Login credentials belonging to an employee at both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Government Efficiency have appeared in multiple public leaks from info-stealer malware, a strong indication that devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years.
Kyle Schutt is a 30-something-year-old software engineer who, according to Dropsite News, gained access in February to a “core financial management system” belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As an employee of DOGE, Schutt accessed FEMA’s proprietary software for managing both disaster and non-disaster funding grants. Under his role at CISA, he likely is privy to sensitive information regarding the security of civilian federal government networks and critical infrastructure throughout the US.
A steady stream of published credentials
According to journalist Micah Lee, user names and passwords for logging in to various accounts belonging to Schutt have been published at least four times since 2023 in logs from stealer malware. Stealer malware typically infects devices through trojanized apps, phishing, or software exploits. Besides pilfering login credentials, stealers can also log all keystrokes and capture or record screen output. The data is then sent to the attacker and, occasionally after that, can make its way into public credential dumps.
If you’re a chip architecture addict, better brush up on your Chinese, as there’s steamin’ hot news about the Nintendo Switch 2’s SoC to discuss. Youtuber GeekerWan got a hold of a dead, but fully assembled Switch 2 motherboard and has spilled the beans in great detail about the SoC therein.
The Trump administration’s steep staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) triggered shutdowns of several climate-related programs Thursday.
Perhaps most notably, the NOAA announced it would be shuttering the “billion-dollar weather and climate disasters” database for vague reasons. Since 1980, the database made it possible to track the growing costs of the nation’s most devastating weather events, critically pooling various sources of private data that have long been less accessible to the public.
In that time, 403 weather and climate disasters in the US triggered more than $2.945 trillion in costs, and NOAA notes that’s a conservative estimate. Considering that CNN noted the average number of disasters in the past five years jumped from nine annually to 24, shutting down the database could leave communities in the dark on costs of emerging threats. All the NOAA can likely say is to continue looking at the historic data to keep up with trends.
Pocketpair, the studio behind surprise hit Palworld, is embroiled in a legal battle with Nintendo and the Pokémon Company, after being accused of having violated several patents. Pocketpair is pushing back against these claims in court, but in the meantime the company will be making changes to core gameplay while the legal proceedings play
Celebrate Ride Like King’s 17th year (and 8th year on Zwift) next week with events featuring celebrity leaders, product giveaways, jersey unlocks, and even Buffalo bikes!
Every 500km ridden by the Zwift community means one more Buffalo bike donated to World Bicycle Relief – up to 700 bikes. Read on for details…
What is Ride Like King?
In 2007, at age 73, Giant Group King Liu completed a 15-day, 927km ride around Taiwan. This resulted in a renewed passion for cycling and the benefits it brings to the individual, community, and country. Following this, King traveled to countries and spoke with governments to promote the positive impacts of cycling.
His message resonated within the company as well. ‘Ride Like King’ started in 2009 as a small event within the Giant Group to celebrate their founder’s passion for cycling. But it grew to be an annual event and is now in its 17th edition! Zwift is an active partner and has been hosting the event on its platform since 2018.
The WBR Buffalo Bike IRLAnd in game!
Event Details
“Ride to Raise” warm-up rides are scheduled hourly from 6am UTC Monday, May 12 to 3am UTC Friday, May 16th. These rides are 45 minutes long and rotate every other hour between two routes. Finishers will unlock the RLK17 kit (see below), and the distance from these rides counts toward our community distance goal to earn Buffalo bikes:
Open Category D will ride Revolt Advanced Pro gravel bikes with Cadex AR35 wheels
Women-Only Category E will ride Devote Advanced Pro gravel bikes with Cadex AR35 wheels
“Celebration Rides” are scheduled from 4am UTC Friday, May 16th to 6am UTC Monday, May 19th and are full laps of the selected routes led by ambassadors and athletes. Finishers will unlock the RLK17 kit (see below), be entered to win an IRL jersey (see below), and have their distance added to our community distance goal to earn Buffalo bikes.
The schedule rotates through three blocks of events, with each block hosting 7 event time slots which are 4 hours apart:
The big weekend Celebration Rides will feature pro riders from Giant and Liv’s most notable teams, including Team Jayco AlUla, Liv AlUla Jayco, and Giant and Liv triathlon, plus mountain bike and gravel pros, ambassadors like Ayesha McGowan and Louis Hatchwell, Zwift community ride leaders, and more.
Hint: check the signup list in Zwift Companion to see who is signed up as a ride leader for any events you’re interested in!
Giveaways and Prizes
Finish any of the RLK events and you’ll unlock the exclusive Ride Like King 17 kit in game.
Also, each Celebration Ride you complete earns you an entry to win a limited-edition RLK17 jersey along with a signed card by King Liu himself! Three winners will be drawn per main event, meaning 63 winners will be drawn overall.
