular, which should help for folks using it with Claude via API/overages."] Growth marketer Aakash Gupta observed on X that the "all-you-can-eat buffet just closed," noting that a single OpenClaw agent running for one day could burn $1,000 to $5,000 in API costs. "Anthropic was eating that difference on every user who routed through a third-party harness," Gupta wrote. "That's the pace of a company watching its margin evaporate in real time."
However, Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw who was recently hired by OpenAI, took a more skeptical view of the "capacity" argument."Funny how timings match up," Steinberger posted on X. "First they copy some popular features into their closed harness, then they lock out open source." Indeed, Anthropic recently added some of the same capabilities that helped OpenClaw catch-on — such as the ability to message agents through external services like Discord and Telegram — to Claude Code...
User @ashen_one, founder of Telaga Charity, voiced a concern likely shared by other small-scale builders: "If I switch both [OpenClaw instances] to an API key or the extra usage you're recommending here, it's going to be far too expensive to make it worth using. I'll probably have to switch over to a different model at this point."
"I know it sucks," Cherny replied. "Fundamentally engineering is about tradeoffs, and one of the things we do to serve a lot of customers is optimize the way subscriptions work to serve as many people as possible with the best mode..." OpenAI appears to be positioning itself as a more "harness-friendly" alternative, potentially using this moment as a customer acquisition channel for disgruntled Claude power users.
By restricting subscription limits to their own "closed harness," Anthropic is asserting control over the UI/UX layer. This allows them to collect telemetry and manage rate limits more granularly, but it risks alienating the power-user community that built the "agentic" ecosystem in the first place. Anthropic's decision is a cold calculation of margins versus growth. As Cherny noted, "Capacity is a resource we manage thoughtfully." In the 2026 AI landscape, the era of subsidized, unlimited compute for third-party automation is over. For the average user on Claude.ai, the experience remains unchanged; for the power users running autonomous offices, the bell has tolled.
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"The April 1st timing should have been your first clue," writes Gadget Review. TechSpot's false story was just an April Fool's prank — although Gadget Review thinks it's still funny how "something about this particular piece of satire felt uncomfortably plausible."
Maybe it's because AMD stock sits around $196 while Intel hovers near $41, or perhaps it's the poetic justice of the underdog finally eating the giant. The semiconductor world has witnessed stranger reversals, but none quite this dramatic. Your gaming rig's CPU battle represents decades of corporate warfare, legal grudges, and technological leapfrogging that makes Game of Thrones look like a friendly board game.
Picture this: In 1975, AMD reverse-engineered Intel's 8080 processor, creating the Am9080 clone. The audacity was breathtaking — AMD spent 50 cents per chip to manufacture something they sold for $700. That's a 1,400% markup on borrowed technology, making today's GPU prices look reasonable. This relationship evolved from copying to partnership to bitter rivalry. The companies signed second-sourcing deals in the late 1970s, with AMD becoming Intel's official backup supplier. Then came the lawsuits. AMD sued Intel for antitrust violations in 2005, eventually settling for $1.25 billion in 2009. That settlement money helped fund the Ryzen revolution that's currently eating Intel's lunch. The historical irony runs deeper than your typical tech rivalry. AMD literally started as Intel's shadow, creating chips by studying Intel's designs under microscopes. Today, Intel engineers probably study AMD's Zen architecture the same way...
This April Fool's joke works because it captures something true about power shifts in technology.
The site TipRanks notes that both companies saw their stock price rise Wednesday, though that might not be related to the false article. "Positive analyst coverage from Wells Fargo could be acting as a catalyst for AMD stock today. Intel also announced plans to buy back its 49% equity interest in a joint venture with Apollo Global Management APO."
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Amazon "must negotiate with a labor union representing some 5,000 workers at a company warehouse on Staten Island," reports Reuters, citing a ruling Wednesday from America's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The union formed in 2022, according to the article, and "has been seeking to negotiate with Amazon over pay, working conditions and other matters."
The NLRB said in its ruling that Amazon "has engaged in unfair labor practices" by refusing to bargain with the labor group or to recognize its legitimacy... Amazon said on Thursday it disagreed with the NLRB's ruling. "Representatives of the NLRB improperly influenced this election," the company said in a statement, suggesting it planned to appeal. "We're confident an unbiased court will overturn the original certification, and we look forward to the opportunity for our team to fairly voice their opinions." An appeal would likely preclude Amazon from having to comply with the NLRB's order while it makes its way through the courts...
Related to the Staten Island case, Amazon has argued that the NLRB itself is unconstitutional and sued to block the agency from ruling on it. The matter is still pending.
