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Intel's data-leaking Spectre defenses scared off yet again

An Anonymous Coward writes:

ETH Zurich boffins exploit branch prediction race condition to steal info from memory, fixes have mild perf hit

by Thomas Claburn // Tue 13 May 2025

Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have found a way around Intel's defenses against Spectre, a family of data-leaking flaws in the x86 giant's processor designs that simply won't die.

Sandro Rüegge, Johannes Wikner, and Kaveh Razavi have identified a class of security vulnerabilities they're calling Branch Predictor Race Conditions (BPRC), which they describe in a paper [PDF] scheduled to be presented at USENIX Security 2025 and Black Hat USA 2025 later this year.

Spectre refers to a set of hardware-level processor vulnerabilities identified in 2018 that can be used to break the security isolation between software. It does this by exploiting speculative execution - a performance optimization technique that involves the CPU anticipating future code paths (also known as branch prediction) and executing down those paths before they're actually needed.

In practice, this all means malware running on a machine, or a rogue logged-in user, can potentially abuse Spectre flaws within vulnerable Intel processors to snoop on and steal data – such as passwords, keys, and other secrets – from other running programs or even from the kernel, the heart of the operating system itself, or from adjacent virtual machines on a host, depending on the circumstances. In terms of real-world risk, we haven't seen the Spectre family exploited publicly in a significant way, yet.

There are several Spectre variants. One of these, Spectre v2, enables an attacker to manipulate indirect branch predictions across different privilege modes to read arbitrary memory; it effectively allows a malicious program to extract secrets from the kernel and other running applications.

Intel has added various hardware-based defenses against these sorts of attacks over the years, which include Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS/eIBRS) for restricting indirect branch target prediction, a sanitizing technique called Indirect Branch Predictor Barrier (IBPB), and other microarchitectural speculation controls.

eIBRS, the researchers explain, is designed to restrict indirect branch predictions to their originating privilege domain, preventing them from leaking across boundaries. Additional protection provided by IBPB is recommended in scenarios where different execution contexts, like untrusted virtual machines (VMs), share the same privilege level and hardware domain.

But Rüegge, Wikner, and Razavi found that branch predictors on Intel processors are updated asynchronously inside the processor pipeline, meaning there are potential race conditions – situations when two or more processes or threads attempt to access and update the same information concurrently, resulting in unpredictable behavior.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Colin" who told us about his time working as a front-end developer for an education company that decided the time was right to expand from the UK to the US.

"Suddenly we needed to localize thousands of online articles, lessons, and other documents into American English."

Inconveniently, all that content was static HTML. "There was no CMS, no database, nothing I could harness on the server side," Colin lamented to Who, Me?

After due consideration, Colin and his team decided to use regular expressions to do the job.

"Our system combined tackling spelling swaps like changing 'ae' to 'e' in words like 'archaeology' and word/phrase swaps so that British terms like 'post' were changed to the American 'mail.'" Colin knew this could go pear-shaped if the system changed a term like "post-modern" to "mail-modern," so compound words were exempt.

As Colin and his workmates considered all the necessary changes, they realized they needed a lot of rules.

"The fact it was running the replacements directly on the body HTML, and causing lots of page repaints, meant we had to build a REST API to cache which rules ran and didn't run for each page, so as to not cause slowdown by running unnecessary rules," he explained.

Which worked well until it didn't.

"One day we got a call asking why a lesson about famous artists referred to the great painter 'Vincent Truck Gogh.'"

Readers are doubtless familiar with Vincent Van Gogh, and the different names for midsize vehicles on each side of the North Atlantic.

That was just the start. Next came complaints about a religious studies lesson that explained how Adam and Eve lived in the "Yard of Eden" – not the garden. Another religion class mentioned sinister-sounding "Easter hoods" instead of the daintier "Easter bonnets."

Colin figured out that the word swaps he coded failed to consider cases where it should just skip a word altogether. A van, after all, is a truck if you're American.

"In the end, we managed to get the system to be context-aware, so that certain swaps could be suppressed if the article contained a certain trigger word which suggested it shouldn't run, and the problems went away. But it was a very entertaining bug to be involved with!"

Original Submission

_{Processed by jelizondo}

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The HoloBoard augmented-reality system lets people type independently.