This is a visualization from Global Data (some really hard-hitting data here) comparing the sizes of various monsters and aliens from pop culture movies, shows, and video games. It begins with the tiny soot sprites from Hayao Miyazaki movies, and ends with the 10.45-trillion light year wide Super Tengen Toppa Giga Drill from Japanese mecha anime Gurren Lagann. That sees a little extreme. Was a BILLION light years not big enough? I can’t even fathom the distance of a single light year. Heck, if I’m being honest I can barely wrap my head around the length of a half marathon.
A Florida federal judge has dismissed the majority of claims against celebrities who endorsed Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Judge K. Michael Moore ruled that investors failed to demonstrate the high-profile endorsers — including Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Kevin O’Leary, Larry David, Shohei Ohtani, and Stephen Curry — knew about FTX’s fraudulent activities.
In his ruling, Moore wrote that while the celebrity endorsers may have been “uninformed, negligent, or even reckless,” plaintiffs didn’t adequately establish that defendants had “knowledge of FTX’s fraud” or “the requisite intent to deceive and defraud investors.”
The US Senate today voted along party lines to kill a Federal Communications Commission program to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren, with Democrats saying the Republican-led vote will make it harder for kids without reliable Internet access to complete their homework.
The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify the hotspot rule, which was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2024 under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The program would be eliminated if the House version passes and President Trump signs the joint resolution of disapproval.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced the plan in January, saying the FCC program would “imped[e] parents’ ability to decide what their kids see by subsidizing unsupervised access to inappropriate content.” He also alleged that the hotspot program would shift control of Internet access from parents to schools and thus “heightens the risk of censoring kids’ exposure to conservative viewpoints.”
Wikipedia is taking legal action against the UK’s new Online Safety Act regulations it says could threaten the safety of its volunteer editors and their ability to keep harmful content off the site. From a report: The Wikimedia Foundation — the non-profit which supports the online encyclopaedia — is seeking a judicial review of rules which could mean Wikipedia is subjected to the toughest duties required of websites under the act.
Lead counsel Phil Bradley-Schmieg said it was “unfortunate that we must now defend the privacy and safety of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors from flawed legislation.” The government told the BBC it was committed to implementing the act but could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings. It’s thought this is the first judicial review to be brought against the new online safety laws – albeit a narrow part of them – but experts say it may not be the last.
“The Online Safety Act is vast in scope and incredibly complex,” Ben Packer, a partner at law firm Linklaters, told the BBC. The law would inevitably have impacts on UK citizens’ freedom of expression and other human rights, so as more of it comes into force “we can expect that more challenges may be forthcoming,” he told the BBC.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has reportedly overhauled a historically wonky Department of Defense-designed tool that automates layoffs of federal workers.
Expected to expedite DOGE’s already rushed efforts to shrink the government, the redesigned software could make it easier for DOGE to quickly dismantle the biggest agencies in a blink, sources familiar with the revamp told Reuters.
Developed more than two decades ago, AutoRIF (short for automated reductions in force) was deemed too “clunky” to use across government, sources told Reuters. In a 2003 audit, the DOD’s Office of the Inspector General noted, for example, that “specialized reduction-in-force procedures needed for the National Guard technicians made the module impractical.” Basically, each department needed to weigh its cuts differently to avoid gutting essential personnel. Despite several software updates since then, Wired reported, the tool remained subject to errors, sources told Reuters, requiring most federal agencies to continue conducting firings manually rather than risk work stoppages or other negative outcomes from sloppy firings.
It appears Microsoft has quietly solved this problem by discontinuing the 256GB versions of the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 and the 13-inch Surface Pro 11. Microsoft’s retail pages for both devices list only 512GB and 1TB configurations, with regular prices starting at $1,199. Though not technically a price hike—the 512GB versions of both devices also cost $1,199 before—it does amount to an effective price increase for last year’s Surface hardware, especially given that both devices have user-replaceable storage that can easily be upgraded for less than the $200 that Microsoft charged for the 256GB-to-512GB upgrade.
The upshot is that the new Surface PCs make more sense now than they did on Tuesday in relative terms, but it’s only because you’ll pay more to buy a Surface Pro 11 or Surface Laptop 7 than you would before. The 15-inch version of the Surface Laptop 7 still lists a 256GB configuration and a $1,299 starting price, but the 256GB models are currently out of stock.
Plastic producers have pushed “advanced recycling” as a salve to the plastic waste crisis despite knowing for years that it is not a technically or economically feasible solution, a new report argues. The Guardian: Advanced recycling, also known as chemical recycling, refers to a variety of processes used to break plastics into their constituent molecules. The industry has increasingly promoted these technologies, as public concern about the environmental and health effects of plastic pollution has grown. Yet the rollout of these technologies has been plagued by problems, according to a new analysis from the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), a fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group.
