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When organizations plan for the future, refresh environments, or roll out new capabilities, they are often tied to software licensing agreements that exist or will need to be acquired. While an organization's requirements should drive the planning, the decision‑making can often be constrained by legacy licensing models that limit flexibility and increase long‑term cost exposure. The process of extending, renegotiating, or ending an existing agreement, such as a VMware by Broadcom Enterprise License Agreement (ELA), can be time-consuming and complex. This challenge has intensified as organizations face a compressed planning window driven by upcoming platform support milestones. Regardless of when your ELA is up, with vSphere 8 support scheduled to end in October 2027, and Broadcom standardizing on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) as the strategic platform moving forward, many customers are reassessing whether accelerated migration timelines, expanded platform scope, and new commercial commitments align with their original IT and cloud strategy. To help navigate this process, I’ve broken down five critical considerations to dig into when preparing for the expiration of a VMware ELA. 1. Assess Current Usage and Future Needs It’s essential to evaluate your existing use of VMware products and services. Look closely and discuss with all applicable teams within your organization to determine any changes in your organization's needs or infrastructure since the agreement was signed. You’ll need to consider how expansion in virtualized environments, new projects, or changes in your technology strategy may affect future requirements. 2. Evaluate Licensing Options With recent changes to VMware’s licensing and packaging model, many previously available bundles and consumption options are no longer offered, introducing new complexity, cost considerations, and long‑term commitment decisions. You’ll need to carefully explore the various licensing options available from VMware. This could include renewing the ELA, transitioning to a different licensing model, or considering alternatives such as subscription-based licensing. If your previous licensing method or bundle is no longer available, you’ll need to identify what is available that will deliver what you need with the minimal amount of unneeded products and expenses. Consider each choice based on cost, flexibility, and compatibility with your organization's goals. Organizations should place particular emphasis on cost predictability, contract flexibility, and the ability to scale infrastructure without committing to unused capacity. These licensing decisions are no longer isolated to cost alone. For many organizations, the move toward VCF introduces broader platform adoption requirements that can accelerate timelines and expand entitlements beyond immediate needs. Evaluating licensing options now, well ahead of ELA expiration, gives teams more leverage and reduces the risk of being forced into decisions by contractual or support deadlines. 3. Explore Alternative Solutions and Vendors Rather than taking the default path of automatically renewing the ELA with VMware, take the opportunity to explore alternative virtualization solutions and vendors in the market. There are other compelling enterprise-ready solutions available. Conducting a thorough evaluation of competing products from other vendors can open your eyes to real alternatives or further confirm your existing path. For many organizations, this evaluation reveals opportunities to modernize infrastructure without sacrificing performance, resiliency, or enterprise support. Key factors include features, performance, scalability, support options, and total cost of ownership (TCO). Engage in discussions to ensure that your organization’s current and future needs can be met with the investigated pricing and terms. This approach allows you to assess whether there are better-suited solutions available that align more closely with your organization's requirements and objectives, potentially providing cost savings or additional functionalities. 4. Evaluate Performance and Support Has performance, support responsiveness, and overall customer experience improved or degraded over the lifecycle of the agreement, particularly as organizational scale, workloads, and vendor priorities have shifted? Do a thorough examination of VMware's performance and support quality over the course of the ELA. Consider aspects such as issue response time, technical resource availability, and overall vendor satisfaction. This evaluation might help you decide whether to stick with VMware or explore alternatives. 5. Planning for the Future - Not Just a Renewal Starting this evaluation early enables teams to compare migration paths, assess operational impact, and determine whether a single‑vendor platform strategy best supports their long‑term objectives. Create a transition and migration strategy in case you decide not to renew the ELA, change vendors, or adopt a dual-vendor approach. By this stage, you should have identified how to map the product to product pairings. Your strategy should include incremental, low‑risk steps toward platforms that simplify day‑to‑day operations, reduce tooling sprawl, and support modern workloads, such as cloud native and AI‑driven applications, without added operational overhead. Make informed decisions for your VMware ELA renewal or transition By proactively considering these factors, you can make informed decisions and effectively manage the transition or renewal of your VMware ELA. To explore a proven VMware alternative designed for cost predictability, operational simplicity, and enterprise scale, especially for organizations planning ahead of upcoming VCF transition timelines, visit: www.nutanix.com/vmware-alternative/transition. Contributed by Nutanix.

