The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced an immediate review of new clinical trials that involve sending American citizens’ living cells to China and other hostile countries for genetic engineering and subsequent infusion back into U.S. patients – sometimes without their knowledge or consent.

Edit 1: The Orange Motherfucker Did it.

OpenAI Public Sector LLC, San Francisco, California, has been awarded a fixed amount, prototype, other transaction agreement (HQ0883-25-9-0012) with a value of $200,000,000. Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains. The work will be primarily performed in the National Capital Region with an estimated completion date of July 2026. Fiscal 2025 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $1,999,998 are being obligated at time of award. Office of the Secretary of Defense Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, Washington D.C., is the contracting activity.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/28876928

For me i’d say vocaloid when i was younger. No clue about now, maybe some russian songs like igorek.

In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.

The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: https://matrix.to/#%2F%21sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn%3Amatrix.org%2F%24XpQe-vmtB7j0Uy1TPCvMVCSCW63Xxw_jwy3fflw7EMQ%3Fvia=matrix.org&via=element.io

https://paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cooked is fascinatingly incorrect

Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.

fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.

Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.

nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.

Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundation

Element has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)

At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.

No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.

Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.

No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).

Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.

wow.

the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is

so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing

this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.

In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:

Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable person

somewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth

"Freedom Phone" 2.0 much? 🧐

Right fellas ? owo

archive Link: https://archive.is/EGO0W

If i was a neighbor of Germany i would get very worried. Germany now openly embraces attack wars against other countries. In combination with the plans to massively arm up this government and a potential future government with AfD in the coalition will probably be interested in invading other countries again.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/936863

[In Hague] the march estimated the peaceful crowd at more than 150,000 people. Local media put the numbers closer to 100,000. > > In neighboring Belgium, around 75,000 people, many of them also clad in red, hit the streets in the capital Brussels, police said. Several rallies have been held to draw attention to Israel’s actions in Gaza, but Sunday’s was the biggest rally so far. > > According to another source: > >

• In Brussels, where protesters were also calling for action from the EU, turnout was estimated at 110,000 by organisers and 75,000 by police.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/31446248

Donald Trump's administration on Saturday was accused of promoting the Russian flag, on Flag Day.

The Department of Defense over the weekend wished social media a "Happy Flag Day!"

"Let us honor the emblem of our nation and the stars and stripes that unite us all. As we display our nations flag and reflect on the values it represents, let’s celebrate the freedom, courage and resilience that makes our country great," the department stated Saturday.

The image attached to the post included two small images that appear to represent the Russian flag.

007 First Light is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026.  

Earn the Number. Play as James Bond, a young, resourceful, and sometimes reckless new recruit, and discover an origin story for the first time. This all-new game experience from IO Interactive is coming in 2026!  

Video is linked. SFW, but keep your volume down.

Whistleblower Disclosure.

Today, Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Acting Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella requesting information and documents in Microsoft’s possession regarding reports that individuals associated with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attempted to remove sensitive information from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), raising serious concerns of technology-related misconduct.

“According to recent reporting by the National Public Radio (NPR) and whistleblower disclosures obtained by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, individuals associated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have attempted to use high-level systems access to remove sensitive information—quite possibly including corporate secrets and details of union activities. The whistleblower has also explained how the responsible individuals have attempted to conceal their activities, obstruct oversight, and shield themselves from accountability, including by deleting system logs and opening back doors into the NLRB case management system to send massive amounts of data outside of the agency. Potentially in connection with these efforts, a DOGE engineer reportedly wrote bespoke code that appears designed to remove data from NLRB and saved that code to a repository on Microsoft’s GitHub platform. Given Microsoft’s ownership of GitHub, I request information and documents in Microsoft’s possession regarding this incident,” wrote Acting Ranking Member Lynch.

Recent reporting by NPR disclosed how a DOGE engineer saved code to a GitHub repository titled “NxGenBdoorExtract,” suggesting that the code could have created a backdoor used to extract files from the NLRB’s internal case management system.

The exfiltration of large swaths of sensitive information through backdoor channels raises significant concerns about the legality of DOGE’s actions and its threat to independent federal agencies, as well as Elon Musk’s personal conflicts of interest with this case.

“Notably, the now-former de facto leader of DOGE, Elon Musk, owns and operates companies that have frequently run afoul of NLRB rules. For example, NLRB has taken action against Mr. Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla for its attempts to discourage unionizing efforts, part of Mr. Musk’s ongoing anti-union actions. Mr. Musk’s social media company, X, also faced a complaint from NLRB after an employee was terminated for posting a tweet challenging the company’s return-to-office mandate. These cases raise concerns about Mr. Musk or anyone associated with DOGE having access to NLRB data, as any such access poses a serious conflict of interest,” concluded Rep. Lynch.