from the getting-the-fix-in dept

Because South Dakota governor Larry Rhoden is forever obligated to serve Kristi Noem and Kristi Noem is forever obligated to serve Donald Trump, he and his GOP buddies are making America MAGA again, starting with his home turf.

Non-citizens have never really disrupted voting. But they’re the convenient scapegoat for a party that’s justifiably worried it’s going to lose its majority during the mid-terms. Multiple efforts are being made all over the nation to disenfranchise anyone that’s not part of Trump’s most rabid voting base. Pretending people not allowed to legally vote are somehow flipping elections for the Democratic Party is more than merely obnoxious. It’s actually harming the democratic process.

Here in South Dakota, two laws have been passed in recent weeks with the express purpose of keeping non-white people from showing up to vote. The first, passed at the beginning of this month, allows any rando to claim a person they saw voting shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Voters in South Dakota will soon be able to challenge other voters’ citizenship.

Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed legislation into law last week that authorizes challenges by individuals and election officials.

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State law already allows challenges to a voter’s registration up to the 90th day before an election, if a person is suspected of lacking South Dakota residency, voting in another state or being registered to vote in another state. The new law adds citizenship as a justification for a challenge.

Challenges may be filed by the South Dakota Secretary of State’s Office, the auditor in the county where the voter is registered, or a voter in the same county. The challenge must be in the form of a signed, sworn statement and must include what the law describes as “documented evidence.”

Now, we can all see what the law is. But we all know how it will be applied. State employees with access to voter rolls will raise challenges against anyone with a foreign-sounding last name. While it’s unlikely few citizens will actually file challenges, they’ll certainly feel comfortable accosting anyone standing in line to vote whose skin is darker than their own. Given the inevitability of these responses, it’s easy to see the law accomplishing exactly what it’s supposed to: limit the number of non-white voters at the polls during the mid-terms and beyond.

But that’s not the only suppression effort signed into law this month. There’s also this one, which raises the bar for participating in the democratic process with the obvious intention of limiting participation to the sort of voters the GOP thinks with vote for it:

New voters in South Dakota will have to prove that they are United States citizens in order to cast a ballot in state and local races under a bill signed on Thursday by Gov. Larry Rhoden.

The new law, which does not apply to South Dakotans already on the voter rolls, comes amid a national push by Republicans to tighten voting rules and root out voting by noncitizens, which is already illegal and believed to be rare.

“This bill ensures only citizens vote in state elections, keeping our elections safe and secure,” said Mr. Rhoden, who is seeking election to a full term this year and is facing a crowded Republican primary field. 

It’s already illegal in South Dakota to vote if you’re not a citizen. This bill addresses a completely imaginary “problem.” And it forces voters to provide a passport, birth certificate, and other documents proving citizenship before they’re allowed to vote. While it may be easy for many people to present these documents, the simple fact is that they’ve never been asked to do this before, and anyone who’s not aware this law has been passed will be denied the opportunity to vote because the GOP decided to move the goalposts during an election year.

Non-citizens voting in South Dakota has never been an issue. The fact that 273 non-citizens were recently removed from the state’s voting rolls may seem a bit sketchy but there’s a good reason there might be a few hundred non-citizens with voter registrations:

Noncitizens can obtain a driver’s license or state ID if they are lawful permanent residents or have temporary legal status. There’s a part of the driver’s license form that allows an applicant to register to vote. That part says voters must be citizens. 

The problem is that this is all on the same form. The voter registration part of the form has a signature line, which many applicants will fill out and sign even if their intention is only to get a drivers license or ID card, especially since it appears before the final signature block for the entire application.

If applicants are not asked to affirmatively state their intention to register to vote (as the Department of Public Safety employees ask now, along with asking applicants to write “vote” on the form to signal their affirmation), their applications might be processed, along with the voter registration applicants didn’t realize they enabling.

The Secretary of State’s office (the office that’s supposed to be reviewing voter registrations for eligibility) threw the Department of Public Safety under the bus:

Rachel Soulek, director of the Division of Elections in the Secretary of State’s Office, placed blame on the department in her response to South Dakota Searchlight questions about the situation.