Cybersecurity experts told TechCrunch that one of the biggest lessons to be taken from the OpenAI hack against Hugging Face has nothing to do with AI, but traditional cybersecurity defense.

⚡ Quick Take

• AMC is adapting Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned, a continuation of The Vampire Lestat, and we think these elements from the book need to appear.

It’s official! The fourth season of Interview with the Vampire will adapt Anne Rice’s third vampire novel, The Queen of the Damned. The next season will witness the immortal Queen Akasha (Sheila Atim) rise in the modern era, becoming a terrifying force of nature. This Rice novel has many layers and is told from many points of view. It’s definitely going to be hard to authentically adapt The Queen of the Damned as a series. Warner Bros. tried to condense it into a 2002, and despite Aaliyah’s iconic portrayal of Akasha, it was largely a dud. Before pre-production begins on Queen of the Damned, here are the elements of the novel (and some from Rice’s The Vampire Lestat) they really need to include in the AMC version.

AMC Include the Ancient Vampiric Twins, Maharet and Mekare, in Queen of the Damned

The main throughline of Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned is the story of two ancient twins, Maharet and Mekare, who were witches in ancient Palestine. They had the power to summon spirits, and one spirit in particular, Amel, looked favorably on the sister witches. When Akasha can’t force the spirit Amel to do her bidding, she blames the twins and assaults and mutilates them. She rips the tongue from Mekare and the eyes from Maharet. Eventually, the two become vampires themselves, vowing revenge on Akasha should she ever rise again. Maharet eventually replaces her own eyes with those of her mortal victims.

Warner Bros.

One of the twins, Maharet, continues to watch over humanity for many centuries. She chronicles her every human descendant over a 6,000 year time-span, referring to them as “the Great Family.” By the modern age, every country on Earth has an element of this Great Family, which is ultimately the human family. Together with her sister, who awakens from her own long slumber, the two enact their revenge against Akasha to protect their mortal lineage, now consisting of thousands of human beings.

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Louis’ Amends DO Change Armand in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’s Finale, Shares Assad Zaman

The movie version of The Queen of the Damned left the twins almost entirely out of the story. Maharet is in the film, played by Lena Olin, as a wise elder vampire, but not her twin sister Mekare. This almost totally changes the character and her motivations. We hope that the television version understands how essential the twins are to the Queen of the Damned narrative. It is a core reason why it’s such a fan favorite book. It’s time to tell the story Anne Rice imagined the movie failed to even attempt.

The History of Armand and Daniel, or “The Devil’s Minion” AMC

The novel The Queen of the Damned has a significant chapter, “The Story of Daniel, the Devil’s Minion, or the Boy from Interview with the Vampire.” In it, we find out how after his 1973 interview with Louis, Daniel was stalked by Armand, who followed him across the globe. Eventually, Armand falls in love with Daniel (Eric Bogosian), and the two have an intense love affair. Armand uses his vast wealth to establish the Night Island, a shopping and entertainment getaway off the coast of Florida.

While season one of IWTV seemed to make that story unfeasible, the admissions from Armand to Daniel in TVL about his years being in love with him suggest some form of the story did happen. Perhaps with Armand tampering with Daniel’s memories so he would forget. Either in Queen of the Damned or a possible Night Island spin-off, fans want this story told.

Talamasca Agent, Jesse Reeves Should Be in the Queen of the Damned TV Show Warner Bros.

