Tech

Trump’s FY27 budget would cut $700M from CISA and kill election security

Published

3 hours ago

8 April 2026

In short: The Trump administration’s FY2027 budget proposes cutting $707 million from CISA, eliminating the agency’s election security programme entirely and shedding 860 positions, a dramatic escalation that would reduce the country’s primary civilian cybersecurity agency to a $2 billion operation after a year already defined by DOGE-driven layoffs and mass departures.

The United States’ central civilian cybersecurity agency has lost roughly a third of its workforce over the past 14 months. Its red team has been dissolved. Scores of staff working on election security, incident response, and continuous monitoring were fired by the Department of Government Efficiency in early 2025, then partially reinstated under court order, then placed on paid leave in legal limbo. Against that backdrop, the Trump administration released its FY2027 budget request on 7 April 2026, proposing to cut a further $707 million from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a reduction the White House frames as a long-overdue refocusing on the agency’s core mission and critics describe as an act of deliberate dismantlement.

The proposed cuts amount to approximately $700 million in programme eliminations, producing a net reduction of around $360 million once internal transfers and targeted new hires are factored in. If enacted, CISA’s operating budget would fall to roughly $2 billion, down from the approximately $3 billion it received when the current administration took office. The budget also projects eliminating around 867 positions, partially offset by transfers into the agency, for a net workforce reduction of approximately 860 roles.

What would disappear

The most politically conspicuous cut is the outright elimination of CISA’s election security programme. The proposal would end CISA’s funding for the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, known as EI-ISAC, which serves as the primary hub for sharing cyber threat intelligence, ransomware alerts, and incident response resources with state and local election offices. It would also remove dedicated election security advisors stationed across the country and terminate the information-sharing support CISA has provided to state and local election officials since the agency’s founding in 2018. Those advisors have been the first point of contact for county clerks and election administrators facing phishing attacks, foreign probing of registration databases, and disinformation campaigns targeting election infrastructure.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

Beyond elections, the proposal would substantially scale back CISA’s stakeholder engagement function, eliminating offices responsible for coordinating with private-sector infrastructure operators and managing the agency’s international affairs partnerships. Workforce development programmes and what the budget characterises as “duplicative” state and local cyber funding streams would also be cut. The proposal shifts more responsibility for certain infrastructure security and emergency communications programmes directly to state and local governments, though it does not specify additional funding to those governments to absorb the transfer.

The White House’s argument

The administration’s budget justification is pointed in its language. The document states that “CISA was more focused on censorship than on protecting the nation’s critical systems, and put them at risk due to poor management and inefficiency, as well as a focus on self-promotion.” The proposed reductions, it argues, “refocus CISA on its core mission” of securing the federal civilian network and helping critical infrastructure operators defend against cyberattacks and physical threats.

The censorship framing refers primarily to CISA’s now-disbanded counter-disinformation work, including a unit that coordinated with social media companies on election-related content moderation during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. That work was shut down after Republican criticism and subsequent litigation. Sean Plankey, Trump’s nominee to lead CISA, addressed the issue directly during his confirmation hearings. “It is not CISA’s job, and nor is it in its authorities, to censor or determine the truths,” Plankey said, adding that the agency would not pursue such work under his leadership. Plankey also pledged to “rebuild and refocus” CISA, emphasising that his goal would be to “empower the operators to operate“, referring to the private sector entities responsible for critical infrastructure. Plankey has not yet been confirmed by the Senate.

A year already defined by cuts

The FY27 proposal lands on an agency that has spent the past year contracting sharply. When Trump returned to office in January 2025, CISA had approximately 3,300 employees. By December 2025, that figure had fallen to roughly 2,400, a loss of nearly 900 people. The departures came through a combination of voluntary exits during the deferred resignation programme, probationary staff terminations, and direct DOGE action. In late February and early March 2025, DOGE terminated contracts and fired staff in waves that eliminated CISA’s entire red team, more than 80 employees working on continuous monitoring, and between 30 and 50 incident response staff. A federal judge subsequently ordered the reinstatement of probationary employees, but reinstated staff were placed on paid administrative leave rather than returned to active duties.

The red team cuts drew particular alarm from security professionals, since red-team exercises, in which agency staff simulate real-world attacks against government networks to identify vulnerabilities before adversaries do, are among the most operationally consequential work any cybersecurity organisation undertakes. Removing that capability does not just reduce CISA’s headcount; it eliminates a specific function that cannot simply be assumed by the remaining staff. The governance of AI-assisted cybersecurity tools across critical infrastructure has become a defining challenge for 2026, and the debate about CISA’s role sits at its centre: the agency was positioned to set standards and share threat intelligence precisely as those questions become most consequential.

Congressional pushback, and its limits

The proposed $707 million cut represents a sharp escalation from the administration’s FY26 request, which sought approximately $490 million in reductions. Congressional resistance at that stage, including from Republican committee members who considered the cuts excessive, ultimately narrowed the actual reductions to somewhere between $130 million and $300 million. Whether that resistance holds in the current budget environment is uncertain.

The sharpest opposition came from the Democratic side of the aisle. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, rejected both the scale of the proposed cuts and the administration’s framing. “Like the President’s cyber strategy, the President’s CISA budget reflects his utter lack of understanding of the urgency of the cyber threats we face and how to mobilize the government to help confront them,” Thompson said in a statement. Citing the threat environment that has intensified in recent months, Thompson added: “There is nothing that justifies a reckless $700 million cut to CISA, particularly at a time of heightened tensions with Iran and an increasingly aggressive China.”

Thompson said he was “committed to working with colleagues to push back against these cuts” and to ensuring the government can protect federal and critical infrastructure networks. Separately, bipartisan legislation introduced earlier in 2026 would require CISA to maintain “sufficient” staffing levels, though the bill has not advanced to a vote.