“These non U.S. citizens had marked ‘no’ to the citizenship question on their driver’s license application but were incorrectly processed as U.S. citizens due to human error by the Department of Public Safety,” Soulek wrote.

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That’s not what happened. Their ID applications were processed and the Soulek’s department failed to catch the inadvertent errors. And it doesn’t really even matter who’s at fault because despite the errors, this is still a non-issue.

Soulek said only one of the 273 noncitizens had ever cast a ballot. That was during the 2016 general election.

A handful of clerical errors that resulted in a single illegal vote in the past decade cannot be a rational basis for a new law. And there’s a good chance the sole vote was made in error, rather than maliciously. After all, if the state told this person they could vote, who were they to question that determination?

This is nothing more than state governments stepping up to do what Trump can’t. His SAVE Act is stalled and lots of last-minute gerrymandering at the behest of the president is tied up in court. His loyalists are doing what they can to make his perverted dreams a reality in states that are most likely to lean Republican in the first place, which makes all of this as pointless as it is stupid. But the underlying threat to democracy remains, ever propelled forward by the people who claim to love America the most.

Filed Under: immigration, larry rhoden, racism, south dakota, trump administration, voter fraud, voter suppression

Apple has now made it possible for more iPhones still running iOS 18 to receive security updates that protect against the actively exploited DarkSword exploit kit.

“We enabled the availability of iOS 18.7.7 for more devices on April 1, 2026, so users with Automatic Updates turned on can automatically receive important security protections from web attacks called DarkSword,” reads a note in today’s iOS 18.7.7 security update changelog.

“The fixes associated with the DarkSword exploit first shipped in 2025.”

In March, researchers at Lookout, iVerify, and Google Threat Intelligence revealed a new “DarkSword” exploit kit that targeted iPhones running iOS 18.4 through 18.7.

The six vulnerabilities used by the DarkSword exploit kit are tracked as CVE-2025-31277, CVE-2025-43529, CVE-2026-20700, CVE-2025-14174, CVE-2025-43510, and CVE-2025-43520.

While iOS exploits have typically been used in highly targeted spyware campaigns, this iOS exploit kit was used much more widely, including by Turkish commercial surveillance vendor PARS Defense, a threat actor tracked as UNC6748, and a suspected Russian espionage group tracked as UNC6353.

In these attacks, GTIG observed three separate information-stealing malware families deployed on victims’ devices: a highly aggressive JavaScript infostealer named GhostBlade, the GhostKnife backdoor, and the GhostSaber JavaScript malware, which can execute code and steal data.

Since July 2025, with the release of iOS 18.6, Apple has been steadily fixing the flaws as they are disclosed in security updates pushed out to compatible devices.

However, by late 2025, Apple stopped offering iOS 18 updates to newer devices capable of running the newer iOS 26. 

For those who decided not to upgrade and stay on iOS 18, availability to the security updates became limited, with newer devices no longer receiving patches for DarkSword vulnerabilities released in 2026.

Since then, only a small number of devices remained able to receive iOS 18 updates, and the last 18.7.6 update was offered only to iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR devices.

To make matters worse, a researcher released the DarkSword exploit kit on GitHub last month, making it accessible to other threat actors who wanted to target older iPhones.

Today, Apple has released iOS 18.7.7 to make it available to more devices that want to stay on the older operating system while remaining protected from the latest threats.

Devices eligible to receive the new update now include iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone 11 (all models), iPhone SE (2nd generation), iPhone 12 (all models), iPhone 13 (all models), iPhone SE (3rd generation), iPhone 14 (all models), iPhone 15 (all models), iPhone 16 (all models), iPhone 16e, iPad mini (5th generation – A17 Pro), iPad (7th generation – A16), iPad Air (3rd – 5th generation), iPad Air 11-inch (M2 – M3), iPad Air 13-inch (M2 – M3), iPad Pro 11-inch (1st generation – M4), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd – 6th generation), and iPad Pro 13-inch (M4).

iPhone users still running iOS 18 with Automatic Updates enabled will now receive the latest version and protections against the DarkSword exploit kit.