“The companies make it sound like it’s pretty great, like it’s something we should pursue,” said Davis Allen, investigative researcher at the CCI and author of the report. “But they know the problems, the limitations.” The new analysis follows a 2024 CCI report which alleged that plastic producers concealed the problems with traditional recycling, and argued that they could face legal ramifications for doing so. That earlier research was cited in a September lawsuit filed by California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, against ExxonMobil for its role in the plastic pollution crisis. “The new report focuses on this modern deception with advanced recycling, which has become a real focus for the industry in recent years,” said Davis.
For more than two months, the Trump administration has been subject to a federal court order stopping it from cutting funding related to gender identity and the provision of gender-affirming care in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders.
Lawyers for the federal government have repeatedly claimed in court filings that the administration has been complying with the order.
But new whistleblower records submitted in a lawsuit led by the Washington state attorney general appear to contradict the claim.
The antitrust trial targeting Google’s search business is heading into the home stretch, and the outcome could forever alter Google—and the web itself. The company is scrambling to protect its search empire, but perhaps market forces could pull the rug out from under Google before the government can. Apple SVP of Services Eddie Cue suggested in his testimony on Wednesday that Google’s search traffic might be falling. Not so fast, says Google.
In an unusual move, Google issued a statement late in the day after Cue’s testimony to dispute the implication that it may already be losing its monopoly. During questioning by DOJ attorney Adam Severt, Cue expressed concern about losing the Google search deal, which is a major source of revenue for Apple. This contract, along with a similar one for Firefox, gives Google default search placement in exchange for a boatload of cash. The DOJ contends that is anticompetitive, and its proposed remedies call for banning Google from such deals.
Surprisingly, Cue noted in his testimony that search volume in Safari fell for the first time ever in April. Since Google is the default search provider, that implies fewer Google searches. Apple devices are popular, and a drop in Google searches there could be a bad sign for the company’s future competitiveness. Google’s statement on this comes off as a bit defensive.
Samsung just announced a new live stream for the upcoming Galaxy S25 Edge. The company initially teased the phone at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event back in January, but details are still slim on the upcoming device.
How to stream Samsung ‘Beyond Slim’ (and reserve your phone)
Samsung’s “Beyond Slim” live stream for the “slimmest Galaxy S Series ever” will air on May 12 at 8 p.m. ET (May 13 at 9 a.m. KST). You’ll be able to watch the event via Samsung’s website or on the company’s YouTube channel, which you can find below:
If you are excited to get your hands on the new Galaxy S25 Edge, you can reserve the new phone from Samsung’s website. In return, you’ll get a $50 credit you can use on the Samsung store.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge rumored specs
While official details about the Galaxy S25 Edge are still under wraps, that hasn’t slowed the speculation. The Galaxy S25 Edge could be just 5.84mm thick. (For comparison, the standard Galaxy S25 is 7.2mm thick.) Leaks suggest that Samsung is putting a 3,900 mAh battery in the S25 Edge’s slim design, which makes it the smallest battery in the Galaxy S25 lineup.
Like the rest of the Galaxy S25 series, the Galaxy S25 Edge will presumably run the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip with up to 12GB of RAM. The phone could also have a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. For cameras, leaks suggest the phone will be packing a dual-lens setup, which includes a 200MP main lens and a 12MP ultrawide.
Rumored pricing for the Galaxy S25 Edge suggest the phone will cost between the Galaxy S25+ ($999) and the Galaxy S25 Ultra ($1,299), but we’ll have to wait for confirmation at the live stream next week.
Many horses, including Spotify and Amazon’s Kindle Store, have already left the barn. But Apple is moving quickly to shut the external payments door opened by last week’s ruling that the company willfully failed to comply with court orders regarding anticompetitive behavior.
In an emergency motion filing late Wednesday (PDF), Apple described US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ “extraordinary Order” as including an injunction that “permanently precludes Apple from exercising control over core aspects of its business operations, including charging for use of its property and protecting the integrity of its platform and in-app purchase mechanism.” A certificate (PDF) accompanying the emergency filing states that the order “fundamentally changes Apple’s business and creates destabilizing effects” for App Store customers.
The restrictions, “which will cost Apple substantial sums annually,” are not based on the company’s conduct, Apple claims, but “were imposed to punish Apple for purported non-compliance” with the 2021 injunction. In her ruling (PDF), Gonzalez Rogers described Apple as conducting an “obvious cover-up” and said that Apple “at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option.”
Apple asked a judge to halt an order forcing it to give up control over App Store payments while it appeals the decision. From a report: In a filing on Wednesday, Apple says the order contains “extraordinary intrusions” that could result in “grave irreparable harm” to the company. Last week, California District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple was in “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction issued as part of the Epic Games v. Apple case.
As a result, the judge ordered Apple to stop collecting an up to 27 percent commission on purchases made outside the App Store, and said the company can no longer restrict how developers point users toward external purchases.
