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RFC 8594: The Sunset HTTP Header Field

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) E. Wilde Request for Comments: 8594 May 2019 Category: Informational ISSN: 2070-1721 The Sunset HTTP Header Field Abstract This specification defines the Sunset HTTP response header field, which indicates that a URI is likely to become unresponsive at a specified point in the future. It also defines a sunset link relation type that allows linking to resources providing information about an upcoming resource or service sunset. Status of This Memo This docume

At Least 2 People Died of ‘Flesh-Eating’ Bacteria After Eating Tainted Oysters

“Flesh-eating” bacteria are continuing to claim lives this summer. Louisiana health officials reported this week that two more people have died from Vibrio infections this month, potentially caused by eating tainted oysters. The Louisiana Department of Health announced the latest deaths during a meeting of the Louisiana Oyster Task Force held Tuesday. Both deaths are linked to oysters harvested in the state, but the oysters were eaten at separate restaurants in Louisiana and Florida. Louisiana

TransUnion suffers data breach impacting over 4.4 million people

Consumer credit reporting giant TransUnion warns it suffered a data breach exposing the personal information of over 4.4 million people in the United States. TransUnion is one of the three major credit bureaus in the United States, alongside Equifax and Experian. It operates in 30 countries, employs 13,000 staff, and has an annual revenue of $3 billion. It collects and maintains credit information on over 1 billion consumers worldwide, with approximately 200 million of those based in the U.S.

We rebuilt Cloud Life's infrastructure delivery with System Initiative

By Ryan Ryke, CEO, Cloud Life ‍ This is the story of how we eliminated static configuration files from our infrastructure workflows at Cloud Life, and, in the process, cut delivery times by more than half, improved reliability, and made our engineers’ work feel much smoother and more manageable. Before this project, we’d been working with the same model that most modern infrastructure teams use: Terraform scripts, config repos, PR reviews, CI pipelines. We’d optimized what we could, but the w

We Rebuilt Cloud Life's Infrastructure Delivery with System Initiative

By Ryan Ryke, CEO, Cloud Life ‍ This is the story of how we eliminated static configuration files from our infrastructure workflows at Cloud Life, and, in the process, cut delivery times by more than half, improved reliability, and made our engineers’ work feel much smoother and more manageable. Before this project, we’d been working with the same model that most modern infrastructure teams use: Terraform scripts, config repos, PR reviews, CI pipelines. We’d optimized what we could, but the w

Using information theory to solve Mastermind

How you've just played optimal Mastermind Mastermind is a game all about information. The Code Master selects one of \( 6^4 = 1\,296 \) secret codes. Each incorrect guess gives us information by eliminating some of these; the more codes that are ruled out, the more information that guess has provided. Let's quantify this insight! Suppose a guess gets some response that reduces the number of possible keys from some number \(n\) to a smaller \(n'<n\). The convention in information theory, a branc

Healthcare Services Group data breach impacts 624,000 people

The Healthcare Services Group (HSGI) is alerting more than 600,000 individuals that their personal information was exposed in a security breach last year. The healthcare services provider stated that it detected unauthorized access to its network on October 7, 2024, and subsequently discovered that the intrusion had begun on September 27. The investigation that followed revealed that the intruders had exfiltrated data from the systems they had accessed. “The investigation determined that an u

The Top Diseases We Choose to Stay Ignorant About, According to Scientists

The old adage “ignorance is bliss” feels especially fitting when it comes to healthcare. In fact, new research reveals that one in three people avoids—or is likely to avoid—medical information. In a study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine earlier this month, researchers investigated data from 92 studies involving 564,497 participants from 25 countries. Despite the fact that successful treatment often depends on early detection, their results indicate that many people are reluctant

Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded. Now they want to silence him

Image: Empire Wind Oil-funded groups are engaging in strategic harassment to stop scientists from revealing the nature of their politically-linked disinformation networks – in what should be a surprise to nobody. A new report came out last week from the Climate & Development Lab (CDL) at Brown University, titled “Legal Entanglements: Mapping Connections of Anti-Offshore Wind Groups and their Lawyers in the Eastern United States.” The study focuses on several examples of law firms with connect