The Queen of the Damned is the novel that introduced the Talamasca organization to Anne Rice’s canon through the character of Jesse Reeves. She’s a young psychic medium of some renown, who is recruited into the Talamasca. And it’s through her eyes we learn about the order, and her “great aunt” Maharet and the Great Family. She’s a rather important character in the novel, even though she largely vanishes after this one book from the series. The Queen of the Damned film recast her as Lestat’s love interest, a complete straight-washing of his character. In the film, actress Marguerite Moreau portrays her. Although we don’t want to see her with Lestat romantically, the series should include her in some capacity.

The Backstories of Armand and Marius AMC

Our biggest complaint about The Vampire Lestat is that it completely omitted the backstories of Armand (Assad Zaman), and his maker, Marius de Romanus (Christopher Heyerdahl). Their stories give context and history to the vampiric race, taking us to Renassaince Italy and ancient Rome. And ultimately, their backstories help to set up who and what Akasha is. For inexplicable reasons, TVL spent more time on Lestat’s tour bus than covering these vital chapters of the book. True, a Queen of the Damned season would already have a lot to cover. But we think these two characters need their chapters of Anne Rice’s second vampire novel brought to life.

Introduce Khayman of the First Brood AMC

One of the new vampires introduced in Rice’s The Queen of the Damned was the 6,000-year-old Khayman. He was once a steward in the court of Queen Akasha and King Enkil. When Akasha became the very first vampire, she transformed Khayman into a being like herself, right after turning Enkil, thus making him the third vampire to exist. Akasha forced Khayman to commit horrible acts upon the twins Maharet and Mekare against his will. These acts spurned him to commit treason against his immortal rulers.

RELATED ARTICLE

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’S Backstory, Explained in Linear Fashion

After becoming a vampire himself, part of “The First Brood,” he passed on the Dark Gift to the twins in an act of rebellion against Akasha. He later forgot his own origins after many centuries, taking on many names, including “Benjamin the Devil.” When Akasha arose in the modern era, he remembered his past, and joined with those who tried to stop her. There is some speculation that Louis’ romantic partner in The Vampire Lestat, Lemuel Babangida (Joseph Sumney), may actually be Khayman, and not even remember it, which would be a very fun twist.

The novel has many other elements we’d love to see, but we see these as essential. We hope the producers recognize how crucial they are to the success of Rice’s beloved gothic classic. In the meantime, you can stream Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat on AMC+.

The post THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED Book Elements That the TV Series Needs appeared first on Nerdist.

Americans are warming to the idea that schools should be for learning rather than doomscrolling, with support for all-day smartphone bans now outweighing opposition for the first time. A new Pew Research Center survey of 9,750 US adults found that 77 percent support banning smartphones during middle and high school classes, up from 68 percent in 2024. More significantly, support for so-called "bell-to-bell" bans now stands at 48 percent, compared with 43 percent who oppose the idea. Back in 2024, opponents held the advantage. The shift coincides with a rush of state legislation. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 42 states have enacted measures addressing cellphone use in schools, many of which require districts to adopt restrictions during the school day. There's little argument over whether phones belong in class anymore, but the sticking point is whether students should get them back between lessons or keep them tucked away until the final bell. Age plays a predictable role. Adults under 30 remain the least enthusiastic about bell-to-bell restrictions, with just 28 percent supporting them. Older Americans, meanwhile, appear increasingly comfortable with the notion that teenagers can survive a school day without immediate access to social media, group chats, or whatever crisis is currently unfolding on Snapchat. The partisan divide is smaller than on most US policy questions. Republicans are more likely to support both classroom and all-day bans, but Democrats also back classroom restrictions by a comfortable margin. The trend echoes developments elsewhere. In the UK, ministers spent much of this year promising to get tougher on phones in schools, only for it to emerge that most schools already had restrictions in place. The government's reforms mostly gave existing policies more bite, saving ministers the trouble of inventing anything new. Whether today's students see their phones as indispensable learning tools or portable oxygen tanks is another matter. Pew's latest numbers suggest more American adults are willing to let them find out for six or seven hours a day. ®

The White House wasn’t ready for the revolt against acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation.