What $2 billion buys, and what it doesn’t

The cuts do not eliminate CISA. Under the proposed budget, the agency would retain its core federal network security functions, its role supporting critical infrastructure operators, and some capacity for coordination with the private sector. The Einstein intrusion detection system and the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation programme for federal civilian networks are expected to survive. What the budget removes is the outward-facing, partnership-intensive layer of CISA’s operations: the work with state and local governments, the election security apparatus, the international engagement, and the stakeholder advisory infrastructure that has grown since the agency’s founding.

The commercial cybersecurity sector is watching closely. CISA has historically been a significant source of free threat intelligence, vulnerability advisories, and incident response support for smaller organisations and local governments that cannot afford enterprise-grade security tools. As the AI-driven expansion of the threat landscape accelerated through 2025, the agency’s advisories on vulnerabilities in industrial control systems and critical infrastructure became more, not less, relied upon by the operators responsible for power grids, water systems, and financial networks. The proposed cuts do not formally end that advisory function, but an agency operating at $2 billion with 860 fewer staff will inevitably produce fewer advisories, respond to fewer incidents, and reach fewer of the operators it was designed to support.

The budget is a proposal, not a law. Congress must still appropriate the funds, and the FY26 experience suggests that the final number will likely be lower than requested. What has already happened at CISA, however, does not require a vote to reverse: a third of the workforce is gone, the red team no longer exists, and election security advisors have been standing down since early 2025. The budget fight now is largely about whether what remains gets smaller still.

Source link

Tech

Apple Faces ‘Massive Dilemma’ With Success of the MacBook Neo

Published

13 minutes ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Apple may have a supply problem on its hands with the MacBook Neo… The laptop reportedly relies on “binned” A18 Pro chips with one GPU core disabled, and demand is so strong that the supply of those cheaper leftover chips could run out before the next model is ready. That leaves Apple choosing between lower margins, shifting production plans, or changing the lineup to keep its $599 hit product in stock. MacRumors reports: The all-new MacBook Neo has been such a hit that Apple is facing a “massive dilemma,” according to Taiwan-based tech columnist and former Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan. […] In the latest edition of his Culpium newsletter today, Culpan said the MacBook Neo is selling so well that Apple’s supply of the binned A18 Pro chips with a 5-core GPU will “run out” before the company is able to fully satisfy demand for the laptop. Apple’s initial plan was to have suppliers build around five to six million MacBook Neo units before ceasing production of the model with the A18 Pro chip, he said, but it sounds like demand is so strong that Apple might run out of A18 Pro chips to put in the MacBook Neo before the second-generation MacBook Neo with an A19 Pro chip is ready next year. Apple is unlikely to mark the MacBook Neo as temporarily sold out, so it may be forced to take action, but profit margins might be affected.

A18 Pro chips are manufactured with TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process, known as N3E, and Culpan said TSMC’s N3E production lines are currently operating at maximum capacity. As a result, he said that Apple may have to pay a premium to restart A18 Pro chip production for the MacBook Neo, which would lower its profit margins. Apple would have to disable a GPU core on these chips to ensure that they have only a 5-core GPU, like all other MacBook Neo units sold to date. Alternatively, Culpan said that Apple could reallocate some of its chip production that was originally planned for other devices, but he said the cost would still be higher than what it paid for its initial batch of A18 Pro chips.

Culpan speculated that Apple could also opt to discontinue the $599 model with 256GB of storage, leaving the $699 model with 512GB of storage and a Touch ID button as the only configuration available. This is unlikely to happen any time soon, in our view, given how heavily Apple has been promoting the MacBook Neo’s affordability. Apple might also be able to move up the release of a MacBook Neo with the iPhone 17 Pro’s A19 Pro chip, but that too would be a costlier option, at least until the company achieves a sufficient stockpile of binned A19 Pro chips with a 5-core GPU. In any case, Apple could opt to keep the starting price of current and future MacBook Neo models at $599 and simply accept lower profit margins on the laptop, especially given that it attracts customers to the macOS and broader Apple ecosystem.

Source link

Tech

Google Maps uses Gemini to write captions for your photos

Published

26 minutes ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

In short: Google Maps now uses Gemini to suggest captions when users share photos of places, launching on iOS in the U.S. and expanding globally to Android in the coming months, the latest step in a six-month campaign to weave AI into every layer of Maps.

Sharing a photo on Google Maps has always required a small act of will: you take the shot, upload it, and then stare at a blank text field deciding whether the restaurant you just visited warrants a full sentence or nothing at all. Most people choose nothing. As of 7 April 2026, Google is trying to fix that with Gemini. The company announced that Google Maps will now analyse uploaded photos and videos and automatically suggest a caption, giving contributors what it describes as a head start on writing. Users can accept, edit, or delete the suggestion. The feature is live now in English on iOS in the United States, with a global rollout to Android in the coming months.

The change is minor in scope and meaningful in intent. Google Maps is powered by user-generated content at a scale few platforms match: more than 120 million Local Guides contribute to the platform, collectively uploading an estimated 300 million photos per year and generating more than 20 million contributions every day, across reviews, ratings, edits, and imagery. That content forms the factual substrate of the map. The quality of a restaurant’s listing, the accuracy of a hotel’s photos, the legibility of a new business’s page, all of it depends on people choosing to write something rather than nothing when they open the share screen. Removing the friction of the blank text box, even slightly, is a data quality decision as much as a user experience one.

How Gemini captions work

The mechanics are straightforward. When a user selects a photo or video to share on Maps, Gemini analyses the image, identifies the subject and context, and generates a suggested caption. The user sees that suggestion before posting and can modify it freely or remove it entirely. Google has framed the tool as assistive rather than automated: the caption is a starting point, not a published output. That framing matters both for user trust and for the platform’s content standards, since a caption Google helped write would carry a different kind of liability if it were factually wrong.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

The feature builds on capabilities Google has been deploying in Maps for several months. In November 2025, the company introduced its first Gemini-powered navigation features, including landmark-based directions that tell drivers to turn “after the Thai Siam Restaurant” rather than “in 200 metres.” In January 2026, Gemini-assisted guidance expanded to cycling and walking. On 12 March 2026, Google announced Ask Maps, a conversational search mode drawing on more than 300 million places and 500 million community reviews to answer complex, natural-language queries, alongside Immersive Navigation, which it described as the biggest overhaul to driving directions in a decade. The AI photo caption feature is the next increment in that sequence, extending Gemini from navigation and search into the content creation workflow that keeps the map fresh. Last year’s aggressive AI deployment across Google’s product suite set the pace for this rollout, and Maps is now clearly a priority target.