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It will consolidate production in its Johor and Selangor plants

Yeo Hiap Seng (Yeo’s) announced today (Mar 31) that it will retrench 25 employees at its Senoko facility in Singapore as it shifts its can manufacturing operations to Malaysia.

The company explained that consolidating production in its Johor and Selangor plants will help “optimise capacity utilisation and strengthen overall manufacturing efficiency” across its network.

Despite the move, Yeo’s Senoko site will remain its headquarters, as well as a hub for cross-border logistics and limited-scale production.

Yeo’s added that it will support affected staff through job placement services, career guidance, and counselling, and may offer them opportunities in Malaysia where suitable roles are available.

The company said it worked closely with the Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union to ensure that the retrenchment package and transition support “reflect appreciation for the contributions of affected staff”. 

The compensation packages will follow guidelines from Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower and will be based on each worker’s salary and length of service.

“These benefits will be commensurate with each employee’s salary and years of service.”

This is not the first round of layoffs for Yeo’s.

In Dec 2024, it cut 25 jobs after Oatly shut its Singapore plant—roles that had been created specifically for that production. Earlier, in 2022, the company retrenched 32 employees, citing shifts in consumer behaviour, retail challenges, and rising costs.

Financially, the SGX-listed firm reported a net profit of S$21.1 million for the year ending Dec 31, 2025, a significant increase from S$6.9 million the year before.

However, both overall revenue and core food and beverage revenue declined, which the company attributed to softer consumer spending and stronger competition in key markets.

• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: Google Street View/ Yeo’s via Facebook

When Intuit shipped AI agents to 3 million customers, 85% came back. The reason, according to the company’s EVP and GM: combining AI with human expertise turned out to matter more than anyone expected — not less.

Marianna Tessel, the financial software company’s EVP and GM, calls this AI-HI combination a “massive ask” from its customers, noting that it provides another level of confidence and trust. 

“One of the things we learned that has been fascinating is really the combination of human intelligence and artificial intelligence,” Tessel said in a new VB Beyond the Pilot podcast. “Sometimes it’s the combination of AI and HI that gives you better results.”

Chatbots alone aren’t the answer 

Intuit — the parent company of QuickBooks, TurboTax, MailChimp and other widely-used financial products — was one of the first major enterprises to go all in on generative AI with its GenOS platform last June (long before fears of the “SaaSpocalypse” had SaaS companies scrambling to rethink their strategies). 

Quickly, though, the company recognized that chatbots alone weren’t the answer in enterprise environments, and pivoted to what it now calls Intuit Intelligence. The dashboard-like platform features specialized AI agents for sales, tax, payroll, accounting and project management that users can interact with using natural language to gain insights on their data, automate tasks, and generate reports. 

Customers report invoices are being paid 90% in full and five days faster, and that manual work has been reduced by 30%. AI agents help close books, categorize transactions, run payroll, automate invoice reminders and surface discrepancies.

For instance, one Intuit customer uncovered fraud after interacting with AI agents and asking questions about amounts that didn’t add up. “In the beginning it was like, ‘Is that an error? And as he dug in, he discovered very significant fraud,” Tessel said. 

Why humans are still in the loop

Still, Intuit operates on the principle that humans are “always accessible,” Tessel said. Platforms are built in a way that users can ask questions of a human expert when they’re not getting what they need from the AI agent, or want a human to bounce ideas off of. 

“I’m not talking about product experts,” Tessel said. “I’m talking about an actual accounting expert or tax expert or payroll expert.”

The platform has also been built to suggest human involvement in “high stakes” decision-making scenarios. AI goes to a certain level, then human experts review and categorize the rest. This provides a level of confidence, according to Tessel. 

“We actually believe it becomes more needed and more powerful at the right moments,” she said. “The expert still provides things that are unique.”

The next step is giving customers the tools to perform next-gen tasks like vibe coding — but with simple architectures to reduce the burden for customers. “What we’re testing is this idea of, you can actually do coding without realizing that that’s what you are doing,” Tessel said. 