President Donald Trump’s inner circle “seemed surprised” by the Republican pushback to Blanche’s nomination, MS NOW reported Thursday.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination Thursday morning. But late the night before, the committee postponed the vote, after Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina made clear that they would not support Blanche.

Earlier Wednesday, the president had suggested that Blanche’s confirmation was a sure thing.

“All I can say is Todd Blanche is outstanding, and I thought it was pretty routine because he’s so good,” Trump said. “He just wouldn’t find a better person.”

The two GOP lawmakers have demanded that Blanche put into writing that Trump’s so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is actually dead. Blanche had declared the fund was dead in June, but staffers at the Department of Justice and White House have continued telling MAGA allies they could still expect to receive some form of payment.

Even if he’s not confirmed before the Senate’s August recess, Blanche will continue to serve as acting attorney general. But it would be a humiliating blow to the president, who is clearly losing his grip on party members.

U.S. economic growth dropped to 1.5 percent in the second quarter, down from a 2.1 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday.

Economists were expecting a gross domestic product growth rate of 1.8 percent, but thanks to President Trump’s Iran war, disastrous tariffs (including new tariffs levied on more than 50 countries last week), and cuts to government spending, we are, once again, not doing as well as Trump claims.

“Americans are feeling gloomy: consumer confidence remains in the doldrums as households worry about rising costs,” The Economist reports. “Although annual inflation slowed to 3.5 percent in June from 4.2 percent in May, thanks largely to a temporary fall in petrol prices, renewed fighting has since pushed oil prices higher again.”

Regular gasoline came in at an average of $4.22 a gallon in the second quarter, a dramatic increase from less than $3 a gallon before the U.S. and Israel began the war on Iran in February. Now that the shaky U.S.-Iran ceasefire is dead, Americans are bracing, once again, for painful prices at the gas pump.

These latest figures reaffirm that the main concern right now for Americans is cost—of just about everything. Even Fox News recognizes that voters are unhappy with Trump’s economy and want “major change.” And by “major change,” we do not mean more tariffs.

Plus, the Federal Reserve opted to hold interest rates steady for a fifth consecutive meeting on Wednesday. New Fed chairman Kevin Warsh acknowledged that there’s no quick fix to ease the cost of living, telling reporters there is no “magic wand” to bring prices down. In other words, Americans are getting the worst of both worlds: an economy that’s slowing down while prices keep climbing.

But of course, in Trump’s own words, he “doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation” when making decisions about the war in Iran.