The data flywheel behind the feature

The strategic logic is not hard to decode. Google Maps’ value proposition rests on having more accurate, more comprehensive, and more up-to-date information about more places than any competitor. That information advantage is maintained primarily through user contributions, not through Google’s own editorial staff. Anything that increases contribution volume — particularly captioned, contextualised photos rather than captionless image dumps — strengthens the map’s relevance for search and discovery. A photo with a descriptive caption (“wide outdoor seating, dog-friendly, gets busy after 6pm”) is more useful to someone planning a visit than an unlabelled image of a table.

The timing also reflects competitive pressure. ChatGPT’s expanding role in local search and recommendations has become a live concern for Google’s Maps and Search businesses, and as AI models begin to monetise local intent directly, the quality of the underlying place data they can draw on becomes a competitive moat. Google’s Local Guides network is one of its most significant proprietary assets in this context. Lowering the bar for high-quality contributions helps keep that dataset ahead of what rivals can source or replicate.

The quality paradox

There is a tension the caption feature will need to navigate carefully. Making it easier to share content on Maps does not automatically make the content better. Google removed more than 160 million photos and 3.5 million videos from Maps in its most recent content moderation period, citing policy violations or low quality. The platform also took down more than 960,000 reviews in 2024 that were flagged as fake or policy-breaching, and has since deployed Gemini specifically to detect AI-generated reviews and suspicious profile edits. Lowering the friction of photo sharing means lowering the friction for poor-quality or manipulated content as well as good-quality contributions.

Google’s apparent answer is to use the same AI that generates captions to assist moderation — using Gemini both to write content and to screen it. That dual role is becoming a structural feature of large platforms managing AI-assisted user-generated content, and it raises questions about governance that extend well beyond maps or photos. The governance of AI in content pipelines remains one of the unresolved infrastructure challenges of this moment, and the Maps caption feature is a small but instructive case study: beneficial automation and content risk reduction require the same underlying model to play two opposing roles simultaneously.

iOS first, then the world

The iOS-first, U.S.-first rollout is consistent with Google’s standard pattern for Gemini feature launches. Ask Maps launched in the U.S. and India before expanding; Immersive Navigation started with U.S. drivers before moving to other markets. The English-only restriction on captions reflects the additional complexity of generating contextually appropriate, grammatically natural text in languages where AI performance varies more significantly. An expansion to Android and to non-English markets “in the coming months” is the expected trajectory, though Google has not specified which languages will follow first.

The competitive landscape for AI-assisted mapping is also shifting at the model infrastructure level. Microsoft’s push for model independence from OpenAI includes vision and multimodal capabilities that could eventually power competing location-based features, and the image understanding underpinning Google’s caption suggestions is precisely the kind of capability where the gap between frontier models and mid-tier alternatives is narrowing quickly. For now, Google’s advantage is integration depth rather than raw model performance: Gemini works inside Maps because Maps is Google’s, and no competitor has equivalent leverage over the contribution workflow of 120 million users.

The blank caption box has existed in Google Maps for years. It turns out the simplest way to get people to fill it in is to fill it in for them and let them decide whether to keep it.

Source link

Tech

Russian YouTubers Somehow Turned A Boxer Engine Into An Inline-Four

Published

54 minutes ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

There are many unique attributes that have made Subaru such a successful auto brand. One is the company’s signature symmetrical all-wheel-drive system, which comes standard on the majority of Subaru vehicles. There’s also the fact that Subaru was an early player in the now-dominant crossover SUV market, building a brand identity around car-based SUVs like the Forester and Outback beginning back in the 1990s.

Then there are the engines. While many Subaru crossover drivers might not pay much attention to their engine layout, gearheads and enthusiasts know that the Subaru boxer four-cylinder is one of the most distinctive engines in the world. For decades, the horizontally opposed Subaru boxer has distinguished itself from more common inline and V-layout engines with its unique weight distribution, power delivery, and engine sound.

With that in mind, it seems a little insane that someone would try to turn the iconic, unique Subaru boxer engine into a more traditional inline four-cylinder. But that’s exactly what a pair of Russian YouTubers from the Garage 54 channel did in their workshop. While we are still scratching our heads over exactly why someone would want to do this, there’s no denying the uniqueness — and comedy — of this project.

Don’t try this at home

There are lots of things that separate flat engines from their inline counterparts, and before you question the reasoning of why anyone would want to convert one of Subaru’s unique flat-four engines into the industry-standard inline-four, you have to understand there’s a whole genre of YouTube mechanic content that’s a little off the wall, and done more for the entertainment value and the “what if” factor, rather than any practical application.

The guys from Garage 54 specialize in these strange projects and experiments, which in the past have included things like putting three turbochargers on a Toyota 2JZ engine and powering a Lada with an engine made of 50 cordless drills. This, however, doesn’t mean there isn’t serious mechanical skill involved. While the Subaru engine project may have resulted in a “generic” inline-four engine, getting there was no easy task.

The Subaru engine that the guys started with has two pistons and a cylinder head with two camshafts on each side, so the project required cutting the engine block in half, joining the two sides together, and rearranging the cylinder heads in line with each other. Obviously, this task is easier said than done, as the Subaru engine components and castings were never designed to be used as part of an inline layout — but they pulled it off.

