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.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: When the pandemic upended the world of higher education, Robin Pugh, a professor at City College of San Francisco, began to see one puzzling problem in her online courses: Not everyone was a real student. Of the 40 students enrolled in her popular introduction to real estate course, Pugh said she'd normally drop three to five from her roster who don't start the course or make contact with her at the start of the semester. But during the current spring semester, Pugh said that number more than doubled when she had to cut 11 students. It's a strange new reality that has left her baffled. "It's really unclear to me, and beyond the scope of my knowledge, how this is really happening," she said. "Is it organized crime? Is it something else? Everybody has lots of theories."

Some of the disengaged students in Pugh's courses are what administrators and cybersecurity experts say are "ghost students," and they've been a growing problem for community colleges, particularly since the shift to online instruction during the pandemic. These "ghost students" are artificially intelligent agents or bots that pose as real students in order to steal millions of dollars of financial aid that could otherwise go to actual humans. And as colleges grapple with the problem, Pugh and her colleagues have been tasked with a new and "frustrating" task of weeding out these bots and trying to decide who's a real person.

The process, she said, takes her focus off teaching the real students. "I am very intentional about having individualized interaction with all of my students as early as possible," Pugh said. "That included making phone calls to people, sending email messages, just a lot of reaching out individually to find out 'Are you just overwhelmed at work and haven't gotten around to starting the class yet? Or are you not a real person?'" Financial aid fraud is not new, but it's been on the rise in California's community colleges, Cal Matters reported, with scammers stealing more than $10 million in 2024, more than double the amount in 2023. Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, the president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges and a professor at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, said the bots have been enrolling in courses since around early 2021.

"It's been going on for quite some time," she said. "I think the reason that you're hearing more about it is that it's getting harder and harder to combat or to deal with." A spokesperson for the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office estimates that 0.21% of the system's financial aid was fraudulently disbursed. However, the office was unable to estimate the percentage of fraudulent attempts attributed to bots.

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration plans to revise a set of chip trade restrictions called the "AI diffusion" rule, which were scheduled to take effect on May 15. CNBC reports: The rule, which was proposed in the last days of the Biden administration, organizes countries into three different tiers, all of which have different restrictions on whether advanced AI chips like those made by Nvidia, AMD, and Intel can be shipped to the country without a license.

Chipmakers including Nvidia and AMD have been against the rule. AMD CEO Lisa Su told CNBC on Wednesday that the U.S. should strike a balance between restricting access to chips for national security and providing access, which will boost the American chip industry. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said earlier this week that being locked out of the Chinese AI market would be a "tremendous loss."

The Drug Enforcement Administration has quietly ended its body camera program barely four years after it began, ProPublica reports, citing an internal email. From the report: On April 2, DEA headquarters emailed employees announcing that the program had been terminated effective the day before. The DEA has not publicly announced the policy change, but by early April, links to pages about body camera policies on the DEA's website were broken.

The email said the agency made the change to be "consistent" with a Trump executive order rescinding the 2022 requirement that all federal law enforcement agents use body cameras. But at least two other federal law enforcement agencies within the Justice Department -- the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- are still requiring body cameras, according to their spokespeople.

The Department of Defense is revamping its "outdated" software procurement systems through a new Software Fast Track initiative. The SWFT program aims to reform how software is acquired, tested, and authorized with security as the primary focus. "Widespread use of open source software, with contributions from developers worldwide, presents a significant and ongoing challenge," DoD CIO Katie Arrington wrote in the initiative memo.

The DoD currently "lacks visibility into the origins and security of software code," hampering security assurance efforts. The initiative will establish verification procedures for software products and expedite authorization processes. Multiple requests for information are running until late May seeking industry input, including how to leverage AI for software authorization and define effective supply chain risk management requirements.

