In its latest briefing, NASA says it won’t build a lunar space station – it’ll build a base instead. Why? CC-licensed photo by NASA Johnson on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. Lunatic. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
US bans new foreign-made consumer internet routers • BBC News
Kali Hays:
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“Malicious actors have exploited security gaps in foreign-made routers to attack American households, disrupt networks, enable espionage, and facilitate intellectual property theft,” the FCC said. While people will still be able to use foreign-made routers they already own, the ban applies to all “new device models.”
The ban stems from growing concern over the last year that routers were a point of easy-access for malicious actors. TP-Link, a router brand made in China that is a best-seller on Amazon, became the subject of some US political anxiety last year after a spate of cyberattacks.
Any new router made outside the US will now need to be approved by the FCC before it can be imported, marketed, or sold in the country. In order to get that approval, companies manufacturing routers outside the US must apply for conditional approval in a process that will require the disclosure of the firm’s foreign investors or influence, as well as a plan to bring the manufacturing of the routers to the US.
Certain routers may be exempted from the list if they are deemed acceptable by the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security, the FCC said. Neither agency has yet added any specific routers to its list of equipment exceptions.
The FCC’s move follows a decision on Friday by government agencies working on national security that internet routers made overseas “posed unacceptable risks” to the US.
The vast majority of Internet routers are assembled or manufactured outside of the US, often in Taiwan or China. The FCC ban applies even if a router is designed in the US, but built abroad.
Popular brands of router in the US include Netgear, a US company, which manufactures all of its products abroad. One exception to the general absence of US-made routers is the newer Starlink WiFi router. Starlink is part of Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. The company says the Starlink routers are made in Texas.
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Better late than never? But if there are a gazillion routers still installed, it’s not really a big security move unless you replace all those. And that’s not going to be popular with the ISPs.
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Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines • The Verge
Sean Hollister:
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Since roughly the turn of the millennium, Google Search has been the bedrock of the web. People loved Google’s trustworthy “10 blue links” search experience and its unspoken promise: The website you click is the website you get.
Now, Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with ones that are AI-generated. After doing something similar in its Google Discover news feed, it’s starting to mess with headlines in the traditional “10 blue links,” too. We’ve found multiple examples where Google replaced headlines we wrote with ones we did not, sometimes changing their meaning in the process.
For example, Google reduced our headline “I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything” to just five words: “‘Cheat on everything’ AI tool.” It almost sounds like we’re endorsing a product we do not recommend at all.
What we are seeing is a “small” and “narrow” experiment, one that’s not yet approved for a fuller launch, Google spokespeople Jennifer Kutz, Mallory De Leon, and Ned Adriance tell The Verge. They would not say how “small” that experiment actually is. Over the past few months, multiple Verge staffers have seen examples of headlines that we never wrote appear in Google Search results — headlines that do not follow our editorial style, and without any indication that Google replaced the words we chose. And Google says it’s tweaking how other websites show up in search, too, not just news.
Like I wrote in January, when Google decided it wouldn’t stop replacing news headlines in Google Discover from The Verge and our competitors, this is like a bookstore ripping the covers off the books it puts on display and changing their titles. We spend a lot of time trying to write headlines that are true, interesting, fun, and worthy of your attention without resorting to clickbait, but Google seems to believe we don’t have an inherent right to market our own work that way.
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Google might call it a “small” and “narrow” experiment, but that’s only in the context of what Google does; and in that, news headlines are “small” and “narrow”. There will surely be plenty of A/B testing of this, and the outcome will decide whether this is applied to all news, or just forgotten. But why would Google ever give up its delicious, tasty AI?
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Senior European journalist suspended over AI-generated quotes • The Guardian
Dan Milmo:
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The publisher of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the Irish Independent has suspended one of its senior journalists after he admitted using AI to “wrongly put words into people’s mouths”.
Peter Vandermeersch, the former head of the Irish operations at Mediahuis, said he “fell into the trap of hallucinations” – the term for AI-generated errors – when using the technology.
Vandermeersch, a fellow of “journalism and society” at the European publishing group, has been suspended from his role.
The experienced journalist said he had summarised reports using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s NotebookLM, and not checked whether the quotes from those summaries were accurate. He subsequently published them in his Substack newsletter.