Jeremy is a 31-year-old autistic man who loves music and biking. He's highly sensitive to lights, sounds, and textures, has difficulty initiating movement, and can say only a few words. Throughout his schooling, it was assumed he was incapable of learning to read and write. But for the past 30 minutes, he's been wearing an augmented-reality (AR) headset and spelling single words on the HoloBoard, a virtual keyboard that hovers in the air in front of him. And now, at the end of a study session, a researcher asks Jeremy (not his real name) what he thought of the experience.

Deliberately, poking one virtual letter at a time, he types, "That was good."

It was not obvious that Jeremy would be able to wear an AR headset, let alone use it to communicate. The headset we use, Microsoft's HoloLens 2, weighs 566 grams (more than a pound), and the straps that encircle the head can be uncomfortable. Interacting with virtual objects requires precise hand and finger movements. What's more, some people doubt that people like Jeremy can even understand a question or produce a response. And yet, in study after study, we have found that most nonspeaking autistic teenage and adult participants can wear the HoloLens 2, and most can type short words on the HoloBoard.

The HoloBoard prototype that Jeremy first used in 2023 was three years in the making. It had its origins in an interdisciplinary feasibility study that considered whether individuals like Jeremy could tolerate a commercial AR headset. That study was led by the three of us: a developmental psychologist (Vikram Jaswal at the University of Virginia), an electrical and software engineer (Diwakar Krishnamurthy at the University of Calgary), and a computer scientist (Mea Wang, also at the University of Calgary).

Our journey to this point was not smooth. Some autism researchers told us that nonspeaking autistic people "do not have language" and so couldn't possibly communicate by typing. They also said that nonspeaking autistic people are so sensitive to sensory experiences that they would be overwhelmed by augmented reality. But our data, from more than a half-dozen peer-reviewed studies, have shown both assumptions to be wrong. And those results have informed the tools we're creating, like the HoloBoard, to enable nonspeaking autistic people to communicate more effectively.

Nonspeaking autistic people may also appear inattentive, engage in impulsive behavior, and score poorly on standard intelligence tests (many of which require spoken responses within a set amount of time). Historically, these challenges have led to unfounded assumptions about these individuals' ability to understand language and their capacity for symbolic thought. To put it bluntly, it has sometimes been assumed that someone who can't talk is also incapable of thinking.

Most attempts to provide nonspeaking autistic people with an alternative to speech have been rudimentary. Picture-based communication systems, often implemented on an iPad or tablet, are frequently used in schools and therapy clinics. If a user wants a cookie, they can tap a picture of a cookie. But the vocabulary of these systems is limited to the concepts that can be represented by a simple picture.

There are other options. Some nonspeaking autistic people have learned, over the course of many years and guided by parents and professionals, to communicate by spelling words and sentences on a letterboard that's held by a trained human assistant - a communication and regulation partner, or CRP. Part of the CRP's role is to provide attentional and emotional support, which can help with conditions that commonly accompany severe autism and that interfere with communication, including anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Having access to such assisted methods of communication has allowed nonspeaking autistic people to graduate from college, write poetry, and publish a best-selling memoir.

But the role of the CRP has generated considerable controversy. Critics contend that the assistants can subtly guide users to point to particular letters, which would make the CRP, rather than the user, the author of any words produced. If nonspeaking autistic people who use a letterboard really know how to spell, critics ask, why is the CRP necessary? Some professional organizations, including the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, have even cautioned against teaching nonspeaking autistic people communication methods that involve assistance from another person.

And yet, research suggests that CRP-aided methods can teach users the skills to communicate without assistance; indeed, some individuals who previously required support now type independently. And a recent study by coauthor Jaswal showed that, contrary to critics' assumptions, most of the nonspeaking autistic individuals in his study (which did not involve a CRP) knew how to spell. For example, in a string of text without any spaces, they knew where one word ended and the next word began. Using eye tracking, Jaswal's team also showed that nonspeaking autistic people who use a letterboard look at and point to letters too quickly and accurately to be responding to subtle cues from a human assistant.

fliptop writes:

Regeneron has agreed to buy 23andMe, the once buzzy genetic testing company, out of bankruptcy for $256 million under a court-supervised sale process:

23andMe declared bankruptcy in March and announced it would seek a buyer, while also saying that co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki would resign.