Infinite Threads

Textiles account for 5% of landfill space—and clothing made with polyester can take up to 200 years to decompose. Massachusetts tackled the problem by banning disposal of clothing and fabrics in 2022. And Infinite Threads, a spinoff of the Undergraduate Association Sustainability Committee, is addressing it by collecting lightly used clothing from the MIT community and selling it for $2 to $6 per item at popup sales held several times each semester. “Our goal is simple: We want to keep clothing

Whistleblower claims DOGE uploaded Social Security data to unsecure cloud server

(Wesley Lapointe for The Washington Post via Getty Images) The Social Security Administration’s (SSA) chief data officer, Charles Borges, has filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uploaded a copy of a key Social Security database to an unsecured cloud environment in June, the New York Times reported. This may have exposed the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans. The complaint alleges that under the authority

DOGE uploaded live copy of Social Security database to ‘vulnerable’ cloud server, says whistleblower

A top Social Security Administration official turned whistleblower says members of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uploaded hundreds of millions of Social Security records to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of most Americans at risk of compromise. Charles Borges, the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, said in a newly released whistleblower complaint published Tuesday that other top agency officials signed off on

How to stop AI agents going rogue

How to stop AI agents going rogue 1 hour ago Share Save Sean McManus Technology Reporter Share Save Getty Images Anthropic tested a range of leading AI models for potential risky behaviour Disturbing results emerged earlier this year, when AI developer Anthropic tested leading AI models to see if they engaged in risky behaviour when using sensitive information. Anthropic's own AI, Claude, was among those tested. When given access to an email account it discovered that a company executive was

Senator castigates federal judiciary for ignoring “basic cybersecurity”

US Senator Ron Wyden accused the federal judiciary of “negligence and incompetence” following a recent hack, reportedly by hackers with ties to the Russian government, that exposed confidential court documents. The breach of the judiciary’s electronic case filing system first came to light in a report by Politico three weeks ago, which went on to say that the vulnerabilities exploited in the hack were known since 2020. The New York Times, citing people familiar with the intrusion, said that Rus

A German ISP changed their DNS to block my website

My website: Publishing Germany's secret internet blocklist In Germany, we have the Clearingstelle Urheberrecht im Internet (CUII) - literally 'Copyright Clearinghouse for the Internet', a private organization that decides what websites to block, corporate interests rewriting our free internet. No judges, no transparency, just a bunch of ISPs and major copyright holders deciding what your eyes can see. I decided to create a website, cuiiliste.de, to find blocked domains, as the CUII refuses to

How to Fix Your Context

Mitigating & Avoiding Context Failures Following up on our earlier post, “How Long Contexts Fail”, let’s run through the ways we can mitigate or avoid these failures entirely. But before we do, let’s briefly recap some of the ways long contexts can fail: Context Poisoning: When a hallucination or other error makes it into the context, where it is repeatedly referenced. When a hallucination or other error makes it into the context, where it is repeatedly referenced. Context Distraction: When

A German ISP tampered with their DNS – specifically to sabotage my website

My website: Publishing Germany's secret internet blocklist In Germany, we have the Clearingstelle Urheberrecht im Internet (CUII) - literally 'Copyright Clearinghouse for the Internet', a private organization that decides what websites to block, corporate interests rewriting our free internet. No judges, no transparency, just a bunch of ISPs and major copyright holders deciding what your eyes can see. I decided to create a website, cuiiliste.de, to find blocked domains, as the CUII refuses to

Two men fell gravely ill last year; their infections link to deaths in the ’80s

Four men in Georgia, all living in the same county, mysteriously became infected with a potentially deadly soil bacterium that's normally found in the tropics and subtropics, particularly Southeast Asia and northern Australia. The four cases were tied together not just by their shared location but also by the bacterial strain; whole genome sequencing showed the bacteria causing all four infections were highly related, suggesting a shared source of their infections. But this bacterium doesn't te

Top Secret: Automatically filter sensitive information

We’ve written about how to prevent logging sensitive information when making network requests, but that approach only works if you’re dealing with parameters. What happens when you’re dealing with free text? Filtering the entire string may not be an option if an external API needs to process the value. Think chatbots or LLMs. You could use a regex to filter sensitive information (such as credit card numbers or emails), but that won’t capture everything, since not all sensitive information can