From flat-four to inline-four

Among the engineering hurdles the guys ran into while designing and fabricating the new engine was the need for an extra Subaru engine to donate its crankcase and crankshaft parts for the new motor. Additionally, combining the formerly separate cylinder heads into a single inline head meant welding the camshafts together, and the engine uses two oil pans rather than a single pan, as you find under a normal inline-four engine.

At this point, the guys have basically built their own Subaru inline-four long block engine, complete with a cylinder head, but there’s still a long way to go before the motor is ready to fire up. For starters, the homemade engine still needs exhaust and intake manifolds, plumbing, and a cooling system — but the project is off to an impressive start. Surely Garage 54 will make more videos as they continue the process of completing and running this one-of-a-kind engine in a vehicle.

Yes, this may have been a ton of work just to get the same type of four-cylinder engine found in most mainstream vehicles, but it’s hard to deny the ingenuity and mechanical skills on display here. This also just scratches the surface of what could be done with skilled mechanics and fabricators playing around with Subaru engines. How cool would it be to see two 2.5-liter Subaru boxer fours combined into one 5.0-liter flat-eight?

Source link

Tech

How to watch NASA’s moon crew splash down at end of historic mission

Published

1 hour ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

The Artemis II astronauts have looped around the moon, captured some extraordinary imagery (above), set a slew of records, and are now on their way back to Earth.

The 10-day mission will reach its climax on Friday, April 10, during a dramatic homecoming that will see the Orion spacecraft enter our planet’s atmosphere at a speed of nearly 25,000 miles per hour.

During the moments that follow, Artemis II crew members Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will experience a 16-minute roller coaster ride as their vehicle experiences the mission’s greatest forces yet.

At the end of the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022, the spacecraft suffered unexpected heat shield damage during reentry, though the vehicle splashed down in one piece. While engineers have implemented changes to ensure the spacecraft’s structural integrity, those final moments as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere later this week will nevertheless be the most perilous of the entire mission for everyone involved — not least the four crew members.

How to watch

NASA will provide a live stream of the crew’s homecoming on NASA+ and also its YouTube channel. The video player embedded above will also show the same feed.

Below is NASA’s latest schedule for Friday. If the timings change, we’ll update this information just as soon as we can. All times are in Eastern Time.

6:30 p.m.: NASA begins its coverage of the crew’s return.

7:33 p.m.: Orion crew module and service module separate.

7:37 p.m.: The Orion will briefly fire its thrusters in preparation for reentry.

7:53 p.m.: An important moment as Orion first encounters Earth’s atmosphere. The vehicle’s heat shield is designed to protect the spacecraft from temperatures of about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit — about half as hot as the surface of the sun. Orion will decelerate at a rate up to four times the force of gravity, causing the astronauts to feel four times heavier than they do on Earth.

8:07 p.m.: Following various parachute deployments to slow Orion down, splashdown will occur in the Pacific Ocean about 50 miles off the coast of California, bringing to an end a historic mission that paves the way for a crewed lunar landing as early as 2028.

10 p.m.: A post-splashdown news conference will take place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Source link

Tech

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The Magic Of The Scroll-Like Phone Which Wast Not!

Published

1 hour ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

When LG left the smartphone market, quite a number of strange devices were left behind. While some, like the Wing, made it to consumers, others did not. The strangest of these would have to be their rollable phone concept; a device which would expand by unrolling a portion of the screen like a scroll. This never made it to market, but one managed to make its way to [JerryRigEverything’s] workbench, and we are fortunate enough to see the insides of this strange device.

There are a few interesting tidbits about the device before even entering the device. Very clearly this phone was ready to be sold, with a tidy user interface for expanding the display, and even animated wallpapers which which expand with it. The display, when rolled onto the back of the device, sits behind a glass cover to keep it protected from debris, and can be used to take selfies with the larger sensors of the rear facing cameras. You can also see a bit of the track that the screen rolls on, hinting at what lies inside.

The “zipper-like” sliding sliding mechanism.

One doesn’t have to get far into a teardown of this phone to find more. A tiny brush hides in the curved corner of the screen rolling mechanism, to keep debris out of the pocket the screen sits inside. This also gives a better look at the aforementioned track system, which guides the display around the corner and keeps it stable and secure.

Further inside, you can see the mechanism which allow the phone to unfurl. Two rather small, but powerful DC motors resting a rack and pinion move the surprisingly strong phone to its full sized state. A number of spring loaded arms provide stability to the mechanism, preventing racking. The mechanism is surprisingly strong, able to push a number of books out of its way. However, if its movement is resisted, it will display a warning that you might damage the phone.

Tearing down a phone that doesn’t exist is not terribly useful, so the focus was very much on the mechanism, with no detours or destructive disassembly. However, if destructive reverse engineering is what your here for, make sure to check out this teardown of a smart LEGO brick next!

Source link

Tech

2 Cases Show Supreme Court Isn’t Holding ISPs Responsible for Piracy

Published

1 hour ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that ISP giant Cox Communications couldn’t be held liable for a billion-dollar judgment over music piracy in a case brought by Sony. On Monday, by sending another case back to a circuit court involving Grande Communications and music companies, including Sony, for reconsideration, the court seems to be reinforcing the idea that internet service providers can’t be held liable for their customers’ copyright infringement.

The Supreme Court relied on the precedent from the first case to send the second back, reinforcing the earlier decision.

Grande Communications is a Texas-based subsidiary of Astound Business Solutions.

A Sony Music representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The two cases back-to-back appear to suggest that copyright owners, like music companies, can’t expect to be compensated by broadband providers (including, presumably, wireless companies such as AT&T and Verizon) that have customers who engage in intellectual property theft across their networks.

What this means for ISPs and customers

Eric Goldman, an associate dean for research and professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, says these decisions buck prior cases.

“The Cox ruling upended decades of fairly well-settled precedent without any clear explanation of why the Supreme Court chose to reset the rules,” he said. “At minimum, the Supreme Court made clear that copyright owners have overreached with their copyright claims against ISPs for user-caused infringement. Thus, the Supreme Court’s message to copyright owners is that they need to be more reasonable and less demanding in their dealings with ISPs.”