The errors were highlighted by an investigation by one of Mediahuis’s own titles, NRC, where Vandermeersch had been editor-in-chief in the 2010s. NRC alleged Vandermeersch had published “dozens” of quotes that were false and that seven quoted individuals in his posts said they had not made the statements attributed to them.
“I wrongly put words into people’s mouths, when I should have presented them as paraphrases. In some cases, it reflected my interpretation of their words. That was not just careless – it was wrong,” Vandermeersch wrote in a Substack post headlined “I am admitting my mistake”.
Vandermeersch added: “It is particularly painful that I made precisely the mistake I have repeatedly warned colleagues about: these language models are so good that they produce irresistible quotes you are tempted to use as an author. Of course, I should have verified them. The necessary ‘human oversight’, which I consistently advocate, fell short.”
Vandermeersch’s Press and Democracy blog writes regularly about “the vital connection between a free press and a healthy democracy”.
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*head in hands emoji*
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NASA kills lunar space station to focus on ambitious Moon base • Ars Technica
Eric Berger:
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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on Tuesday laid out a sweeping vision for the space agency’s next decade during an event called “Ignition” in which he and other senior leaders set out their exploration plans.
Isaacman and his colleagues shared a number of major announcements, including outlining a nuclear-powered mission to Mars that will release three helicopters there and major changes to commercial space stations. However, most significantly, Isaacman outlined a detailed plan to construct a substantial Moon base over the next decade. He framed it as part of a “great power” challenge, saying that if NASA does not succeed now it will cede the Moon to China.
The base included long-range drones, multiple sources of power, sophisticated communications, permanent habitats, scientific laboratories, local manufacturing, and more. To accomplish this, NASA will work with a broad range of industry partners capable of sending medium-size and large cargos to the lunar surface. Isaacman also confirmed that NASA will no longer build a Lunar Gateway in orbit around the Moon, but would rather focus all of its energy and resources on the lunar surface.
Is this affordable? One of Isaacman’s fundamental beliefs is that NASA does not have a revenue problem. Rather, it has an expense problem.
“For too long we tried to satisfy every stakeholder, and the results of that are very well documented in Office of the Inspector General reports,” he said. “Billions of dollars wasted. Years lost. Hardware that never launched. Fewer flagship science missions. And fewer astronauts in space, which means fewer kids dressing up as astronauts for Halloween. I don’t like it. The president doesn’t like it. The American people have waited long enough.”
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Would this be the same NASA that has managed to not put any astronauts into orbit around the Moon for more than 50 years, and has had multiple holdups in its latest attempt to reenact that achievement? And that NASA is going to start building a base on the Moon? Because otherwise China will get to sit on a trillion pounds of dust?
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OpenAI just gave up on Sora and its billion-dollar Disney deal • The Verge
Richard Lawler:
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On Tuesday afternoon, OpenAI announced “We’re saying goodbye to Sora,” the video generation tool that it launched at the end of 2024, and centered in a massive licensing deal with Disney only a few months ago. The Wall Street Journal reported the move earlier, saying that OpenAI boss Sam Altman had informed staff that both the TikTok-like Sora app and API access for developers would be discontinued, with no plans to roll the feature into ChatGPT as had previously been rumored.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, as a result, the deal Disney announced in December, saying it would invest $1bn in OpenAI, license its characters for use within Sora, and send AI-generated videos into Disney Plus, is also coming to an end.
…OpenAI hasn’t responded to a request for comment or otherwise explained the shift, but there have been signs that things are changing, following Altman’s declaration of a “code red” a few months ago over possible slippage of ChatGPT vs. Google Gemini.
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Sora rocketed to popularity – and then vanished completely. People were OK with making AI videos of themselves for about five minutes, but then the novelty wore off, and the question became: what is the utility of this? Why do it? And people stopped using it, but the copyright headache didn’t go away.
Even so, turning away a billion dollars in income – not investment – from Disney is quite a move. Perhaps they didn’t want to have to generate the content because it would be a distraction.
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Quadruple amputee, cornhole pro charged with murder • FOX 5 DC
Elissa Salamy and Isabel Soisson:
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A professional cornhole player and quadruple amputee has been formally charged with murder and multiple related offenses in connection with a deadly shooting that occurred in Charles County on March 22, 2026.