Organizations everywhere are investing in data and AI while customer expectations climb, with buyers demanding partners who can move quickly, solve complex problems, and turn technology spending into measurable results. That environment requires more than access to technology; it demands expertise applied consistently across teams, projects, and engagements. The latest Databricks survey on Databricks Certifications reveals a clear pattern: certification deepens technical knowledge, builds confidence, and strengthens credibility. Those individual gains translate into wider organizational benefit, giving partners a firmer footing to deliver outcomes, earn customer trust, and grow. Certification creates more than skills For many respondents, Databricks Certification was more than a way to validate existing knowledge; it became a catalyst for professional growth. Participants consistently reported stronger expertise across Lakehouse architecture, AI, data engineering, and machine learning. Many described gaining a fuller understanding of the Databricks platform and learning how to apply best practices to real-world challenges. Just as importantly, certification gave professionals the confidence to take on larger responsibilities. Most respondents reported a significant impact on their ability to solve more complex technical challenges. Across the survey, respondents cited greater involvement in architecture discussions, solution design, troubleshooting, customer engagements, and technical leadership. Several described becoming the go-to Databricks resource at their organizations after completing certification pathways. Certification also strengthened professional credibility, with respondents frequently citing greater recognition from leadership, customers, hiring managers, recruiters, and peers. For many, the credential provided independent validation of expertise that opened doors to new opportunities and greater responsibility. Databricks Certification extends beyond platform expertise, preparing professionals for emerging AI-driven customer engagements. "[Databricks] Certification gave me the confidence to take on more complex responsibilities and contribute more effectively to architectural decisions." — Survey participant, , C-level executive at fortune 500 company Career growth becomes organizational value Survey participants reported a range of professional benefits, from promotions and role transitions to salary growth, greater responsibility, and expanded customer-facing opportunities. The most telling finding, however, is what happens once those skills are applied inside an organization. When Databricks-Certified professionals bring stronger expertise into customer engagements, the impact reaches well beyond individual career advancement. Teams gain new technical capabilities, delivery organizations improve, and customers see better results. That is where certification begins to shift from an individual achievement to a business asset. What partners gain: Faster, more effective project delivery Databricks-Certified professionals consistently described improvements in performance tuning, troubleshooting, architecture design, pipeline development, governance, and solution implementation. Many reported handling day-to-day work more efficiently and solving problems that once required extra support or time. For partner organizations, that translates into stronger project execution, faster delivery, and greater consistency. When teams understand platform best practices and apply them with confidence, projects move forward with less risk. Stronger bench strength As technologies evolve, customers increasingly judge partners by the depth of expertise available across the wider organization. Certification helps partners build a larger pool of validated knowledge across data engineering, analytics, machine learning, and AI. Rather than relying on a small number of specialists, organizations can develop repeatable capabilities across broader teams. The result is more capacity to meet customer demand, start new projects, and scale delivery practices across multiple engagements. Greater customer confidence Several respondents noted that certification strengthened customer trust and improved credibility during client conversations. Others highlighted it as a differentiator when pursuing new opportunities or positioning themselves for more strategic roles. For customers, certification signals that a partner has invested in expertise aligned with modern data and AI platforms. In competitive tenders, trust can become a meaningful advantage. Building readiness for the AI era One of the strongest themes from the survey was the shift from AI experimentation to AI execution. Respondents who completed AI, Machine Learning, and advanced Data Engineering certifications frequently reported a deeper grasp of AI architectures, governance practices, modern data platforms, and emerging technologies. Many said they were more comfortable discussing AI with customers and spotting new ways to apply solutions within their organizations. As organizations move from experimentation to adoption, those capabilities grow more valuable. With 70 percent of the Fortune 500 relying on Databricks, the ability to deploy AI that powers natural language insights and automated agents at scale is what sets serious partners apart. Customers are not simply looking for someone who can deploy a technology platform; they want partners who can help them build the foundation, governance, architecture, and expertise required to design production-scale AI and deliver meaningful business outcomes. Databricks Certification helps prepare teams for that responsibility. The Databricks Certification journey The most successful organizations treat Databricks Certification as a continuous growth path rather than a one-time achievement. 1. Associate Build foundational expertise in Databricks, data engineering concepts, platform capabilities, and best practices. 2. Professional Develop deeper knowledge of architecture, performance tuning, governance, scalability, and enterprise-ready implementation. 3. Delivery expert Apply advanced expertise in customer transformation initiatives, strategic solution design, AI adoption, and business outcomes. As professionals progress through this journey, they move beyond platform familiarity toward delivery leadership and trusted advisor status. Their organizations, in turn, build a stronger, more capable workforce prepared to meet changing customer needs. The bigger opportunity The survey findings point to a simple conclusion: Databricks Certification is most valuable when treated as an organization-wide capability-building strategy rather than an individual credentialing exercise. Certification deepens professional expertise, gives teams greater confidence, strengthens credibility with customers, and equips partners to deliver in an increasingly data-driven, AI-powered market. Ready to build strong data and AI foundations with Databricks training and certification? Beyond the Certification: Download our guide on moving from AI ambition to AI readiness. Explore all trainings in the Databricks Learning Library or start upskilling with Databricks Academy Contributed by Databricks.