Goldman said he doesn’t expect the case to have much impact on internet customers. In the face of less resistance, it’s likely ISPs will maintain their current policies and restrictions on piracy, although another legal expert, David B. Hoppe, founder of Gamma Law, said some might reduce the resources they spend on identifying or terminating accounts of content pirates.

“However, the decision does not reduce the liability exposure of websites that facilitate or encourage infringement, and probably does not affect the ability of copyright owners to cause hosting providers to terminate websites that are facilitating or encouraging infringement,” Hoppe said.

The court, he said, drew a clear distinction between passive ISPs who serve as intermediaries of content and those who actively facilitate or encourage piracy or show intent to engage in copyright infringement.

Something that remains to be seen is whether the Supreme Court’s judgment favoring ISPs also extends to web hosts that facilitate sites that engage in mass-scale piracy of material such as music, movies and video games.

“Already, we’ve seen one lower court imply that the Supreme Court holding only applies to ISPs and not web hosts, even though the Supreme Court opinion did not make that distinction,” Goldman said.

Source link

Tech

What is space medicine? The science behind getting humans to Mars, the moon, and beyond

Published

2 hours ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Editor’s note, April 7, 2026, 5:10 pm ET: The Artemis II mission is conducting experiments that may radically advance our understanding of space medicine. The findings of A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response (AVATAR) experiment could help us create personalized medical kits for astronauts, and the Artemis Research for Crew Health & Readiness (ARCHeR) study will monitor the astronauts’ health as they go further into space than any human beings have gone before. As we await the findings of those experiments, Vox is republishing this article, which originally launched September 24, 2025.

Vox Members got to read this story first. Support independent journalism and get exclusive access to stories like this by becoming a Vox Member today.

One day, Mars might become a home to humans. But first, there’s the cinematic, sci-fi challenge of making the Red Planet suitable for life. There’s a problem, though: The typical person can’t get to space safely. That throws a wrench into the whole “let’s move to Mars” plan in the face of extreme climate change and other existential risks on Earth.

Today, the path to becoming an astronaut is “littered with the hopes and dreams of medically disqualified candidates,” said Shawna Pandya, a research astronaut with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) and the director of its Space Medicine Group. “Once upon a time, kids being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in the doctor’s office would be told, ‘Well, you could still be anything, except an astronaut.’”

Here are some of the common reasons why you might be medically disqualified from becoming an astronaut:

Tobacco use
Autoimmune disorders
Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders
Sleep apnea
Asthma
Hypertension
Migraines
Anxiety and depression

Astronauts inherently aren’t representative of the broader population — they’re selected for being in very good health. The stress of existing in essentially weightless microgravity conditions, like those on the International Space Station (ISS), can be incredibly tough on the human body. Astronauts face heightened risks of early-onset osteoporosis, insulin resistance, and significant muscle mass loss. Naturally, government space agencies want people whose bodies are more resilient to such pressures, and who can perform necessary duties without a ton of medical intervention.

According to Haig Aintablian, director of the UCLA Space Medicine Program, “just as pregnancy causes the body to undergo complex and unique changes, spaceflight also produces distinct and significant physiological changes.” It also requires its own medical specialty to manage (aptly called space medicine).

There’s a lot scientists don’t know, from the physical to the psychological. That’s a problem — for the future of science, space travel, and maybe even human existence at large.

NASA wants to go to Mars for research, and aims to send humans there as early as the 2030s. As the most similar planet to Earth in our solar system, Mars may have once harbored life, or may even currently. And in the future, we may even need it to support us.

Decades ago, seriously engaging with the idea of moving to Mars was extremely fringe for a multitude of reasons, ranging from a lack of technical feasibility to the desire to put scientific resources toward solving problems on Earth. Elon Musk — founder of the spaceflight company SpaceX — became a famed advocate for colonizing Mars in the early 2000s. He still is. Musk, who is currently worth around $410 billion, claims that he is only accumulating assets for the purpose of Martian space settlement. Last year, he said that he wants 1 million human settlers on the Red Planet in a self-sustaining city by 2050.

Now Musk isn’t alone. NASA experts, biologists, academics, futurists, disaster resilience researchers, and physicians are seriously considering the possibility of making humanity an interplanetary species.

“The biggest problem for humanity to solve is the guaranteed survival of our species — which the logical answer is to become multiplanetary,” Aintablian said. “I don’t think there’s a better solution than Mars.”

While we know some of the health effects of being on the ISS, we can’t really replicate the effects of Martian radiation exposure. Kelly Weinersmith — a biologist and co-author of A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? — thinks that settling Mars on Musk’s timescale will be catastrophic. She argues that we shouldn’t rush to set up shop before understanding — and mitigating — the risks, even if this takes centuries rather than decades.

But many advocates for settling Mars are much more impatient. The only way to get there safely would be to unlock significant advances in space medicine, a nascent field that has just barely scratched the surface in its approximately 75-year history.

“Nothing that humanity has done that has been worthwhile has been easy,” Aintablian told me. “So much in our development as a civilization has been difficult, and the reason why we’re able to live such comfortable lives now is because of the extremely difficult challenges that humans have had to solve in the past.”

What we know — and don’t — about human health on Mars

Since extremely few people end up in space right now, the researchers trying to understand how to improve human health there have a limited sample size to work with. Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space in 1961, and more than 600 astronauts have followed him. Only about a sixth of them are women.

NASA researchers have identified some key ways that time in space can impact human health — radiation exposures, isolation, distance from Earth, altered gravity, and environmental consequences like an altered immune system. But we’re still lacking many specific examples of how these different dynamics play out in real life.

Scott and Mark Kelly in their NASA jackets with arms crossed

Former astronaut Scott Kelly, right, who commanded a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station, along with his twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly.