The push comes amid recent DoD security incidents, from malware campaigns targeting procurement systems to sensitive information leaks.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Spyware maker NSO Group will have to pay more than $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for a 2019 hacking campaign against more than 1,400 users. On Tuesday, after a five-year legal battle, a jury ruled that NSO Group must pay $167,256,000 in punitive damages and around $444,719 in compensatory damages. This is a huge legal win for WhatsApp, which had asked for more than $400,000 in compensatory damages, based on the time its employees had to dedicate to remediate the attacks, investigate them, and push fixes to patch the vulnerability abused by NSO Group, as well as unspecified punitive damages.

The trial, as well as the whole lawsuit, prompted a series of revelations, such as the location of the victims of the 2019 spyware campaign, as well as the names of some of NSO Group's customers. The ruling marks the end -- pending a potential appeal -- of a legal battle that started in more than five years ago, when WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against the spyware maker. The Meta-owned company accused NSO Group of accessing WhatsApp servers and exploiting an audio-calling vulnerability in the chat app to target around 1,400 people, including dissidents, human rights activists, and journalists. NSO Group's spokesperson Gil Lainer left the door open for an appeal. "We will carefully examine the verdict's details and pursue appropriate legal remedies, including further proceedings and an appeal," Lainer said in a statement.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) introduced the App Store Freedom Act [PDF] on Tuesday, legislation that would compel "large app store operators" with over 100 million US users to permit third-party app stores and allow them to be set as defaults. The bill directly challenges Apple's walled garden approach and Google's Play Store dominance by requiring both companies to allow developers to use alternative payment systems, bypassing the platforms' commission structures.

It would also mandate equal access to development tools and interfaces without discrimination, while giving users the ability to remove pre-installed apps. Violations would trigger FTC enforcement with penalties up to $1 million per infraction. The legislation mirrors recent European Union regulations that have already forced Apple to permit third-party app stores and allow users to change default apps.

Longtime Slashdot reader RoccamOccam shares a blog post from the Trifecta Tech Foundation, a nonprofit organization that creates secure, open source building blocks for infrastructure software. The foundation is also the developer behind Sudo-rs. From the report: Ubuntu 25.10 is set to adopt sudo-rs by default. Sudo-rs is a memory-safe reimplementation of the widely-used sudo utility, written in the Rust programming language. This move is part of a broader effort by Canonical to improve the resilience and maintainability of core system components. [...]

The decision to adopt sudo-rs is in line with Canonical's commitment to Carefully But Purposefully increase the resilience of critical system software, by adopting Rust. Rust is a programming language with strong memory safety guarantees that eliminates many of the vulnerabilities that have historically plagued traditional C-based software. Sudo-rs is part of the Trifecta Tech Foundation's Privilege Boundary initiative, which aims to handle privilege escalation with memory-safe alternatives.

President Trump's proposed 2026 budget seeks to cut nearly $500 million from CISA, accusing the agency of prioritizing censorship over cybersecurity and election protection. "The proposed cuts -- which are largely symbolic at this stage as they need to be approved by Congress -- are framed as a purge of the so-called 'censorship industrial complex,' a term the White House uses to describe CISA's work countering misinformation," reports The Register. From the report: In its fiscal 2024 budget request, the agency had asked [PDF] for a total of just over $3 billion to safeguard the nation's online security across both government and private sectors. The enacted budget that year was about $34 million lower than the previous year's. Now, a deep cut has been proposed [PDF], as the Trump administration decries the agency's past work tackling the spread of misinformation on the web by America's enemies, as well as the agency's efforts safeguarding election security. [...]

"The budget eliminates programs focused on so-called misinformation and propaganda as well as external engagement offices such as international affairs," it reads [PDF]. "These programs and offices were used as a hub in the censorship industrial complex to violate the First Amendment, target Americans for protected speech, and target the President. CISA was more focused on censorship than on protecting the nation's critical systems, and put them at risk due to poor management and inefficiency, as well as a focus on self-promotion."