Under the proposed agreement with Regeneron, the Tarrytown, New York, drugmaker will acquire 23andMe's assets, including its personal genome service and total health and research services. Regeneron said Monday that it will abide by 23andMe's privacy policies and applicable law to protect customer data.

Data privacy experts had raised concerns about 23andMe's storehouse of data for about 15 million customers, including their DNA.

23andMe's consumer-genome services will continue interrupted, the purchaser said. Regeneron will not acquire 23andMe's Lemonaid Health telehealth business.

Also at ZeroHedge.

Previously: 23andMe Reportedly Faces Bankruptcy — What Will Happen to Everyone's DNA Samples?

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The Verge, Space News, and The South China Morning Post are reporting that Red China has begun assembling a 744 TOPS super computer in Earth's orbit. The advantages of an orbital super computer include better access to solar energy, easier radiation of waste heat, and, above all, shorter communications times with other satellites.

The satellites communicate with each other at up-to-100Gbps using lasers, and share 30 terabytes of storage between them, according to Space News. The 12 launched last week carry scientific payloads, including an X-ray polarization detector for picking up brief cosmic phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts. The satellites also have the capability to create 3D digital twin data that can be used for purposes like emergency response, gaming, and tourism, ADA Space says in its announcement.

— China begins assembling its supercomputer in space. The Verge.

They are part of the Three-Body Computing Constellation, space-based infrastructure being developed by Zhejiang Lab. Once complete, the constellation would support real-time, in-orbit data processing with a total computing capacity of 1,000 peta operations per second (POPS) – or one quintillion operations per second – the report said.

— China launches satellites to start building the world's first supercomputer in orbit. The South China Morning Post.

The satellites feature advanced AI capabilities, up to 100 Gbps laser inter-satellite links and remote sensing payloads—data from which will be processed onboard, reducing data transmission requirements. One satellite also carries a cosmic X-ray polarimeter developed by Guangxi University and the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), which will detect, identify and classify transient events such as gamma-ray bursts, while also triggering messages to enable followup observations by other missions.

— China launches first of 2,800 satellites for AI space computing constellation. Space News.

Maintenance will be difficult.

Previously:
(2025) PA's Largest Coal Plant to Become 4.5GW Gas-Fired AI Hub
(2025) FTC Removes Posts Critical of Amazon, Microsoft, and AI Companies
(2025) Real Datacenter Emissions Are A Dirty Secret
(2022) Amazon and Microsoft Want to Go Big on Data Centres, but the Power Grid Can't Support Them

Original Submission

hubie writes:

EU users have less than two weeks to opt out of Meta's AI training:

Privacy watchdog Noyb sent a cease-and-desist letter to Meta Wednesday, threatening to pursue a potentially billion-dollar class action to block Meta's AI training, which starts soon in the European Union.

In the letter, Noyb noted that Meta only recently notified EU users on its platforms that they had until May 27 to opt their public posts out of Meta's AI training data sets. According to Noyb, Meta is also requiring users who already opted out of AI training in 2024 to opt out again or forever lose their opportunity to keep their data out of Meta's models, as training data likely cannot be easily deleted. That's a seeming violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Noyb alleged.

"Meta informed data subjects that, despite that fact that an objection to AI training under Article 21(2) GDPR was accepted in 2024, their personal data will be processed unless they object again—against its former promises, which further undermines any legitimate trust in Meta's organizational ability to properly execute the necessary steps when data subjects exercise their rights," Noyb's letter said.

[...] The letter accused Meta of further deceptions, like planning to seize data that users may not consider "public," like disappearing stories typically only viewed by small audiences. That, Noyb said, differs significantly from AI crawlers scraping information posted on a public website.

According to Noyb, there would be no issue with Meta's AI training in the EU if Meta would use a consent-based model rather than requiring rushed opt-outs. As Meta explained in a blog following a threatened preliminary injunction on AI training in Germany, the company plans to collect AI training data using a "legitimate interest" legal basis, which supposedly "follows the clear guidelines of the European Data Protection Committee of December 2024, which reflect the consensus between EU data protection authorities."

shrewdsheep writes:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/13/nextcloud_play_store_complaint/
https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-android-file-upload-issue-google/

Exclusive European software vendor Nextcloud has accused Google of deliberately crippling its Android Files application, which it says has more than 800,000 users.