NASA/AFP via Getty Images

One of the best studies we have is NASA’s famous 2019 twins study. Twin studies allow researchers to separate the effects of genetic predispositions from environmental influences on health outcomes. NASA compared the health of identical twin brothers Scott and Mark Kelly over the course of a year. Scott went into orbit on the ISS while Mark remained on Earth. Both underwent the same battery of physiological tests, and the results indicated some surprising new differences between the two men.

Scott’s telomeres — the bits of DNA at the end of our chromosomes — lengthened while he was in space and (mostly) reverted to normal once he returned to Earth, possibly indicating radiation-induced DNA damage and potential increased cancer risk. Scott also lost body mass, developed signs of cardiovascular damage that were not present in Mark, and experienced some short-term cognitive changes after returning to Earth.

While survivable with the right training, equipment, and precautions, the twin study demonstrated how space’s unique environment can have significant consequences for gene expression and overall health while in orbit.

If the best of the best struggle, what about the rest of us? We’re getting some insights here now, too.

Since space tourism has literally taken off, astronauts aren’t the only ones going to space now: Wealthy non-astronauts, like Jeff Bezos, Gayle King, and Katy Perry, have recently taken short, recreational jaunts into outer space through Bezos’s space tech company, Blue Origin.

“Teenage Dream” singer Katy Perry kisses the ground after returning to Earth from her short spaceflight earlier this year.

Cover Images via AP Images

Aintablian is very excited about the prospect of civilian access to space increasing, which will inherently mean people with medical issues are also flying. This represents a huge opportunity for scientists to study the medical management of a much wider range of conditions.

That said, 10 or 15 minutes in space is hardly comparable to the conditions on the ISS. And Mars poses even worse consequences in terms of hostile environments and time spent away from Earth. Mars has toxic dust, lacks plant life and a breathable atmosphere, and only has about 40 percent of Earth’s gravity. Earth’s global magnetic field protects our planet from harmful radiation, and the Martian counterparts are localized, not planet-wide.

The longest time someone has been in space consecutively is 438 days aboard a space station. But crewed missions to Mars would probably take at least nine months just to get there, let alone stay or travel back (which could take up to three years). Mars is usually around 140 million miles from Earth based on its orbital path around the sun, with up to a 20-minute communication delay one way. If they experienced a medical emergency, astronauts likely wouldn’t be able to access telemedicine instructions in time, and they couldn’t turn back around for treatment.

A crewed mission to Mars would have to take all of their supplies with them before they left our planet. And when the first people heading to Mars set foot on the planet, they won’t have access to the intense support astronauts receive when landing back on Earth.

Getting to Mars is only part of the challenge. We’ve been to space, but so far, humans have only ever sent robots to the Red Planet. We are making educated guesses at what Mars is like for living things. Earth analogues aren’t able to truly replicate the closed, hostile conditions of the space environment, which can wreak havoc on astronauts’ mental health. Desert research stations have an atmosphere, while the moon barely has one — and setting up that modest base was a huge mission in its own right. Weinersmith told me that scientists at polar research stations are isolated in remote, inhospitable environments, but they can “still open the door, take a deep breath, and not die.”

Medicine’s new frontier

We’re still pretty far from being able to breathe in Mars’ atmosphere — but it would be nice to get there one day and simply not die.

Programs dedicated to figuring out how to get humans safely into space for long periods of time are popping up, and non-physician health care providers are getting in on the action too. UCLA is planning to launch a space nursing program and possibly space paramedic training. SpaceMed is a European master’s program focused on human health in spaceflight and other extreme conditions.

Today, astronauts receive most of their care from Earth-based aerospace medicine physicians called flight surgeons through telemedicine. Aintablian envisions a future where health care providers directly accompany astronauts on their expedition-class missions, like to the moon or Mars. Artificial intelligence can act as a resource for the on-board flight surgeon, he predicted, and aid in the development of other technologies that will bring us closer to Mars.

Such technology is already in the works. Google recently collaborated with NASA to develop an AI system that could guide astronauts in diagnosing and treating medical conditions that arise in-flight when they lack access to telemedicine.

But the devil is in the details, Pandya told me. AI can help with just-in-time training for medical emergencies and diagnostics, but the data requirements would be massive. Since extremely few people end up in space — and the ones who do are overwhelmingly male — models might be trained on an unrepresentative dataset that could lead to inaccurate predictions of physiological changes in space. These kinks need to be worked out first.

Right now, there’s a gendered gap in the research — so much so that Weinersmith told me there’s never a line to the women’s restroom at space settlement conferences. Human reproduction and development in space, as a result, is wildly understudied.

As far as we know, no human being has ever been to space while pregnant, and we don’t know of any humans who have been conceived in space. We’re going to learn a lot about reproduction on Earth from the first human space pregnancy and space birth, a prerequisite for a self-sustaining settlement on Mars. (Plus, space tourism companies are talking about hotels in space, and we know what people do in hotels.) Ideally, you want to have an idea of what will happen to someone giving birth in space before they actually go through it.

“What we’re arguing is that we should do the research to understand those risks before we go out there because if there are massive risks, there usually are technological solutions for some of these,” Weinersmith said.

NASA will begin its second Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog this October, a year-long “mission” to Mars in a 3D-printed habitat at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it will collect behavioral health data on the effects of isolation and confinement. Scientists are conducting bed rest studies, which simulate the physiological effects of altered gravity and weightlessness. And as funding cuts transform the future of scientific research on Earth and beyond, space medicine researchers are among those advocating for continued investment in space and biomedical science.

Maedeh Mozneb, a biomedical engineer and project scientist in the Sharma Lab at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, told me that the ultimate goal is to send “avatars” of astronauts to space by taking their stem cells and creating 3D tissue cultures called organoids that represent different parts of their body — yes, miniature hearts, kidneys, and even brains made from Earth-dwelling humans. From there, scientists can determine personalized countermeasures such as workout plans or supplements tailored to each astronaut’s needs, before they actually end up in space.

The hope, for those space medicine physicians like Pandya, is that in a spacefaring future, all medical disciplines — from neurology to radiology — will be represented in space medicine.