For example, a merchant running a flower shop wants to ensure that they have the right amount of inventory in stock for Mother’s Day. They can vibe code an agent that analyzes previous years’ sales and creates purchase orders where stock is low. That agent could then be instructed to automatically perform that task for future Mother’s Days and other big holidays. 

Some users will be more sophisticated and want the ability to dive deeper into the technology. “But some just want to express what they want to have happen,” Tessel said. “Because all they want to do is run their business.” 

Listen to the full podcast to hear about: 

• Why first-party data can create a “moat” for SaaS companies.

• Why showing AI’s logic matters more than a polished interface.

• Why 600,000 data points per customer changes what AI can tell you about your business.

You can also listen and subscribe to Beyond the Pilot on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

My life has changed so much since my time as a Voices of Change fellow during the 2023 school year. As I wrote in my final essay of the fellowship, the beautiful, imperfect school I loved and helped build had closed. With the support of my fellowship editor, Cobretti Williams, I applied and was admitted to the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans, where I am taking graduate classes and teaching a freshman English composition course.

In deciding what to write as a reflection on my time since the fellowship, I started three different essays and hated all of them. I did a lot of cursing, went on a couple of brooding walks and wondered why I agreed to write this in the first place. During the similarly maddening process of designing the syllabus for the first college course I taught, I took a break to write my students a letter. Here is an excerpt:

This excerpt reminds me that writing is much more difficult than most of the things we do in a world that commodifies ease and comfort, upholds them as desirable and makes us feel we are entitled to them while simultaneously less and less able to tolerate their lack.

There is a common misconception that my students come to me with that manifests most often in the statement “I don’t know what to write.” They think this means they are not ready to begin, because they believe that writing is putting what you already know onto paper. I understand why this misconception exists. So often in life, we only see finished products. The published novel, the final cut, the social media post depicting the outcome and not the process and the struggle. It’s easy to think that everyone else has things figured out, that what you see is how something was from the beginning. This can trick us into believing that if something isn’t good right away, we should abandon it. Drafting insists that we try before we feel sure, finish something even if it is not yet “good.” Revision insists that what we have can be something different, something better, and teaches us to hold multiple things in our heads at the same time. Throughout this process, we gain clarity.

Each time we give or receive feedback and assess whether it moves us closer to or further from our vision, we get better at articulating what we want and closer to achieving it. When teachers and students do this work together and commit to improvement, even when we both have moments of uncertainty about what to do next, we are practicing true collaboration. We both grow. What a way to become more skillful at building the world we want.

It is a strange time to be devoting so much of my life to writing, to be telling students that they should care about writing too. Just this week, an article came out detailing pervasive, undisclosed AI use to grade and give feedback to student writing in some New Orleans schools. A study conducted in May of 2025 showed that 84 percent of high school students used generative AI to complete their school work. I understand intimately the overwhelm of educators and students, and the temporary relief that cognitive offloading with AI can provide.

However, what we lose in the long term by not engaging deeply in the writing process, the practice of giving and receiving feedback, of watching revision unfold, is so much greater than the gains we feel in accepting AI’s “help” in our moments of overwhelm. What world are we building when we delegate the human work of communication through writing to machines? We would do better to engage in a process of re-evaluating our priorities, taking on fewer assignments for longer and working collaboratively as educators and administrators to redesign curricula and systems so that teachers have the capacity to get to know their students through repeated contact with their written work.

Sometimes, it feels like we are already living in a completely different world from the one in which I grew up and was educated. Luckily, these times, despite how often folks like to say they are not, are precedented. In these times, I have been turning to Black women writers like Toni Morrison, Toni Cade Bambara, Audre Lorde and June Jordan for guidance, and they all insist writing only becomes more urgent the more dire the times. In facing what Toni Morrison described in 2004 as “a burgeoning ménage a trois of political interests, corporate interests and military interests” working to “literally annihilate an inhabitable, humane future,” I have been especially steeled by Audre Lorde’s words, “In this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth.”