Recent college graduates face the worst job market in decades, with unemployment reaching 5.8%, according to recently released New York Federal Reserve data. The "recent-grad gap" - the difference between unemployment rates of young college graduates versus the overall labor force - has hit its lowest point in four decades, indicating college graduates are facing unusual difficulties securing employment. (The New York Federal Reserve said labor conditions for recent college graduates have "deteriorated noticeably" in the past few months.)

Even graduates from elite MBA programs are struggling to find work, while law school applications have surged as young people seek shelter from the difficult job market. Economists are attributing the decline to three potential factors: incomplete recovery from pandemic disruptions, diminishing returns on college education, and possibly AI replacing entry-level positions.

"When you think about what generative AI can do, it's the kind of things that young college grads have done," said David Deming, a Harvard economist. "They read and synthesize information and data. They produce reports and presentations."

Further reading: Young Men in US Abandoning College Education at Record Rates.

Most people in the United States rely on federal science in their daily lives but don't realize it, a new nationwide poll of U.S. adults shows. NPR: The poll was conducted in early April by the Association of Science and Technology Centers, the association for science museums and other educational science centers in the U.S. The poll found that on a weekly basis more than 90% of people use weather forecasts, job market reports, food safety warnings and other information that is based on federal science.

But only 10% of respondents are concerned that cuts to federal support for science might impact their access to such information. The Trump administration has made deep budget and personnel cuts to federal agencies that collect weather data and do safety inspections at factories that make food and prescription drugs, among many science-related functions.

The association conducted the poll to understand current attitudes about science in the U.S. and inform how their member institutions, which include science museums, aquariums and zoos, can better serve the public.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The European Union launched a drive on Monday to attract scientists and researchers to Europe with offers of grants and new policy plans, after the Trump administration froze U.S. government funding linked to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. "A few years ago, no one would have imagined that one of the biggest democracies in the world would cancel research programs under the pretext that the word diversity was in this program," French President Emmanuel Macron said at the "Choose Europe for Science" event in Paris. "No one would have thought that one of the biggest democracies in the world would delete with a stroke the ability of one researcher or another to obtain visas," Macron said. "But here we are."

Taking the same stage at the Sorbonne University, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU's executive branch would set up a "super grant" program aimed at offering "a longer-term perspective to the very best" in the field. She said that 500 million euros ($566 million) will be put forward in 2025-2027 "to make Europe a magnet for researchers." It would be injected into the European Research Council, which already has a budget of more than 16 billion euros ($18 billion) for 2021-2027.

Von der Leyen said that the 27-nation EU intends "to enshrine freedom of scientific research into law" with a new legal act. As "the threats rise across the world, Europe will not compromise on its principles," she said. Macron said that the French government would also soon make new proposals to beef up investment in science and research. [...] While not mentioning the Trump administration by name, von der Leyen said that it was "a gigantic miscalculation" to undermine free and open research. "We can all agree that science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity, no political party," she said. "We believe that diversity is an asset of humanity and the lifeblood of science. It is one of the most valuable global assets and it must be protected." Macron said that science and research must not "be based on the diktats of the few."

Macron said that Europe "must become a refuge" for scientists and researchers, and he said to those who feel under threat elsewhere: "The message is simple. If you like freedom, come and help us to remain free, to do research here, to help us become better, to invest in our future."

Further reading:
75% of Scientists in Nature Poll Weigh Leaving US
NASA, Yale, and Stanford Scientists Consider 'Scientific Exile'

Donald Trump has announced plans to impose a 100% tariff on all foreign-made films, citing national security concerns and accusing other countries of luring U.S. film production abroad with incentives. PBS reports: "The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death," he wrote [on his Truth Social platform], complaining that other countries "are offering all sorts of incentives to draw" filmmakers and studios away from the U.S. "This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!"

It wasn't immediately clear how any such tariff on international productions could be implemented. It's common for both large and small films to include production in the U.S. and in other countries. Big-budget movies like the upcoming "Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning," for instance, are shot around the world.