Dayton James Webber, 27, of La Plata, Md., was arraigned in the District Court of Maryland for Charles County after being located in Charlottesville, Virginia, and arrested following the fatal shooting of 27‑year‑old Bradrick Michael Wells, according to court documents.
…According to the statement of charges filed by Det. M. Bigelow of the Charles County Sheriff’s Office, Dayton Webber picked up two witnesses from work in a vehicle, with Bradrick Wells already in the front passenger seat. The documents state that, while driving, an argument broke out between Webber and Wells.
The witnesses, identified in the charging documents as W1 and W2, told police that Webber pulled out a firearm and shot Wells twice in the head during the argument. The statement of charges says Webber then pulled the vehicle over and asked the passengers to remove Wells from the car, which they refused.
The two witnesses exited the vehicle and flagged down a police officer, the documents state, while Webber drove off with Wells still inside the car. According to the filing, around 12:41 a.m. on March 23, a resident at 10115 Newport Church Road in Charlotte Hall discovered Wells’ body on the side of the road.
The statement of charges notes that both W1 and W2 positively identified Webber as the shooter and Wells as the victim, providing the basis for the murder and assault charges currently pending in Charles County District Court.
Police say that Webber’s vehicle was later located in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Webber was found at a hospital seeking treatment. Webber is currently awaiting extradition to Charles County, Maryland, where he will face formal charges.
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This might not yet be the weirdest story of the week, but it’s got to be up there.
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VW to shift from cars to missile defence in deal with Israel’s Iron Dome maker • Financial Times
Laura Pitel, Anne-Sylvaine Chassany and Sebastien Ash:
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Volkswagen is in talks with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems over a deal that would switch production at one of the German group’s factories from cars to missile defence.
The two companies plan to convert the embattled Osnabrück plant to make components for the Israeli state-owned group’s Iron Dome air defence system, according to people familiar with the plan.
The tie-up would be the highest-profile example yet of the German car industry, where profits have plunged amid rising Chinese competition and a stuttering transition to electric vehicles, seeking partnerships with the booming defence sector.
The two companies hope to save all 2,300 jobs at the plant in the west German state of Lower Saxony, which has been under threat of closure, and hope to sell the systems to European governments.
“The aim is to save everybody, maybe even to grow,” said one of the people familiar with the plans. “The potential is so high. But it’s also an individual decision for the workers if they want to be part of the idea.”
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Plowshares are outdated! Swords (and to some extent shields) are where it’s at now.
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BASE experiment at CERN succeeds in transporting antimatter • CERN
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CERN’s “antimatter factory” is the only place in the world where antiprotons can be produced, stored and studied. Two successive decelerators, the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) and the Extra Low Energy Antiproton ring (ELENA), provide several experiments with low-energy antiprotons – the lower their energy, the easier they can be stored and studied. Among these experiments, BASE holds long-standing records for containing antiprotons for more than one year, and the experiment has invented this pioneering approach in order to move on to the next stage: transporting antiprotons to an offline space for more precise experiments as well as sharing them with others. That’s why they developed the BASE-STEP trap: an apparatus designed to store and transport antiprotons.
“Our aim with BASE-STEP is to be able to trap antiprotons and deliver them to our precision laboratories at a dedicated space at CERN, HHU, Leibnitz University Hannover and perhaps other laboratories that are capable of performing very-high-precision antiproton measurements, which unfortunately is not possible in the antimatter factory,” explains Christian Smorra, the Leader of BASE-STEP. “We validated the feasibility of the project with protons last year, but what we achieved today with antiprotons is a huge leap forward towards our objective.”
BASE-STEP is small enough to be loaded onto a truck and fit through ordinary laboratory doors, and it can withstand the bumps and vibrations of transport. The current apparatus – which includes a superconducting magnet, liquid helium cryogenic cooling, power reserves and a vacuum chamber that traps the antiparticles using magnetic and electric fields – weighs 1,000 kilograms [one tonne]: much more compact than BASE or any other existing system used to study antimatter.
“To reach our first destination – our dedicated precision laboratory at HHU in Germany – would take us at least eight hours,” says Christian Smorra. “This means we’d have to keep the trap’s superconducting magnet at a temperature below 8.2K for that long. So, in addition to the liquid helium , we’d need to have a generator to power a cryocooler on the truck. We are currently investigating this possibility.” Nevertheless, the greatest challenge remains on arrival at the destination: to transfer the antiprotons to the experiment without them vanishing.