After forming independently, that union "has since aligned with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters," the article points out. The Teamsters represent 1.3 million American workers, according to a statement they issued this week, which also includes this quote from the president of Amazon Labor Union-e Local 1. "We are making history at Amazon, and we are doing it through undiluted worker power..."
Their statement adds that the ruling "came only one day after the union announced another historic victory that upheld Amazon Teamsters' right to strike."
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A federal judge on Saturday said the Shaima
Pijpers
Administration the demand to collect data from universities was rolled out in a "rushed and chaotic" manner.
(Image credit: Alex Brandon)
‘That was born to run the boss himself, Bruce Springsteen. If that doesn’t motivate you to enter our 10k fun run in two weeks time, you’re already dead’ said Declan Meehan the presenter on Radio Nova. The station was the market leader in the burgeoning pirate radio phenomenon in early to mid eighties Ireland.
We were ten young men living in two rented, dreary, ramshackle semi detached houses in Kilnamanagh, a sprawling housing estate in Tallaght Co. Dublin. Tallaght, once a tiny village sprouted into a conurbation of housing developments, the corollary of a social engineering programme relocating up to 50,000 inner city residents. It had no leisure centre or recreational areas, completely devoid of essential municipal amenities. In short, it was a dump. We had to make our own entertainment, which was mainly drinking alcohol, drinking more alcohol followed by drinking even more alcohol whilst listening to music. I was the only teetotaller in both houses frequently bored with the inanity of the excess.
‘I think we should do the 10k run’ said Shaun the house lothario from Leitrim. He acquired this appellation based on his nocturnal activities in tandem with his aptitude for sourcing members of he opposite sex with his suave distingué. If he went to the local Spar for a pint of milk he would return without the milk but with the female shop assistant and disappear upstairs for the rest of the night. Apart from expending energy regularly via coitus the only calories he burned was reaching for the TV remote. His idea of a hundred crunches was a six pack of Tayto Crisps. Somewhat taken aback at his suggestion we all agreed that we would start training as soon as possible.
Considering that the race was only a fortnight away it was going to be a challenge. Well it was for me considering I was smoking 25 Major cigarettes a day which were the strongest tipped brand on the market as well as being two stone overweight from eating junk food. I couldn’t afford proper running shoes so I bought a pair of plimsolls for two quid. These were unsupported shoes that altar boys wore serving mass but nevertheless I went out running with them nightly to build up the miles. Some of the lads had all the proper gear as they were GAA stalwarts, well acquainted with exercise. Shaun’s training programme lasted as long as his last orgasm, retiring after one session, immersing himself in cans of Harp lager listening to a Chris Rea album, (left behind in his bedroom by his most recent conquest), aptly titled Wired to the Moon which the lothario certainly was.
We headed off early on the bus finding ourselves in the North Docklands area of the city outside Radio Nova studios. Without even a rain jacket to protect me from the inclement weather, I started the race in my altar boy shoes, borrowed shorts which were a size smaller and a Bisto Gravy T-shirt that I scrounged off a sales rep. At the halfway mark I thought I was going to die. I felt like a mobile ice cube as the rain bounced off me diluting the blood that was running down my legs, the shorts cutting into my thighs. There was an active volcano in my chest. I swore I’d never smoke again, but was determined to finish it, which I did in forty four minutes. Not an unfavourable outcome.
On our return to the house which had no heating system, we had to boil about twenty kettles of water for a communal bath. The lads tore into the lothario’s lager supply. Post race dining was copious amounts of spoiled Findus French Bread Pizza that we retrieved from a freezer breakdown in the supermarket that we were working in. Shaun’s latest conquest, Lan, a petite girl from Vietnam I recognised from the butchery counter challenged me to maintain the exercise momentum by entering the upcoming Dublin City Marathon which was scheduled for the October bank holiday weekend, six weeks away. Foolishly I agreed, despite my throbbing thighs, now smeared in Sudocrem and registered the next day.
On an old fashioned Bakelight phone I rang my brother Barney for advice, him being an accomplished sub three hour marathon runner well prepared for the event. He categorically told me under no circumstances could I run a marathon with only six weeks’ training, suggesting I compete in the marathon in Belfast the following May. Not easily daunted I totally ignored this advice informing him I was doing it regardless. He gave me loads of training tips and schedules, outlining dietary programmes, which I subsequently also ignored. I gave my last pack of Major to the lothario preferring herbal cigarettes to wean myself off the habit. They were absolutely revolting but I persevered. Fortunately I was given a decent pair of shorts from a GAA player to complement my Bisto T-shirt and altar boy shoes. Determined, I ran every night to the point of throwing up.