The problem lies with the "All files access" permission, where broad access to files on a device is required. While most applications can make do with Google's more privacy-friendly storage access tools, such as Storage Access Framework (SAF) or the MediaStore API, others require more permissions – hence the "All files access" privilege.

Nextcloud's Android Files app is a file synchronization tool that, according to the company, has long had permission to read and write all file types. "Nextcloud has had this feature since its inception in 2016," it said, "and we never heard about any security concerns from Google about it."

That changed in 2024, when someone or something at Google's Play Store decided to revoke the permission, effectively crippling the application. Nextcloud was instructed to use "a more privacy-aware replacement."

According to Nextcloud, "SAF cannot be used, as it is for sharing/exposing our files to other apps ... MediaStore API cannot be used as it does not allow access to other files, but only media files."

Original Submission

looorg writes:

Scientists have re-calculate when the universe will end and it's a lot sooner than previously expected.

"sooner" still means a mind-bending 10 to the power of 78 years from now. That is a 1 followed by 78 zeros, which is unimaginably far into the future. However, in cosmic terms, this estimate is a dramatic advancement from the previous prediction of 10 to the power of 1,100 years, made by Falcke and his team in 2023.

Lets hope the next predictions does not come with the same results. The logarithmic end of time.

https://www.space.com/astronomy/scientists-calculate-when-the-universe-will-end-its-sooner-than-expected

Original Submission

M&S Forces Customer Password Resets After Data Breach

upstart writes:

M&S forces customer password resets after data breach:

Marks and Spencer (M&S) has confirmed that customer data was stolen during the Easter DragonForce ransomware attack on its server infrastructure and will be prompting all online customers to reset their account passwords as a precautionary move.

The attack unfolded three weeks ago and is thought to have been the work of a white-label affiliate of DragonForce – possibly the notorious Scattered Spider operation, which uses social engineering tactics to conduct its intrusions.

The stolen tranche of data is understood to include contact details email addresses, postal addresses and phone numbers; personal information including names and dates of birth; and data on customer interactions with the chain, including online order histories, household information, and 'masked' payment card details.

M&S added that customer reference numbers, but not payment information, belonging to holders of M&S credit cards or Sparks Pay cards – including former cardholders – may also have been taken.

"We have written to customers today to let them know that unfortunately, some personal customer information has been taken," said M&S chief exec Stuart Machin.

"Importantly there is no evidence that the information has been shared and it does not include useable card or payment details, or account passwords, so there is no need for customers to take any action."

[...] NordVPN chief technology officer, Marijus Briedis, described M&S' assertion that the attackers have not yet leaked or shared the stolen data was "overly optimistic" under the circumstances and warned that even if passwords or credit card details were not exposed, the data that was taken was still very useful to cyber criminals.

"This type of data can be used in phishing campaigns or combined with other leaked information to commit identity theft," explained Briedis.

"Consumers often underestimate how damaging 'harmless' data like order history or email addresses can be in the wrong hands. These M&S hackers could use this data to build highly personalised phishing emails, designed to look identical to what the retailer would send, and these are much harder to spot.

"This breach highlights how companies must not only secure financial data, but also treat seemingly less sensitive information – like customer profiles and purchase records – as critical assets that require protection."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Police and federal agencies have found a controversial new way to skirt the growing patchwork of laws that curb how they use facial recognition: an AI model that can track people using attributes like body size, gender, hair color and style, clothing, and accessories. 

The tool, called Track and built by the video analytics company Veritone, is used by 400 customers, including state and local police departments and universities all over the US. It is also expanding federally: US attorneys at the Department of Justice began using Track for criminal investigations last August. Veritone’s broader suite of AI tools, which includes bona fide facial recognition, is also used by the Department of Homeland Security—which houses immigration agencies—and the Department of Defense, according to the company. 

“The whole vision behind Track in the first place,” says Veritone CEO Ryan Steelberg, was “if we’re not allowed to track people’s faces, how do we assist in trying to potentially identify criminals or malicious behavior or activity?” In addition to tracking individuals where facial recognition isn’t legally allowed, Steelberg says, it allows for tracking when faces are obscured or not visible. 

The product has drawn criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union, which—after learning of the tool through MIT Technology Review—said it was the first instance they’d seen of a nonbiometric tracking system used at scale in the US.They warned that it raises many of the same privacy concerns as facial recognition but also introduces new ones at a time when the Trump administration is pushing federal agencies to ramp up monitoring of protesters, immigrants, and students.