Space medicine research and practice isn’t cheap. “I often get asked,” said Pandya, “‘Why are you spending money on space health when we have all of these problems on Earth?’” But that’s the wrong way to think about it, she said.

Research conducted in space has already improved health on this planet. Advances in digital imaging for moon photography during the 1972 Apollo 17 mission later played a crucial role in CT scans and MRIs. Remote health monitoring tools designed for astronauts in space are now widely used in hospitals.

One of the next big things in space medicine “is probably going to be the development of radiation protection mechanisms,” Aintablian told me.

Space medicine research will also allow more people to go to space. In 2023, Pandya’s team demonstrated the safety and functionality of a continuous glucose monitor in the spaceflight environment. This could eventually allow diabetics to check their blood sugar in space. It has implications for current astronauts, who can develop insulin resistance and pre-diabetes symptoms in longer-duration spaceflights. The child diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes who wants to be an astronaut may actually have the chance to live out their dream now, and studying how the body metabolizes glucose in space helps us better understand health on Earth.

Then there are the diseases that take decades to unfold. Muscle loss in space can help scientists better understand how to treat conditions like Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy. On Earth, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s often aren’t apparent until a person is in their late 60s.

In microgravity, said Shelby Giza, the director of business development at Space Tango, a company that facilitates automated research and development in microgravity conditions, “you can see that kind of disease output in a matter of weeks.” Research on these conditions can be conducted much faster — and hopefully accelerate the pace of medical breakthroughs.

The same can be said for cancer. Not all radiation exposures are made equal, and susceptibility to the harmful effects of radiation varies between individuals. Since the ISS is within the protection of Earth’s magnetosphere, it’s not the best comparison to the elevated radiation levels astronauts would face on Mars.

According to former NASA astronaut and biologist Kate Rubins, most astronauts are healthy people in their 30s and 40s, an age when cancer typically doesn’t develop. Scientists must track astronauts for decades after their last spaceflight to see if cancer or other adverse health conditions occur. NASA’s Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health program, which is voluntary for former astronauts and not specific to cancer alone, monitors the health status of people like Kelly and Rubins for the rest of their lives.

Exposure to space radiation is linked to developing cancer and degenerative diseases. To mitigate the risk of developing fatal cancers, NASA currently limits astronauts’ spaceflight radiation exposure to 600 millisieverts (mSv) — roughly the equivalent of 60 CT scans of the torso and pelvis — over the course of their entire career. A 2023 NASA white paper estimates that a healthy astronaut will have a 33 percent increased risk of dying from cancer in their lifetime after a 1,000-day mission to Mars.

One of the next big things in space medicine “is probably going to be the development of radiation protection mechanisms,” Aintablian told me. “I do believe that with the amount of emphasis being placed on radiation protection, we’re going to figure out ways to actually protect against significant amounts of radiation for the general public for multiple uses.”

While it’s still relatively early days for the space pharma industry, life science companies are taking note, seeing microgravity as a platform for better drug discovery.

Like fiber optic cables used for telecommunications, some pharmaceuticals are better synthesized in microgravity conditions. Scientists can produce more uniform protein crystals in microgravity, which can improve drug injectability and reduce the need for refrigeration.

Raphael Roettgen, an entrepreneur and the co-founder of space biotech startup Prometheus Life Technologies, told me that organoids — those 3D cell models replicating human organs — grow more cleanly in space without Earth’s gravity weighing them down. Derived from non-embryonic stem cells, these miniature organ models have tremendous potential for personalized medicine.

Roettgen hopes that human space organoids could reduce the need for animal testing in the near term. Eventually, he hopes that new organs could be regenerated for patients needing transplants. Since the new tissue would be derived from the patient’s own stem cells, there would not be a risk of immune rejection, saving transplant patients astronomical costs and immense suffering. He estimates that liver regeneration and transplants from these organoids could become a reality in patients within the next 20 years.

Microgravity is an “expensive tool,” but an important one nonetheless, said Mozneb, who studies the effects of low earth orbit on stem cell differentiation. She hopes increasing commercialization and new technologies will significantly decrease the cost of launching experiments into orbit over the next 10 years.

What we already know about space medicine is a drop in the ocean of what we will discover as more people — astronauts and otherwise — venture into space.

“It’s like if you were studying genetics back in the ’90s,” Mozneb said. “Everything is a discovery.”

Source link

Tech

The Best Front-Load Washer Brand Isn’t Samsung, According To Consumer Reports

Published

2 hours ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Samsung has a mixed reputation when it comes to household appliances. Its refrigerator line has been subject to numerous complaints from owners, and its dishwashers aren’t particularly highly rated either. However, Consumer Reports gives a number of Samsung front-load washing machines good scores in its latest rankings, with their washing performance generally being impressive, even if their reliability record is on the patchy side. The highest rated Samsung front-load washing machine just about squeezes into the top ten in the outlet’s rankings, but the top nine places in the table are all taken by models from a rival brand.

The brand in question is LG, which receives consistently impressive scores for washing performance from Consumer Reports, as well as strong ratings for owner satisfaction and reliability. That makes the brand’s current line of washing machines a safe bet when it comes to picking your new appliance, but there are a few models that are rated particularly highly by the outlet.

Jointly topping the rankings are the LG WM4000HWA, LG Signature WM990HSA, and LG WM3400CW, all of which received the same overall score despite their notably different price points. The WM3400CW is the cheapest of the bunch and is available at Best Buy for a retail price of $749 at the time of writing. Rounding out the top five in CR’s rankings are the LG WM8900HBA and LG WM6500HWA.

LG’s other appliance lines are well-liked

As well as achieving top scores from Consumer Reports for its front-load washing machines, LG also fares well in a number of other home appliance categories. Although LG missed out on the top spot in the outlet’s kitchen appliance reliability rankings, it still earned a second-place finish behind German premium appliance brand Gaggenau. It’s also considered to be one of the most reliable air conditioner brands on the market.