The Disrupt Stage is where many of the biggest conversations in technology happen, with a legacy that stretches back for more than a decade.

You’ve probably already put America’s 250th birthday behind you. What should have been a terrific bipartisan celebration of our nation’s history was hijacked by President Donald Trump, who turned it into a right-wing, low-rent catastrophe and a birthday party for himself. Not only that, but he also hijacked your tax dollars, diverting funds from the actual bipartisan group, America250…

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Samsung Electronics is warning that the current memory supply crunch will deepen next year and persist through 2028, a shortage that keeps padding its own record profits at the expense of enterprise customers and consumers. The Korean conglomerate said agentic AI has added to demand already generated by model training, driving an "unprecedented rise" in requirements for AI servers and other computing infrastructure. Memory makers continue to prioritize production of components for AI servers, leading to a shortfall of the mainstream memory types needed for PCs, smartphones, and other devices. The industry continues to invest in new capacity, but the lead time from starting construction of a fab to producing wafers exceeds three years, according to Samsung's EVP of Memory, Jaejune Kim, meaning that any significant ramp in supply capacity will take considerable time. "So we believe it will be unlikely to see any significant increase in incremental supply through 2028," Kim told analysts on a call to discuss the firm's calendar Q2 financial results for the period ended June 30. "Based on the incoming requests that we have been seeing from the customers, unmet demand from this year is likely to carry over into the following year, contributing to tighter supply conditions going forward. The supply constraints are expected to become even more severe in 2027 than 2026, reinforcing our view that the supply shortage will persist through 2028." Kim said visibility further ahead is limited, although rising token processing by AI agents is expected to keep pressure on memory chip demand over the medium to long term. Like rival SK Hynix, Samsung has also cut deals with customers to ensure long-term supply stability. "Customers who want to secure substantial AI service infrastructure are increasingly approaching us for multiyear supply," Kim told analysts. "These multiyear arrangements actually are aligned with our objective of hedging our mid- to long-term risk. And so we have been engaging in discussions with customers, prioritizing those who can guarantee committed future captive demand." In other words, customers willing to sign up for years of memory purchases move to the front of the queue. Everyone else can take a number and get in line. Samsung hopes the agreements will reduce its exposure to the memory market's boom-and-bust cycles. It expects output, measured in bits, to grow by the mid-single digits for DRAM and the high single digits for NAND flash next quarter. It will aim to expand sales of high-performance products including HBM4, HBM4E, DDR5, SOCAMM2, and enterprise SSDs, Kim said. This approach led to Samsung reporting revenue of ₩171.5 trillion ($119 billion) for Q2, up 130 percent year-on-year. Operating profit shot up more than nineteen times the year-ago figure to ₩89.5 trillion ($62.4 billion). Taiwan-based market watcher TrendForce agrees that AI will remain a primary driver of DRAM demand in 2027, but expects to see supplies of NAND flash ease in the second half of the year as new production capacity comes online. For DRAM, several suppliers plan to start new lines in 2027, but construction schedules, equipment installation, and other requirements will delay meaningful production ramp-ups until the second half of 2027, the firm says, so substantial extra output is not expected to materialize until 2028. In contrast, accelerated migration to NAND products with more layers and the gradual ramp-up of new fabrication plants during 2027 is expected to drive greater bit supply growth than in 2026, resulting in an expansion of industry output. ®

⚡ Quick Take

• The Brand New Day cast was interviewed by Sesame Street‘s Cookie Monster on the red carpet of the movie’s premiere.
• His interview with Sadie answered the question “everybody wants to know.”
• To avoid spoilers, we suggest ONLY watching the Cookie Monster interview.