Veritone gave us a demonstration of Track in which it analyzed people in footage from different environments, ranging from the January 6 riots to subway stations. You can use it to find people by specifying body size, gender, hair color and style, shoes, clothing, and various accessories. The tool can then assemble timelines, tracking a person across different locations and video feeds. It can be accessed through Amazon and Microsoft cloud platforms.

In an interview, Steelberg said that the number of attributes Track uses to identify people will continue to grow. When asked if Track differentiates on the basis of skin tone, a company spokesperson said it’s one of the attributes the algorithm uses to tell people apart but that the software does not currently allow users to search for people by skin color. Track currently operates only on recorded video, but Steelberg claims the company is less than a year from being able to run it on live video feeds.

owl writes:

https://archive.is/hXGcp

On Tuesday, someone posted a video on X of a procession of crosses, with a caption reading, "Each cross represents a white farmer who was murdered in South Africa." Elon Musk, South African by birth, shared the post, greatly expanding its visibility. The accusation of genocide being carried out against white farmers is either a horrible moral stain or shameless alarmist disinformation, depending on whom you ask, which may be why another reader asked Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot from the Musk-founded company xAI, to weigh in. Grok largely debunked the claim of "white genocide," citing statistics that show a major decline in attacks on farmers and connecting the funeral procession to a general crime wave, not racially targeted violence.

By the next day, something had changed. Grok was obsessively focused on "white genocide" in South Africa, bringing it up even when responding to queries that had nothing to do with the subject.

How much do the Toronto Blue Jays pay the team's pitcher, Max Scherzer? Grok responded by discussing white genocide in South Africa. What's up with this picture of a tiny dog? Again, white genocide in South Africa. Did Qatar promise to invest in the United States? There, too, Grok's answer was about white genocide in South Africa.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Mars may still be home to oceanic quantities of liquid water, according to a recent paper published by the National Science Review.

Titled “Seismic evidence of liquid water at the base of Mars' upper crust”, the paper [PDF] notes that liquid water once flowed freely on the surface of Mars before the planet’s magnetic field faded, its atmosphere thinned, and it became the dry and frozen hellscape we know today.

The paper’s authors – from China’s Academy of Sciences, the Australian National University, and the University of Milano-Bicocca – note the generally accepted theory that Mars’ water either evaporated into space or was somehow stored in the planet’s crust but worry there’s little evidence to help us understand how much water may remain.

They think they found that evidence in data gathered by the Mars InSight, the sadly defunct lander that studied the Red Planet’s interior, when it recorded the impact of two meteorite impacts in 2021 and a 2022 Marsquake.

Those incidents produced seismic waves that slowed as they passed through a layer between 5.4 and 8 kilometers below the surface.

The authors cite studies on how quickly seismic waves travel through porous rocks, plus research on how such waves behave as they pass through layers in Earth’s crust and conclude that Mars is home to a “water-soaked layer 5.4 to 8 kilometers deep.”

In a summary of the paper, Australian and Chinese researchers characterize the that layer as “most likely highly porous rock filled with liquid water, like a saturated sponge” and akin to Earth’s aquifers. The paper estimates the porous rocks contain enough water to cover Mars in a global ocean 520–780m deep.

Journal Reference: Weijia Sun, Hrvoje Tkalčić, Marco G Malusà, Yongxin Pan, Seismic evidence of liquid water at the base of Mars' upper crust, National Science Review, 2025, nwaf166, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwaf166

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Last week, a U.S. congressman announced a plan to introduce a bill that would mandate producers of high-performance AI processors to track them geographically in a bid to limit their usage by unauthorized foreign actors, such as China. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas then introduced a legislative measure later in the week. The bill covers hardware that goes way beyond just AI processors, and would give the Commerce Secretary power to verify the location of hardware, and put mandatory location controls on commercial companies. To make matters even more complicated, geo-tracking features would be required for high-performance graphics cards as well.

The bill covers a wide range of products classified as 3A090, 4A090, 4A003.z, and 3A001.z export control classification numbers (ECCNs), so advanced processors for AI, AI servers (including rack-scale solutions), HPC servers, and general-purpose electronics of strategic concern due to potential military utility or dual-use risk. It should be noted that many high-end graphics cards (such as Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 5090) are also classified as a 3A090 product, so it looks like such add-in-boards will also have to add geo-tracking capabilities.

