DOGE's tentacles spread DOGE accesses federal payroll system and punishes employees who objected Report: IT officials who fought DOGE access put on leave and under investigation. Jon Brodkin Mar 31, 2025 4:00 pm | 24 Elon Musk at a meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Jim Watson/AFP Elon Musk at a meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Jim Watson/AFP Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreElon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has gained access "to a payroll system that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees across dozens of agencies," despite "objections from senior IT staff who feared it could compromise highly sensitive government personnel information" and lead to cyberattacks, The New York Times reported today.The system at the Interior Department gives DOGE "visibility into sensitive employee information, such as Social Security numbers, and the ability to more easily hire and fire workers," the NYT wrote, citing people familiar with the matter. DOGE workers had been trying to get access to the Federal Personnel and Payroll System for about two weeks and succeeded over the weekend, the report said."The dispute came to a head on Saturday, as the DOGE workers obtained the access and then placed two of the IT officials who had resisted them on administrative leave and under investigation, the people said," according to the NYT report. The agency's CIO and CISO are reportedly under investigation for their "workplace behavior."When contacted by Ars today, the Interior Department said, "We are working to execute the President's directive to cut costs and make the government more efficient for the American people and have taken actions to implement President Trump's Executive Orders."DOGE's access to federal systems continues to grow despite court rulings that ordered the government to cut DOGE off from specific records, such as those held by the Social Security Administration, Treasury Department, Department of Education, and Office of Personnel Management.DOGE's new access at Interior allows "at least two DOGE employees, Stephanie Holmes and Katrine Trampe... to make changes to employment status, compensation level, health benefits and morewith no additional oversight or approval required," the NYT report said.Memo warned against DOGE accessThe NYT obtained a memo written by senior career employees who objected to DOGE's access. "Such elevated access to critical high-value asset systems is rare with respect to individual systems and no single DoI official presently has access to all HR, payroll and credentialing systems," the memo reportedly said.The memo "also warned that individuals with the elevated access to the system could become prime targets for cybersecurity attacks by terrorists, nations or other malicious actors," the NYT wrote. The memo reportedly said that such access "typically requires training and certification... Without formal qualifications, the Department may experience significant failure because of operator error."Musk told Fox News last week that DOGE is working on "reconciling all the government databases to eliminate the waste and fraud. These databases don't talk to each other... it's frankly painful homework, but it has to be done and it will greatly improve the efficiency of government systems."A federal appeals court ruled last week that Musk and DOGE don't have to turn over information related to their government cost-cutting operations, reversing a district court judge's previous decision. The case was brought by 14 states alleging that "President Trump has delegated virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress and without meaningful supervision of his activities."Jon BrodkinSenior IT ReporterJon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 24 Comments

A cave orb spiderblickwinkel/AlamySpiders known for elaborate circular webs have altered their spinning style in dark spaces to create apparent tripwires for walking prey.Those that make circular webs are known as orb-weavers, and most of them trap mosquitoes, beetles and other flying insects in sticky spiral frame webs sparsely attached to outdoor structures, like tree branches. But European cave orb spiders (Meta menardi) anchor their webs to cave walls using twice as many silk strands, which appear to vibrate when tripped by unsuspecting crawlers, says Thomas Hesselberg at the University of Oxford.

MindBy studying the brains of autistic girls, we now know the condition presents differently in them than in boys, suggesting that huge numbers of women have gone undiagnosed 31 March 2025 Daniel StolleIn China, it is known as the lonely disease. The Japanese term translates as intentionally shut. Across the world, there is a perception of autistic people as aloof, socially awkward and isolated, seeming to not only lack the kind of automatic social instinct that enables successful interaction, but also the desire to achieve it. There is also a perception that autistic people tend to be men.For decades, researchers myself included have thought of autism as a predominantly male condition. The more we studied boys and men, the clearer the picture of autism that emerged or so we thought.Today, we have come to realise that we were missing a huge piece of the puzzle all along. Not only have we been failing to recognise autism in vast numbers of women and girls preventing them from getting a diagnosis and support but we have now made the profound discovery that the female autistic brain works differently than the male one, especially when it comes to social motivations and behaviours. As a result, an entirely new picture of autism in girls is crystallising, forcing a radical rethink of everything we thought we knew.Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition, commonly diagnosed by the age of 5. Current standard diagnostic criteria refer to persistent difficulties with social communication and social interaction, as well as restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviours, activities or interests to the extent that these limit and impair everyday functioning.The World Health Organization estimates that 1 per cent of children worldwide are autistic, but