Much like Samsung, LG is a Korean brand, although its appliances are made all over the world. Most of its American-market washers and dryers are made in a high-tech manufacturing plant in Tennessee, which can produce one new appliance every 11 seconds. The plant is equipped with more than 300 robots that automate various aspects of the manufacturing process, but it still employs more than 900 workers. LG has said that it intends to expand its Tennessee facility over the coming years, potentially adding a refrigerator manufacturing facility in addition to its current washing machine-making operations.

Source link

Tech

Iranian hackers are targeting American critical infrastructure, US agencies warn

Published

2 hours ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

The U.S. government is warning that Iran-backed hackers are escalating their tactics by targeting American critical infrastructure systems with the aim of causing disruption.

In a joint advisory published Tuesday, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the U.S. Department of Energy collectively warned that Iranian government hackers have been exploiting internet-facing systems used across a range of sectors. These include water and wastewater utilities, as well as energy and local government facilities. The agencies did not specifically name any of the targets but said that the hacks were aimed at causing “disruptive effects within the United States” and had already resulted in “operational disruption and financial loss.”

The hackers targeted programmable logic controllers and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) products, which are used to control and manage industrial equipment and systems in critical infrastructure operations, the agencies said. The agencies said that the hackers were able to manipulate information displayed on these devices and maliciously interact with project files that store important device configurations.

The agencies said that the hacks targeting critical infrastructure are a marked escalation in tactics by Iranian hackers, likely in response to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, which began on February 28 with air strikes that killed the country’s leader.

The advisory also comes shortly after U.S. president Donald Trump threatened Iran in a social media post earlier on Tuesday, writing, “A whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not capitulate to a deal with the United States to open the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for global shipping traffic, by end of day.

Since the start of the war, an Iranian government-backed hacking group called Handala has been linked to several high-profile cyberattacks, including a disruptive breach at U.S. medical tech giant Stryker, which saw the hackers remotely wipe thousands of employee devices using the company’s own security tools.

The FBI recently blamed the Handala hackers for leaking the partial contents of FBI director Kash Patel’s private email account.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026

Iran has also hit several U.S.-owned and operated data centers across the region with missiles and air strikes, causing instability and disruption to cloud services across the region.

Source link

Tech

Golf star Bryson DeChambeau leads acquisition of Seattle-area startup Sportsbox AI

Published

3 hours ago

8 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Bryson DeChambeau swings while the Sportsbox AI app captures his motion on a smartphone. (Sportsbox AI Photo)

First Bryson DeChambeau used Sportsbox AI to win a major. Then he invested in the Bellevue, Wash.-based startup. Now he’s taking a swing at the entire company.

DeChambeau, the two-time U.S. Open champion and one of golf’s most tech-obsessed players, is leading a group of investors that has acquired Sportsbox AI, the startup that uses AI and 3D motion capture to analyze golf swings from smartphone video.

With the announcement Tuesday morning, the company also announced SAMI, an upcoming agentic AI coaching assistant powered by Google Cloud that’s designed to translate the app’s swing data into personalized, conversational coaching advice.

As part of the partnership, DeChambeau will also carry the Google Cloud logo on his golf bag at the Masters and future tournaments — reportedly the first time the Google Cloud brand has appeared on a professional golfer’s bag.

“This is about making golf more accessible, especially premium coaching,” DeChambeau said in the acquisition announcement, saying they’re “building something that brings real coaching to anyone with a smartphone, not just elite players. That’s what gets me fired up.”

Financial details: DeChambeau, who is preparing to compete in the Masters later this week, told Bloomberg the transaction is worth eight figures, without being more specific.

Sportsbox had raised more than $9 million, GeekWire previously reported. It was last valued at $41 million in a March 2023 seed round, according to PitchBook.

The press release announcing the acquisition describes the buyers as a group of investors led by DeChambeau but does not name the other members.

Co-founders Jeehae Lee and Samuel Menaker will continue to run Sportsbox, a spokesperson confirmed. The company’s roughly 30 employees will stay on, and Sportsbox will remain headquartered in Bellevue, though many employees work remotely.

PitchBook lists 19 sellers who fully exited in the deal, including Elysian Park Ventures, the PGA of America, pro golfer Michelle Wie West, golf instructor David Leadbetter, Randi Zuckerberg, and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin.

Backstory: Sportsbox launched in 2020 as a spinoff of AI Thinktank, a Bellevue-based incubator founded by Mike and Rich Kennewick, the brothers behind Voicebox Technologies, an early speech recognition company.

Lee, the CEO, is a former LPGA Tour player who previously led strategy and business development at Topgolf. Menaker, the CTO, was VP of engineering at Voicebox.

The app uses a smartphone camera to create a 3D model of a golfer’s swing and measure hundreds of data points that would otherwise require an expensive motion-capture studio.

Sportsbox generates revenue through coaching subscriptions and a consumer tier for golfers at $15.99 per month or $110 per year.

DeChambeau’s connection: In the week leading up to the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst, DeChambeau used Sportsbox to identify and fix a slight miss to the right in his shots. He gave the company a shout-out at his winner’s press conference and soon after joined as an investor.

SAMI — short for Sportsbox AI Motion Intelligence — is the next step.

Built on Google’s Gemini models, it’s designed to act as a conversational AI coach, interpreting the app’s 3D biomechanical data and delivering personalized advice. The press release describes it as moving Sportsbox from a passive measurement tool to a proactive AI agent.

SAMI is currently in beta, and the company said it will begin rolling out agentic AI features throughout the second quarter, starting this week with AI-generated highlights available to subscribers of its 3D Player and 3D Player Plus tiers on iOS.

DeChambeau told Bloomberg he’s been using the technology ahead of the Masters and plans to keep using it during and after the tournament. But he said it isn’t meant to replace coaches.

“The camera and the phone are only going to tell you so much,” he told Bloomberg. “They can’t make you feel what you’re doing.”

Source link