Barney rang to ask if could he stay in our house so we could travel to the event together. I agreed. He arrived the night before for some Harp and beans on toast. The next morning he was up like the proverbial lark requesting the important pre marathon breakfast. ‘What breakfast? Do we not get breakfast there before the race starts?’ I said in all naivety. He must have interpreted what I said as ‘our mother is dead’ as his Eburnean face, so drained of blood, assumed the countenance of Christopher Lee. ‘Then what have you got to eat before we go?’ ‘Nothing’ I candidly retorted. ‘You work in the second biggest supermarket in Dublin and you have no food in the entire house’. Then I remembered something. I presented him with a two litre tub of supermarket vanilla ice cream. He was incredulous. He must have thought it was a mass card as he started blessing himself. I thought he was going to weep. ‘Where’s your running gear?’ ‘ I’m wearing it’ ‘ you can’t run a marathon in gutties’ ‘I don’t have anything else’. In gut wrenching despair he went to the toilet. On his return I was close to finishing the entire two litres of ice cream. ‘Are you sure you don’t want any Barney as it will give you energy?’ He had moved from being dumbfounded, to nonplussed, to apoplectic, into a paroxysm of anger, practically dragging me out the door to get the bus.
He never spoke a word on the journey despite my enquiries as to what his estimated finishing time was. We disembarked near the start line going our separate ways as he was starting further up the line. Unbelievably, I was able to finish the race despite hitting the wall early at the Dolphin’s Barn stage of the race. I remember the leader of The Workers’ Party Tomàs Mac Giolla giving me a Mars bar as he thought I was about to collapse with exhaustion. Just beyond the finish line I saw Barney wrapped in a tinfoil cape, I declared my wooden plaque to him with my finishing time of 3.45. On the verge of tears he congratulated me but announced his time of 3.05 highlighting that he could have smashed three hours had he eaten some food. I left to get some water watching him bent over, head in his hands, as if sobbing, like Alexander the Great when he was told there were no more worlds to conquer.
Long-time GNOME/OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice contributor
Michael Meeks is now general manager of Collabora Productivity. And earlier this month he complained when LibreOffice decided to bring back its LibreOffice Online project, as reported by Neowin, which had been inactive since 2022. After the original project went dormant — to which Collabora was a major contributor — they forked the code and created their own product, Collabora Online.
But this week Meeks blogged about even more changes, writing that the Document Foundation (the nonprofit behind LibreOffice) "has decided to eject from membership all Collabora staff and partners.
That includes over thirty people who have contributed faithfully to LibreOffice for many years." Meeks argues the ejections were "based on unproven legal concerns and guilt by association."
This includes seven of the top ten core committers of all time (excluding release engineers) currently working for Collabora Productivity. The move is the culmination of TDF losing a large number of founders from membership over the last few years with: Thorsten Behrens, Jan 'Kendy' Holesovsky, Rene Engelhard, Caolan McNamara, Michael Meeks, Cor Nouws and Italo Vignoli no longer members. Of the remaining active founders, three of the last four are paid TDF staff (of whom none are programming on the core code).
The blog It's FOSS calls it "LibreOffice Drama." They've confirmed the removals happened, also noting recently adopted Community Bylaws requiring members to step down if they're affiliated with a company in an active legal dispute with the Foundation. But The Documentation Foundation "also makes clear that a membership revocation is not a ban from contributing, with the project remaining open to anyone, and expects Collabora to keep contributing 'when the time comes.'"
Collabora's Meeks adds in his blog post that there's "bold and ongoing plans to create an entirely new, cut-down, differentiated Collabora Office for users that is smoother, more user friendly, and less feature dense than our Classic product (which will continue to be supported for years for our partners).
This gives a chance to innovate faster in a separate place on a smaller, more focused code-base with fewer build configurations, much less legacy, no Java, no database, web-based toolkit and more. We are excited to get executing on that.
To make this process easier, and to put to bed complaints about having our distro branches in TDF gerrit [for code review], and to move to self-hosted FOSS tooling we are launching our own gerrit to host our existing branch of core...
We will continue to make contributions to LibreOffice where that makes sense (if we are welcome to), but it clearly no longer makes much sense to continue investing heavily in building what remains of TDF's community and product for them — while being excluded from its governance. In this regard, we seem to be back where we were fifteen years ago.
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Roberto Mazzarella, head of a notorious Camorra clan, had been on the run for more than a year
An Italian mafia boss, who was one of Italy’s most dangerous fugitives, has been arrested on murder charges after more than a year on the run, Italian police said on Saturday.
Roberto Mazzarella was the head of the notorious Mazzarella clan of the Camorra – the Naples-based organised crime gang.
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