The seven founding members of Twenty25 Ventures. Madison McIlwain 2025-03-31T20:32:59Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Harvard MBAs are launching Twenty25 Ventures to invest in their classmates' companies.The fund will take contributions from the class of 2025, starting as small as $3,000.In the past five years, students at several top business schools have launched similar funds.Students in Harvard Business School's graduating class have made an executive decision fortunes are made through access, not exclusion.Seven members of HBS's class of 2025 have collectively raised close to $1 million for a class fund they're calling Twenty25 Ventures.The fund is built through contributions from the graduating class and will invest solely in startups founded by peers an investment structure that's taking off at business schools as students look to find footing in a traditionally rarefied funding ecosystem.The founders Yoav Anaki, Yuval Efrat, Lisa Yan, Insoo Chang, Lindsay Atkeson, Madison McIlwain, and Rob Muldowney began discussions during the 2023 to 2024 school year, and started fundraising in earnest in September. They're closing the fund this month and will begin deploying it in April over a five-year period.They also recruited a cadre of high-profile venture capitalists as advisors including Alex Kayyal, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bryan Kim partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Sara Choi, partner at Wing Venture Capital, and Sanjay Rao, managing partner at Tau Ventures. Several of its more than 10 advisors are alumni of HBS."It's no surprise that Harvard Business School people are doing business together, right? That is the genesis of the school," McIlwain told Business Insider. Twenty25's "thesis is if you just backed an index of HBS graduates in your class you would outperform the S&P."Harvard MBA graduates have raised close to $80 billion in venture capital funding in the past decade, more than any other business school, according to PitchBook. The school's top-funded companies include battery maker Northvolt, used car marketplace Kavak, and cloud security startup Lacework. It came in second after Stanford Graduate School of Business for the greatest number of unicorn founders, producing about 4.2 per 1,000 graduates, according to a LinkedIn post from Stanford professor Ilya Strebulaev.Twenty25 will invest in startups raising $500,000 or more in rounds led by institutional investors and select venture capital firms. The average investment check size will be between $10,000 and $50,000.Its goal is to give more HBS students a chance to tap into their exclusive network before they embark on their careers and build wealth."We wanted to lower the barrier to entry and give more of our classmates the chance to participate in venture investing," McIlwain said. "Generational wealth creation begins with access."The fund takes student checks as low as $3,000 and caps them at $100,000, or 10% of the fund.Students want to bet on each otherHarvard's fund is inspired by Stanford 2020, a venture capital fund launched by Stanford Graduate School of Business students in 2020 to invest in their classmates' startups. The fund garnered backing from nearly half of the 2020 class, raising over $1.5 million, and had a minimum of $3,000 for contributions.In a 2020 interview with TechCrunch, Stanford 2020 founder Steph Mui said the fund was born from the inaccessibility of angel investing through which high net-worth individuals put capital into early-stage ventures: "Only accredited people can do it, it feels very elite," she said."We started thinking more about if we can actually make this something that the whole class could participate in, or at least make it more accessible to more than just like these small pockets of people that do it behind closed doors," she said.She later told the outlet that the majority of people who contributed to Stanford 2020 were first-time check writers.PIN, which stands for Power in Numbers, is a platform that Mui spun out of Stanford 2020. It handles all of the administrative, legal, and tax work for investment clubs. Twenty25 is utilizing it because it makes it easier to handle smaller-scale checks than a standard platform for syndicates.In recent years, student-backed funds with similar structures have sprung up at other business schools.Students at University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business launched Courtyard Ventures in 2021, which has since deployed over $3 million across multiple funds, investing about $50,000 to $100,000 per startup, according to its website. Its general partners also invest about half of their performance fees into campus groups supporting startups.Last year, two members of Wharton's class of 2026 launched Center City Ventures. The fund collects contributions from students in the class of 2026 starting at $3,000, and will invest the money into startups founded across the university, according to its website.The past few years have been tough on MBA graduates including ones from the most elite institutions. White-collar hiring has taken a hit and cut the amount that companies are willing to pay post-MBA hires. The share of graduates from top schools like Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton with jobs three months after graduation has declined since 2021.But class funds at these schools make the case that students see real value in their network."This fund isn't just about startups," she said. "It's about inclusion, ownership, and community."Recommended video