If you thought the Hulk was going to be the only “monster” on the red carpet of the Spider-Man: Brand New Day premiere, you were dead wrong. Before the icons of the Brand New Day cast could settle into their theater seats, they were interviewed by none other than Cookie Monster from Sesame Street.

Sesame Street

During Tom Holland’s interview with the fluffy blue puppet, the two sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” together, and Cookie Monster messily scarfed down a chocolate chip cookie. In her Brand New Day interview, Zendaya gave Cookie Monster advice on premiere etiquette, and in return he handed her a very special spider cookie. Interviewing Sadie Sink, Cookie Monster asked the Stranger Things actress to “reveal the answer that everybody wants to know,” playing on the mystery of her role in the movie. His question? If she liked “chewy or crunchy cookies” better.

Sadie Sink’s interview was certainly the funniest. After months of online fan speculation about her role in the movie, it’s definitely refreshing to see that Cookie Monster was in search of other answers. Especially after musician Steve Lacy spoiled her role during an interview at the very same premiere. This is after the cast and crew managed to keep it under wraps for the entirety of production. Lacy has officially taken Tom Holland’s place as top Marvel spoiler. So, if you want to avoid those spoilers, I suggest only watching the Cookie Monster interviews.

This premiere happened days before the movie’s release in theaters on July 31. Already, the movie is estimated to gross over $200 million on just its opening weekend. Some say it could surpass $300 million, and with Marvel’s dedicated fanbase, I would not doubt it in the slightest. And based on critic reviews thus far, Marvel junkies are right to be so excited.

The post Cookie Monster Interviews BRAND NEW DAY Cast at Premiere appeared first on Nerdist.

The U.S. federal consumer watchdog said Hims & Hers, which prescribes for sexual wellness and mental health conditions, used website trackers to share customers' information with advertisers.

On July 30, 1965, former President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, issuing the first official Medicare card to former President Harry S. Truman. The first beneficiary of Medicare was no coincidence, as 20 years prior, Truman had proposed a national health insurance program for Americans. Since then, the right has sought to privatize Medicare—most recently in the form of…

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Amazon has linked the compromises of four npm packages over the past 18 months, saying they were all the work of the same North Korean crew. In research published this week, AWS attributed the activity with medium confidence to the North Korea-linked group tracked as Sapphire Sleet, which is widely regarded as a Lazarus Group offshoot. Rather than exploiting zero-days or hacking npm itself, the crew allegedly took the slower route of befriending maintainers, stealing credentials, and publishing poisoned updates from accounts that developers already trusted. The research revisits the compromises of typo-crypto, chalk and debug, and Axios, concluding that the four packages were targeted by the same North Korean operation. Google had already attributed the Axios compromise to Sapphire Sleet, which it tracks as UNC1069, but Amazon goes further, saying the same group was behind all four incidents. The company points to shared infrastructure and technical overlaps, alongside similarities in how the attacks were carried out and which packages were targeted. Rather than attacking npm's infrastructure, the group allegedly went after the people trusted to publish code. Once a maintainer account was compromised, malicious releases could be pushed through the same channels developers use every day. AWS says the targets also grew more ambitious, progressing from little-known packages to some of the ecosystem's biggest names. AWS says this strategy is as much about economics as espionage. Instead of picking off victims individually, compromising a small number of widely used packages offers a shot at thousands of downstream environments in one go. AWS warns that generative AI is making this kind of operation easier to sustain by helping attackers create believable developer personas, tailor messages to individual maintainers, and keep long-running social engineering campaigns convincing enough to earn their targets' trust. "Attackers can now produce thousands of lines of coherent, idiomatic, well-commented code, complete with convincing documentation, plausible commit histories, and synthetic maintainer identities, wrapped around a backdoor," said CJ Moses, AWS CISO. "Because each variant can be mutated, renamed, restructured, and re-encrypted, there is no single stable signature to match. Pattern-based detection loses ground against malware that looks one of a kind in every deployment." Amazon's findings build on what's already known about Sapphire Sleet. The group has long been associated with cryptocurrency theft, fake job offers, and elaborate social engineering campaigns aimed at developers. Amazon argues that the group has adapted its established methods to target the software supply chain. Whether other researchers will agree that all four compromises belong to the same operation remains unclear. If AWS is correct, the incidents trace the group's progression from an obscure package with few downloads to dependencies used across millions of projects. ®