The first and central provision of the bill is the requirement for tracking technology to be embedded in any high-end processor module or device that falls under the U.S. export restrictions. This condition would take effect six months after the legislation is enacted, which will make the lives of companies like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia harder, as adding a feature to already developed products is a tough task. The mechanism must allow verification of a chip's or device's physical location, enabling the U.S. government to confirm whether it remains at the approved endpoint. Yet, exporters would be obliged to keep track of their products.

The bill authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to verify the ownership and location of regulated processors and systems after export and maintain a centralized registry of current locations and end-users. Nvidia, as well as other exporters, would also be obligated to inform the Bureau of Industry and Security if there is evidence that a component has been redirected from its authorized destination. Additionally, any indications of tampering or manipulation must be reported.

The bill, if supported by lawmakers, will mandate a one-year study to be conducted jointly by the Department of Commerce and the Department of Defense, which will identify additional protective measures that could be introduced in the future. Beyond the initial study, the same two departments are required to conduct yearly assessments for three consecutive years following the bill's enactment. These reviews must evaluate the most current advancements in security technologies applicable to products under export control. Based on these assessments, the departments may determine whether new requirements should be imposed. 

If the assessment concludes that additional mechanisms are appropriate, the Commerce Department must finalize rules within two years requiring covered chips and systems to incorporate these secondary features. A detailed implementation roadmap must also be submitted to the relevant congressional committees. All development and deployment of these mechanisms must preserve the confidentiality of sensitive commercial technologies. 

Finally, the legislation emphasizes confidentiality in all stages of developing and applying these new technical requirements. Any proposed safeguards or tracking features must be designed and implemented in a way that protects the proprietary information and trade secrets of American developers, such as AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. This condition ensures that while national security is strengthened, industrial competitiveness is not undermined. 

Is it even possible? Does the "tracking" stop if an American purchases the GPU?

See also: Nvidia says it is not sending GPU designs to China after reports of new Shanghai operation [JR]

Original Submission

_{Processed by drussell}

owl writes:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/15/voyager_1_survives_with_thruster_fix/

NASA has revived a set of thrusters on the nearly 50-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft after declaring them inoperable over two decades ago.

It's a nice long-distance engineering win for the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, responsible for keeping the venerable Voyager spacecraft flying - and a critical one at that, as clogging fuel lines threatened to derail the backup thrusters currently in use.

The things you have to deal with when your spacecraft is operating more than four decades beyond its original mission plan, eh? Voyager 1 launched in 1977.

JPL reported Wednesday that the maneuver, completed in March, restarted Voyager 1's primary roll thrusters, which are used to keep the spacecraft aligned with a tracking star. That guide star helps keep its high-gain antenna aimed at Earth, now over 15.6 billion miles (25 billion kilometers) away, and far beyond the reach of any telescope.

Those primary roll thrusters stopped working in 2004 after a pair of internal heaters lost power. Voyager engineers long believed they were broken and unfixable. The backup roll thrusters in use are now at risk due to residue buildup in their fuel lines, which could cause failure as early as this fall.

Without roll thrusters, Voyager 1 would lose its ability to stay properly oriented and eventually drift out of contact.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

White House scraps plan to block data brokers from selling Americans' sensitive data:

A senior Trump administration official has scrapped a plan that would have blocked data brokers from selling Americans' personal and financial information, including Social Security numbers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said in December 2024 it planned to close a loophole under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the federal law that protects Americans' personal data collected by consumer reporting agencies, such as credit bureaus and renter-screening companies. The rule would have treated data brokers no differently than any other company covered under the federal law and would have required them to comply with the law's privacy rules.

The rule was withdrawn early Tuesday, according to its listing in the Federal Register. The CFPB's acting director, Russell Vought, who also serves as the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, wrote that the rule is "not aligned with the Bureau's current interpretation" of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

[...] Privacy advocates have long called for the government to use the Fair Credit Reporting Act to rein in data brokers.

The decision by CFPB to cancel the rule comes days after the Financial Technology Association, an industry lobby group representing non-bank fintech companies, wrote to Vought in his capacity as the White House's budget director. The lobby group asked the administration to withdraw the CFPB's rule, claiming it would be "harmful to financial institutions' efforts to detect and prevent fraud."

Original Submission