Q. There have been some pretty big geopolitical shifts since you went up there. What does it look like from your point of view?

Hague: Most of the time when I go over to the window, that's when I start thinking about the Earth below me. And I can tell you, in the time that I've been here, the time that I was here before six years ago, the view hasn't changed, and the thoughts that I eventually get to really haven't changed. I see Earth as a small, small orb that's in a pretty big black vastness of space. And there's a lot out there. There are more stars than you can count, but the world looks pretty small when it's in that perspective. And as you fly from continent to continent, you don't necessarily see all of those borders. And the lesson, or the realization that I always come away with is we have far more in common than we have in different, and those common things that we have bring us together. And if, if we're smart, those differences that we have are differences that we bring to teams like the International Space Station, and those differences make the team stronger.

Sesame's new AI voice model features uncanny imperfections, and it's willing to act like an angry boss.

jester6
6 hours ago
The Legacy Media Bubble is like a commemorative snowglobe. Those of us outside know the snow is fake and the buildings aren't real. Those living inside think those buildings are their whole world and they are facing an apocalyptic blizzard.

Keep shaking that globe, Donald.

The Supreme Court struck down some of EPA's rules regulating the discharge of treated sewage. The rules allegedly enforced the Clean Water Act. In a 5-4 decision, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett crossing to join three progressive justices, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA can't play Humpty Dumpty and say the legal standard "means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

It started when the EPA fined the City of San Francisco nearly $10 billion because of alleged violations of its sewage discharge into the Pacific Ocean. There were $313 million in assessed fines and about $10.6 billion in mandated upgrades to its treatment plant. San Francisco did not deny that the EPA had the authority to police sewage discharge; its objection was that the standards were so vague that the city could not meet them because they were forever shifting.

“We simply want to understand our prohibition limits so we can comply with them,” Tara M. Steeley, the San Francisco deputy city attorney, told the justices.

This is how Justice Alito described the situation in his opinion.

Instead, this case involves provisions that do not spell out what a permittee must do or refrain from doing; rather, they make a permittee responsible for the quality of the water in the body of water into which the permittee discharges pollutants. When a permit contains such requirements, a permittee that punctiliously follows every specific requirement in its permit may nevertheless face crushing penalties if the quality of the water in its receiving waters falls below the applicable standards. For convenience, we will call such provisions “end-result” requirements. //

This case marks the latest entrant in the list of court cases that roll back the incredible authority that the EPA has arrogated to itself to manage the US economy.

Once the backdoor exists, others will attempt to surreptitiously use it. A technical means of access can’t be limited to only people with proper legal authority. Its very existence invites others to try. In 2004, hackers—we don’t know who—breached a backdoor access capability in a major Greek cellphone network to spy on users, including the prime minister of Greece and other elected officials. Just last year, China hacked U.S. telecoms and gained access to their systems that provide eavesdropping on cellphone users, possibly including the presidential campaigns of both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. That operation resulted in the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recommending that everyone use end-to-end encrypted messaging for their own security. //

It’s a question of security vs. security. Yes, we are all more secure if the police are able to investigate and solve crimes. But we are also more secure if our data and communications are safe from eavesdropping. A backdoor in Apple’s security is not just harmful on a personal level, it’s harmful to national security. We live in a world where everyone communicates electronically and stores their important data on a computer. These computers and phones are used by every national leader, member of a legislature, police officer, judge, CEO, journalist, dissident, political operative, and citizen. They need to be as secure as possible: from account takeovers, from ransomware, from foreign spying and manipulation. Remember that the FBI recommended that we all use backdoor-free end-to-end encryption for messaging just a few months ago.

Securing digital systems is hard. Defenders must defeat every attack, while eavesdroppers need one attack that works. Given how essential these devices are, we need to adopt a defense-dominant strategy. To do anything else makes us all less safe. //

Stéphan • February 26, 2025 7:37 AM

It will be interesting to see if the UK Govt is satisfied with the disabling of ADP, because that would confirm the backdoor is already in place for non-ADP iCloud accounts. Which would mean it is likely also in place for non-E2E-encrypted cloud services like Google and MS365 accounts. With this move Apple came up with a clever canary about the true underlying situation.