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The transfer – only across the CERN site in this first attempt – was of 92 antiprotons. With a mass of 1.6×10^-27kg each, on annihilation by touching matter (using E=mc^2) they’d produce a rather small elimination of 3×10^-8 joules. That would (per ChatGPT, showing its working) lift a speck of dust about three metres.
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‘Zombie’ tankers take Tehran Toll Booth route as more vessels make detour • Lloyd’s List
Richard Meade, Tomer Raanan and Ece Göksedef:
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Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is increasingly being diverted into Iranian territorial waters in what has been dubbed the “Tehran Toll Booth”, where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is understood to be verifying vessel details and, in some cases, extolling a passage fee.
More than 20 vessels of over 10,000 dwt [dead weight tonnage] have thus far made the detour, which goes between Iran’s Qeshm and Larak Islands.
Among them were two “zombie” tankers that transited while assuming the identity of dead vessels.
At least two vessels transiting through the strait are understood to have paid in exchange for safe passage, with one fee reported to have been around $2m.
While the Strait of Hormuz remains dramatically reduced as a result of the conflict, which has seen more than 20 maritime incidents involving commercial vessels and offshore infrastructure since February 28, the pace of vessel transits across the strait picked up over the weekend.
Analysis of Lloyd’s List Intelligence data reveals that at least 16 vessels have transited the strait since Friday. Thirteen vessels headed east out of the Middle East Gulf, while three entered westbound.
Twelve were tracked via Automatic Identification System data sailing through the new route that transits Iranian territorial waters; three either did not have enough AIS data to assess their route or transit date with confidence, while a fourth, an Iran-flagged bulker, transited the strait but stopped near Larak Island.
…On Monday, two India-flagged very large gas carriers transited, signalling their Indian ownership via their AIS signal — a trend that is increasingly prevalent among Indian and some China affiliated vessels.
India’s Ministry of Shipping said the two ships, carrying over 92,600 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas, had transited and are scheduled to reach ports in the country between March 26 and 28.
Shortages of LPG in India, where the gas is primarily used for cooking has become a hot political issue, forcing the government to engage in talks with Tehran to secure cargoes.
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The story has a graph of daily traffic through the Strait by sector (chemical, oil, gas, etc). It’s gone from more than 100 to single digits.
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Three charged with conspiring to unlawfully divert cutting edge US artificial intelligence technology to China • US Department of Justice
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Today [Thurs March 19], an indictment was unsealed charging Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang, and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun, for allegedly conspiring to divert high-performance computer servers assembled in the United States and integrating sophisticated US artificial intelligence technology to China, in violation of US export controls laws. Liaw, a US citizen, and Sun, a citizen of Taiwan, were arrested today and will be presented in the Northern District of California. Chang, a citizen of Taiwan, remains a fugitive.
“The indictment unsealed today details alleged efforts to evade US export laws through false documents, staged dummy servers to mislead inspectors, and convoluted transshipment schemes, in order to obfuscate the true destination of restricted AI technology—China,” said John A. Eisenberg, Assistant Attorney General for National Security. “These chips are the product of American ingenuity, and NSD will continue to enforce our export-control laws to protect that advantage.”
“The FBI’s investigation revealed that Liaw, Chang, and Sun allegedly conspired to sell billions of dollars’ worth of servers integrating sensitive, controlled graphic processing units to buyers in China, in violation of US export control laws,” said Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. “Controlling the export of sensitive US artificial intelligence technology is essential to safeguarding our national security and defending the homeland. That’s why combating export violations is among the FBI’s highest priorities, and we will continue working with our law enforcement, private sector, and international partners to bring to justice all who take action to undermine US national security.”
“As alleged in the Indictment, the defendants participated in a systematic scheme to divert massive quantities of servers housing US artificial intelligence technology to customers in China,” said US Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York. “They did so through a tangled web of lies, obfuscation, and concealment—all to drive sales and generate revenues in violation of US law. Diversion schemes like those disrupted today generate billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains and pose a direct threat to US national security.
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Obviously all those Nvidia GPUs had to get to China some way. Whether this is everyone who was doing it may be a different story.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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