Johnathan Taylor, former US Marine Corps scout sniper, rates sniping in 11 video games, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, for realism.Taylor discusses sniper tactics and equipment, such as the use of the ghillie suit and drones in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, and the camouflage techniques and night operations in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint. He looks at the plausibility of long-range sniper shots seen in PUBG: Battlegrounds, Sniper Elite 5, and Rust. Taylor also explains the realism of popular video game techniques, such as no-scoping and quick-scoping in Counter-Strike 2, and using a sniper rifle in close-range combat in Far Cry 5 and Valorant. He further looks into the accuracy of the equipment and strategies of snipers, such as the sniper's movements in Fortnite, the sniper's shooting position, and the look of the rifle's scope and reticle in Hitman 3 and the suppressed rifle in Apex Legends.Taylor spent eight years as a scout sniper in the US Marine Corps. He is president of the USMC Scout Sniper Association, an organization dedicated to providing veteran snipers with financial, medical, and psychological support.You can learn more about the USMC Scout Sniper Association here.USMC Scout Sniper Association's Instagram.Show more

A technique that may create a new field of medicine

By Passant Rabie Published March 31, 2025 | Comments (0) | The Dragon crew vehicle on the launch mount ahead of the Fram2 mission. C&J Images Four amateur astronauts are about to venture where no other crew has gone before, orbiting Earths polar region to better understand how humans fare in space. SpaceXs Fram2 mission is set for liftoff on Monday at 9:46 p.m. ET, launching from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will launch a private crew of astronauts on board a Dragon spacecraft, where they will spend three to five days admiring our planet from a unique polar orbit. SpaceX will stream the launch live on its website and X account, beginning around an hour before liftoff. Should the launch need to be postponed, a backup opportunity is available on Tuesday, April 1, depending on weather conditions. The Fram2 mission crew. Credit: SpaceX The crew of first-time astronauts includes Chun Wang of Malta, who founded the Bitcoin mining companies f2pool and stakefish, and is leading Fram2 and reportedly funding the mission as well; Jannicke Mikkelsen, a Norwegian cinematographer; Eric Philips, an Australian polar adventurer; and Rabea Rogge, a German robotics researcher. Although the space tourists have no prior spaceflight experience, they will go where no crew has gone before. The Dragon spacecraft will fly the astronauts over the planets polar regions at an altitude of around 265 to 280 miles (425 to 450 kilometers) above the ground, where they will fly a polar orbit at an inclination of about 60 to 90 degrees to the equator. If successful, Fram2 will go down in history as the first human crew to orbit Earths poles. During the mission, the astronauts will perform 22 research studies designed to help advance humanitys capabilities for long-duration space exploration and understanding of human health in space, according to SpaceX. The crew will attempt to take the first X-ray in space, perform exercise studies to maintain muscle and skeletal mass, and grow mushrooms in microgravity. The astronauts are also planning on studying the aurora-like phenomenon called STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), known for its hazy purple and green streaks across the sky. Once back on Earth, the crew will exit the Dragon spacecraft without additional medical and operational assistance, helping researchers characterize the ability of astronauts to perform unassisted functional tasks after short and long durations in space, SpaceX wrote.The Dragon crew vehicle being used for Fram2 previously flew SpaceXs Polaris Dawn mission, whichpulled off the first commercial spacewalk in history. SpaceX is not playing games with its private missions, which go way beyond your basic space tourism.Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like By Thomas Maxwell Published March 31, 2025 By Passant Rabie Published March 31, 2025 By Passant Rabie Published March 27, 2025 By Passant Rabie Published March 26, 2025 By Matthew Gault Published March 25, 2025 By Thomas Maxwell Published March 25, 2025

