DOD: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon has halted a decade-old Microsoft program that has allowed Chinese coders, remotely supervised by U.S. contractors, to work on sensitive DOD cloud systems. In a digital video address to the public posted yesterday, the secretary said DOD was made aware of the "digital escorts" program last month and that the program has exposed the Defense Department to unacceptable risk -- despite being designed to comply with government contracting rules.

"If you're thinking 'America first,' and common sense, this doesn't pass either of those tests," Hegseth said, adding that he initiated an immediate review of the program upon learning of it. "I want to report our initial findings. ... The use of Chinese nationals to service Department of Defense cloud environments? It's over," he said. Additionally, Hegseth said DOD has issued a formal letter of concern to Microsoft, documenting a breach of trust, and that DOD is requiring a third-party audit of the digital escorts program to pore over the code and submissions made by Chinese nationals. The audit will be free of charge to U.S. taxpayers, he said.

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Microsoft has found no link between the August 2025 KB5063878 security update and customer reports of failure and data corruption issues affecting solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs). From a report: Redmond first told BleepingComputer last week that it is aware of users reporting SSD failures after installing this month's Windows 11 24H2 security update. In a subsequent service alert seen by BleepingComputer, Redmond said that it was unable to reproduce the issue on up-to-date systems and began collecting user reports with additional details from those affected.

"After thorough investigation, Microsoft has found no connection between the August 2025 Windows security update and the types of hard drive failures reported on social media," Microsoft said in an update to the service alert this week. "As always, we continue to monitor feedback after the release of every Windows update, and will investigate any future reports."

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De fotoredactie van NRC selecteert elke week de indrukwekkendste, mooiste en beste nieuwsfoto’s die binnenkomen op de redactie. In de week dat duizenden mensen in de Indonesische hoofdstad Jakarta demonstreerden tegen hoge toelagen voor parlementsleden, vielen er meerdere doden bij een grote aanval op de Oekraïense hoofdstad Kyiv, vond in Spanje het jaarlijkse stierenrennen én het jaarlijkse tomatengevecht plaats en werd in een Franse dierentuin een albino gordeldierbaby gepresenteerd aan de buitenwereld.

BertvB posted a photo:

Conservative antipathy toward the institution began long ago: with the bones of Bible giants.

Did you hear the one about the Smithsonian hiding the bones of Bible giants in the basement? No? Well, Missouri Republican Representative Eric Burlinson did, and he recently said he wants to develop a "strategy" to use Congress's investigative power to get to the bottom of the mystery. "I do believe [giants] were real," Burlinson told a Blaze TV program in June, shortly before he gave a speech at NephCon 2025, a gathering of people who are hunting the remains of the Nephilim, or the giants from the Book of Genesis. [...]

Powell wanted to disprove the popular notion that Native Americans erected these mounds, on the grounds that they were too stupid and lazy to create these features -- something that nineteenth-century scholars assumed only white people or Bible giants could do. [...]

Among the most popular of these were the Christian DVDs and later podcasts produced by Steve Quayle and his Nephilim-hunting partner, Timothy Alberino. Quayle, an archconservative, blamed Bible giants for "teaching" men to be gay. He and Alberino were regulars on the right-wing podcast circuit in the 2010s, often appearing with figures like Alex Jones and Jim Bakker so Quayle could hawk their merch, attack Democratic politicians as demonic, and advocate for a targeted genocide of Nephilim-controlled liberals.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

There’s nothing like nothing, Julie Blackmon

Cease upon the midnight, Sebastian B (@tabacstar_)

Look through any window, Paloma Salgado Díaz

Orange you glad, George Townley

End of verified end user status means South Korean memory vendors will need licenses to bring restricted chipmaking tech into Chinese fabs

The US government already has a lot to say about what products chipmakers can and can't sell in China. This week the Commerce Department moved to make it harder for South Korean memory vendors Samsung and SK Hynix to continue manufacturing in the region.…