Incentive programs for years have influenced where movies are shot, increasingly driving film production out of California and to other states and countries with favorable tax incentives, like Canada and the United Kingdom. Yet Trump's tariffs are designed to lead consumers toward American products. And in movie theaters, American-produced movies overwhelming dominate the domestic marketplace. "Other nations have been stealing the movie-making capabilities from the United States," Trump told reporters at the White House on Sunday night after returning from a weekend in Florida. "If they're not willing to make a movie inside the United States we should have a tariff on movies that come in."

An industrial plan China rolled out a decade ago that was criticized by the U.S. as protectionist has been highly successful in narrowing China's technological gap with the West, a new study finds. From a report: The study, commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is set to intensify the debate in Washington and elsewhere over how to counter China's use of state subsidies and other strategies to bolster its competitiveness. To placate President Trump during his first-term trade war with China, Beijing dropped mentions of the "Made in China 2025" plan, leader Xi Jinping's signature industrial strategy, from public discourse. But the policy stayed in place.

The study, released Monday, shows that enormous state support unleashed under the strategy has enabled China to eliminate or reduce its dependence on imports such as rail and power equipment, medical devices and renewable-energy products. In addition, Chinese companies have become more competitive globally, gaining market share from foreign companies in sectors including shipbuilding and robotics. The findings in the study, conducted by economic consulting firm Rhodium Group, highlight the stakes for the U.S. and other advanced economies as Beijing continues to advance Xi's blueprint to make China a leader in high-tech industries.

Apple on Monday lodged an appeal to challenge a U.S. judge's ruling that ordered the tech company to immediately open its lucrative App Store to more competition. From a report: Apple in a court notice it will ask the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the April 30 ruling, which found the company in contempt of an earlier order in a 2020 antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in her decision that Apple willfully failed to comply with a 2021 injunction designed to allow developers to more easily steer consumers to potentially cheaper non-Apple payment options. Gonzalez Rogers also referred Apple and one of its executives to federal prosecutors for a possible criminal contempt investigation.

The United Arab Emirates will introduce AI to the public school curriculum this year, as the Gulf country vies to become a regional powerhouse for AI development. From a report: The subject will be rolled out in the 2025-2026 academic year for kindergarten pupils through to 12th grade, state-run news agency WAM reported on Sunday. The course includes ethical awareness as well as foundational concepts and real-world applications, it said. The UAE joins a growing group of countries integrating AI into school education. Beijing announced a similar move to roll out AI courses to primary and secondary students in China last month.

New York City's subway system continues to operate largely on analog signal technology installed nearly a century ago, with 85% of the network still relying on mechanical equipment that requires constant human intervention. The outdated system causes approximately 4,000 train delays monthly and represents a technological time capsule in America's largest mass transit system.

Deep inside Brooklyn's Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, transit worker Dyanesha Pryor operates a hulking machine the size of a grand piano by manipulating 24 metal levers that control nearby trains. Each command requires a precise sequence of movements, punctuated by metallic clanking as levers slam into place. When Pryor needs to step away, even for a bathroom break, express service must be rerouted until she returns, forcing all trains onto local tracks.

The antiquated "fixed block" signaling divides tracks into approximately 1,000-foot sections. When a train occupies a block, it cuts off electrical current, providing only a general position rather than precise location data. This imprecision requires maintaining buffer zones between trains, significantly limiting capacity as ridership has grown. Maintenance challenges are also piling up, writes the New York Times. Hundreds of cloth-wrapped wires -- rather than modern rubber insulation -- fill back rooms and are prone to failure. When equipment breaks, replacements often must be custom-made in MTA workshops, as many components have been discontinued for decades.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has begun replacing this system with communications-based train control (C.B.T.C.), which uses computers and wireless technology to monitor trains' exact locations. Routes already converted to C.B.T.C., including the L line (2006) and 7 line (2018), consistently show the best on-time performance. However, the $25 million per-mile upgrade program faces uncertain funding after the Trump administration threatened to kill New York's congestion pricing plan, which would provide $3 billion for signal modernization.