Apple drags ex-Apple Watch engineer to court over Oppo trade secret leak

Every now and then, we hear about Apple going after ex-employees who allegedly try to take trade secrets with them when they get hired by the competition. That’s the case with Chen Shi, a former Sensor System Architect for the Apple Watch team. Here are the details. According to Apple’s claim, Shi worked at the company from January 2020 until a couple of months ago, when he left to go work for Oppo, a Chinese company that also makes phones and wearables, like the Oppo Watch. Apple says that in

DaVita says ransomware gang stole data of nearly 2.7 million people

Kidney dialysis firm DaVita has confirmed that a ransomware gang that breached its network stole the personal and health information of nearly 2.7 million individuals. DaVita serves over 265,400 patients across 3,113 outpatient dialysis centers, 2,660 in the United States, and 453 centers in 13 other countries worldwide. The company reported revenues of over $12 billion in 2024 and of $3.3 billion for the second quarter of 2025. In April, the healthcare provider revealed in a filing with the U

Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10 billion

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2024. Meta has agreed to spend more than $10 billion on Google cloud services, according to two people familiar with the matter. The agreement spans six years, said the people, who asked not to be named because the terms are confidential. The deal was reported earlier by The Information. Google is aiming to land big cloud contracts as it chases lar

WhatsApp is working on a voicemail-like feature

Heads up if you tend to dodge, ignore, or genuinely miss calls on WhatsApp: the app is working on a voicemail-like feature. Here’s how it will work. According to WABetaInfo (via Tecnoblog), the feature was introduced in the latest Android beta, but not yet on iOS. They explain that if a call goes unanswered, a new “Record voice message” button pops up at the bottom of the screen, alongside the Call again and Cancel options. This lets the user quickly record a voice message, rather than either

Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2024. Meta has agreed to spend more than $10 billion on Google cloud services, according to two people familiar with the matter. The agreement spans six years, said the people, who asked not to be named because the terms are confidential. The deal was reported earlier by The Information. Google is aiming to land big cloud contracts as it chases lar

Missouri Man Dies After Water Skiing Leads to Brain-Eating Amoeba Infection

A Missouri man’s lake outing has ended in tragedy. Local health officials announced this week that a resident died from a rare but nearly always fatal brain amoeba infection likely caught while water skiing. The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services disclosed the resident’s death Wednesday, following its initial report of the case last week (though few details about the case were released, several outlets reported the resident was a man). Officials are still investigating the source

To Infinity but Not Beyond

Previously on meyerweb, I explored ways to do strange things with the infinity keyword in CSS calculation functions. There were some great comments on that post, by the way; you should definitely go give them a read. Anyway, in this post, I’ll be doing the same thing, but with different properties! When last we met, I’d just finished up messing with font sizes and line heights, and that made me think about other text properties that accept lengths, like those that indent text or increase the sp

Project to formalise a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem in the Lean theorem prover

Fermat’s Last Theorem An ongoing multi-author open source project to formalise a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem in the Lean theorem prover. Information about the project The project is currently being led by Kevin Buzzard. It is funded by grant EP/Y022904/1, awarded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The project is hosted at Imperial College London. Kevin would like to extend many many thanks to both of these institutions for their ongoing support of this nonstand

Do Large Language Models Dream of AI Agents?

During sleep, the human brain sorts through different memories, consolidating important ones while discarding those that don’t matter. What if AI could do the same? Bilt, a company that offers local shopping and restaurant deals to renters, recently deployed several million agents with the hopes of doing just that. Bilt uses technology from a startup called Letta that allows agents to learn from previous conversations and share memories with one another. Using a process called “sleeptime compu

Magic Cue on Pixel 10: What is it and how will it make your life simpler?

TL;DR With the Pixel 10 series, Google has revealed a new AI feature called “Magic Cue.” Magic Cue watches your screen and offers suggestions by pulling relevant information from multiple apps. It currently supports a host of Google apps, with support for third-party apps promised to arrive soon. Despite nearly a decade of selling its Pixel phones (and several years with the Nexus devices before that), Google still strongly relies on unique software experiences to make its phones more compell

NY Business Council discloses data breach affecting 47,000 people

The Business Council of New York State (BCNYS) has revealed that attackers who breached its network in February stole the personal, financial, and health information of over 47,000 individuals. As the state's largest statewide employer association, BCNYS represents over 3,000 member organizations, including chambers of commerce, professional and trade associations, and other local and regional business organizations, as well as some of the largest corporations worldwide, which employ more than