In the face of a world that would automate us right out of existence, I intend for us to survive, and so I insist we write.

Let’s be honest, the modern web is… a mess. Pop-ups, autoplay videos, cookie banners, ads everywhere. In fact, sometimes it feels like actually reading something online is the hardest part. And that’s exactly where Textise comes in.

Think of it as a “strip everything away” button for the internet. Textise is a simple web tool that converts any webpage into a clean, text-only version, removing ads, images, scripts, and all the extra clutter. What you’re left with is just the content: no distractions, no loading bloat, no nonsense. It’s fast, lightweight, and honestly feels like going back to a simpler version of the web.

Why does it feel so refreshing?

Modern websites are built for engagement, not readability. That means heavy layouts, tracking scripts, and design choices that often get in the way of just consuming information. Tools like Textise flip that on its head by streamlining content into plain text, making it easier to read and more accessible. In fact, for long articles or research-heavy pieces, it can genuinely feel like a productivity boost: less scrolling, fewer distractions, and quicker load times.

You can even tweak how Textise looks and behaves, from fonts and text size to background colors and link styles. It’s a surprisingly flexible tool, letting you tailor the reading experience exactly the way you like it. Of course, you lose things along the way. Images, videos, interactive elements — all gone. But that’s also what makes it work. Textise isn’t trying to enhance the web; it’s trying to simplify it to the bare minimum. And weirdly enough, that’s exactly why it feels so useful in 2026.

So… who is this for? Well, pretty much anyone who reads a lot online. Whether it’s articles, blogs, or even cluttered news pages, Textise makes everything feel cleaner and easier to digest. It’s especially handy for people who just want to focus on content without distractions.

Same idea, very different vibe

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because most modern browsers already have a built-in Reader Mode, like the one in Safari or Chrome. These features clean up a webpage by removing ads, menus, and distractions, and reformat the article into a more readable layout with better fonts and spacing.

But here’s where Textise feels different. Reader modes are still design-aware, meaning they keep images and basic formatting and rely on the browser to figure out what the “main article” is. Textise, on the other hand, goes full savage mode. It strips everything down to raw text, no images, no styling, no fluff. In a way, Reader Mode is like switching to a clean reading theme… while Textise is like opening the internet in Notepad. And honestly, depending on the day (or how chaotic the webpage is), both have their moment.

And maybe that’s the best part about it. In a web that’s constantly trying to grab attention, Textise just quietly steps back and lets you focus. Sometimes, all it takes to make the internet better… is less internet.

AI bias is usually talked about in terms of algorithms: skewed datasets, flawed outputs, and stereotypes baked into models. But new research suggests there’s another, more subtle problem about who gets to use AI in the first place. According to a recent report by Lean In, women are less likely than men to use AI tools at work, and even when they do, they’re less likely to get recognition or support for it.

The numbers paint a clear picture. Men are more likely to use AI regularly (33% vs 27%), more likely to have ever used it at work, and significantly more likely to be encouraged by managers to adopt it. And it’s not just about access, but also about perception. Women are more likely to worry about the risks of AI, question its accuracy, and even fear being judged for using it, including concerns that it might be seen as “cheating.”

Why this matters more than it seems

Chances are, this gap could compound fast. AI is quickly becoming a core workplace skill, and early adoption often translates into better opportunities. If one group is consistently using it less, or getting less credit for it, that gap can grow into real career disadvantages over time. And this isn’t happening in isolation. Broader research already shows women are underrepresented in tech and AI roles, meaning they’re not just using these tools less, but they’re also less involved in building them.

What makes this interesting is how familiar it feels. This isn’t a new kind of bias; it’s an old one, just showing up in a new space. The same patterns seen in workplaces for decades, with less recognition, less encouragement, and more scrutiny, are now playing out in how AI is adopted and used.

Same bias, new tech?

As AI becomes a core workplace skill, even small gaps like this can snowball into missed opportunities, slower career growth, and less representation in shaping the tech itself. Because if the people using AI aren’t equally represented… the future it builds won’t be either.