Katie Miller, a former Trump administration staffer and wife of White House adviser Stephen Miller, has called for Anthony Fauci to be jailed, citing the recent release of his diary entries as proof that he is nothing but an attention-seeker. 

But the diary entries reveal something else. During President Trump’s first term, when Katie Miller was then-Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director and involved in the White House’s response to Covid-19, she appeared quite close with the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. 

Fauci provided regular medical advice to the Millers, counseling the family after Katie tested positive for the virus in 2020 while she was pregnant, when her husband had Covid-19, and when her newborn child had a medical episode, NOTUS reports. 

“I am calling katie frequently to check on her couple time per day. She is very anxious about getting very ill since she is 10 weeks pregnant. Tonight she had an anxiety reaction. I calmed her over the phone,” Fauci wrote in his diary on May 9, 2020. Fauci wrote in another entry how he called the doctors treating Miller’s child directly to discuss the baby’s medical care. 

Senator Rand Paul released over 1,000 pages of Fauci’s diary Saturday, and quite a few of those entries showed the extent of Fauci’s interactions with Miller before they were later redacted. NOTUS compared pages before and after the redactions, and found that many of the suddenly redacted passages concerned the Millers’ relationship with Fauci, with the original documents mentioning Katie 56 times, while the redacted version mentioned her just 37 times. 

Katie told NOTUS not to publish details of her child’s medical history, claiming that Paul published them without her permission. She also said that despite her regular contact with Fauci during the pandemic, she thought at the time that he was “incredibly self-centered and sought to promote himself above the good of the people.”

“He was not my doctor. He was not my friend. He was a work colleague who called me for work purposes, and in the course of a phone call, you would discuss other things,” Miller said to NOTUS. 

Fauci describes Katie Miller in his diary as someone who he saw as an ally to help deal with Pence and Trump while the Coronavirus Task Force was active. 

“katie Miller is great (tough, smart,but great),” Fauci wrote on March 25, 2020. He also spoke to her multiple times while she was traveling to her parents’ home in Texas later in October that year, after her husband tested positive. 

“Am on phone frequently with katie and Stephen,” Fauci wrote on December 31, 2020.

But since then, Katie has blasted Fauci frequently online, accusing him of caring “more about virtue signaling than science” and causing “decades of harm” to children with his leadership of the government’s response to Covid-19. She now speaks often about not vaccinating her youngest child on her podcast.

It’s highly hypocritical how she and her husband are now trashing a dedicated public servant and medical professional who went out of his way to help them during the Covid-19 pandemic, when they dealt with the same fears of the virus as every other American. Now the Millers are happy to pile on and blame Fauci for the failures of the Trump administration’s Covid-19 response.  

Federal safety regulators have given Zoox a temporary exemption that will allow the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle technology company to charge customers for rides in its custom-built robotaxi.

London-based Inforcer just closed a $50 million Series C round led by Insight Partners.

The Series A was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Allianz, Rebel Fund, Brick and Mortar Ventures’ Darren Bechtel, and Y Combinator’s Garry Tan.

Trump’s war on ‘gender ideology’ and diversity is hurting San Francisco Asian Women’s Shelter’s ability to help victims—many of whom can’t get help anywhere else. It’s already cost them nearly $500,000. By Jasmine Mithani for The 19th For a long time, reaching out for help felt insurmountable. Through her job, Monica Paz had seen firsthand the discrimination faced by trans women…

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