A majority of Britons may now consider themselves neurodivergent, with conditions such as autism, dyslexia or ADHD, according to a leading psychologist from King's College London. Professor Francesca Happe, an expert in cognitive neuroscience, said reduced stigma around these conditions has prompted more people to seek medical diagnoses or self-diagnose.

"Once you take autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and all the other ways that you can developmentally be different from the typical, you actually don't get many typical people left," Happe told BBC Radio 4.

Autism diagnoses increased 787% between 1998 and 2018 in the UK, with estimated prevalence rising from one in 2,500 children 80 years ago to one in 36 today. Happe, who was appointed CBE in 2021 for her autism research, warned that behaviors previously considered "a bit of eccentricity" are now being labeled with medical terms.

Did you know there's an initiative to drive Open Source adoption both within the United Nations — and globally? Launched in March, it's the work of the Digital Technology Network (under the UN's chief executive board) which "works to advance open source technologies throughout UN agencies," promoting "collaboration and scalable solutions to support the UN's digital transformation." Fun fact: The first group to endorse the initiative's principles was the Open Source Initiative...

"The Open Source Initiative applauds the United Nations for recognizing the growing importance of Open Source in solving global challenges and building sustainable solutions, and we are honored to be the first to endorse the UN Open Source Principles," said Stefano Maffulli, executive director of OSI.
But that's just the beginining, writes It's FOSS News: As part of the UN Open Source Principles initiative, the UN has invited other organizations to support and officially endorse these principles. To collect responses, they are using CryptPad instead of Google Forms... If you don't know about CryptPad, it is a privacy-focused, open source online collaboration office suite that encrypts all of its content, doesn't log IP addresses, and supports a wide range of collaborative documents and tools for people to use.

While this happened back in late March, we thought it would be a good idea to let people know that a well-known global governing body like the UN was slowly moving towards integrating open source tech into their organization... I sincerely hope the UN continues its push away from proprietary Big Tech solutions in favor of more open, privacy-respecting alternatives, integrating more of their workflow with such tools.
16 groups have already endorsed the UN Open Source Principles (including the GNOME Foundation, the Linux Foundation, and the Eclipse Foundation).

Here's the eight UN Open Source Principles:

1. Open by default: Making Open Source the standard approach for projects
2. Contribute back: Encouraging active participation in the Open Source ecosystem
3. Secure by design: Making security a priority in all software projects
4. Foster inclusive participation and community building: Enabling and facilitating diverse and inclusive contributions
5. Design for reusability: Designing projects to be interoperable across various platforms and ecosystems
6. Provide documentation: Providing thorough documentation for end-users, integrators and developers
7. RISE (recognize, incentivize, support and empower): Empowering individuals and communities to actively participate
8. Sustain and scale: Supporting the development of solutions that meet the evolving needs of the UN system and beyond.

"Our future won't be handed to us," says the young narrator in a new ad from the nonprofit Code.org. "We will build it."

"But how can we when the education we need is still just an elective?" says another young voice...

The ad goes on to tout the power "to create with computer science and AI — the skills transforming every industry..." and ends by saying "This isn't radical. It's what education is supposed to do. Make computer science and AI a graduation requirement."

There's also a hard-hitting new web site, which urges people to sign a letter of support (already signed by executives from top tech companies including Microsoft, Dropbox, AMD, Meta, Blue Origin, and Palantir — and by Steve Ballmer, who is listed as the chairman of the L.A. Clippers basketball team).

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp says the letter ran in the New York Times, while this campaign will officially kick off Monday... Code.org teased the new Unlock8 campaign last month on social media as it celebrated a new Executive Order that makes K–12 AI literacy a U.S. priority, which it called a big win for CS & AI education, adding, "We've been building to this moment."

The move to make CS and AI a graduation requirement is a marked reversal of Code.org's early days, when it offered Congressional testimony on behalf of itself and tech-led Computing in the Core reassuring lawmakers that: "Making computer science courses 'count' would not require schools to offer computer science or students to study it; it would simply allow existing computer science courses to satisfy a requirement that already exists."