seUnited Airlines has been approved to begin operating flights with onboard Starlink satellite internet service. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the airline a certificate to operate the service on its fleet of Embraer 175 aircraft, with United expecting to install the SpaceX service on all 300 of the regional jets by the end of the year. Starlink will be a free service for UnitedPlus members, which is essentially all passengers as the loyalty program is free to join. United and Starlink announced last year that the airline would outfit its entire fleet of more than 1,000 aircraft with Starlink in the next few years. SpaceX has been on something of a tear recently, signing deals with numerous partners to offer Starlink beyond rural households, including partnering with T-Mobile and cruise ship operator Royal Caribbean. Beyond United, it has also signed deals to offer in-flight WiFi with Hawaiian and private jet operator JSX. The service is not expected to work well in densely populated areas as high-speed fiber is already available, and a singular Starlink satellite would likely not have enough bandwidth to serve many users simultaneously. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said Starlink would likely never be suitable in urban environments where high-speed internet access is already plentiful. Starlink is expected to reach more than $11 billion in revenue in 2025, buoyed by government and commercial contracts. It helps essentially subsidize the cost of SpaceX rocket launches, as the company can send up new Starlink satellites with each payload. Airlines are eager to offer the service as existing offerings from the likes of Gogo have been notoriously slow and unreliable, resulting in frequent complaints on social media from customers who pay $10-20 for a WiFi pass only to find the service does not work. Starlink can offer broadband-like speeds thanks to its constellation of satellites in low-earth orbit (LEO), though latency is high due to the inherent nature of sending requests to space and back.It is somewhat surprising that airlines are willing to eat the cost of providing Starlink service considering the business model of unbundling airline tickets and charging extra for each perk. It would be unsurprising to see airlines eventually throttle the service and upcharge for faster speeds. Being associated with Elon Musk, Starlink comes with some baggage. Where the service has been able to supply crucial internet access in locations such as Ukraine, countries in Asia and Europe have expressed some reservations about relying on internet service controlled by a close confidant of President Trump.Europe is developing its own Eutelsat alternative, while Taiwan has similarly been exploring other options out of concern regarding Musks ties to China for Tesla sales. In Canada, the province of Ontario recently canceled a $100 million Starlink contract in retaliation over U.S. tariffs. Musk may be able to secure lucrative government contracts domesticallyand the Treasury Secretary has pushed to use Starlink in the governments rural internet access programbut his newfound influence is a double-edged sword. Musks empire is exposed to geopolitical conflict being so close to President Trump.

Seriema House / TETRO ArquiteturaSave this picture! Luisa LageHousesBrumadinho, Minas Gerais, BrazilArchitects: TETRO ArquiteturaAreaArea of this architecture projectArea:350 mYearCompletion year of this architecture project Year: 2025 ManufacturersBrands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers: Ana Luisa Decoraes , Art Pedras, Bel Lar, Cinex, Lder, Mrmores LTDA, So Romo Lead Architects: Carlos Maia, Dbora Mendes e Igor Macedo More SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!Text description provided by the architects. Seriema House is located in a bucolic refuge on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte. To access it, you must cross a mountain range, a journey that marks a transition. By leaving behind the noise of the city, visitors enter a serene environment, fully integrated with nature.Save this picture!Save this picture!The site where the house was built reveals two distinct scenarios. On one side, a wide and open view of the mountains; on the other, a dense forest, full of trees. In this balance between expansive landscape and shaded refuge, the house fits in harmoniously. Seriemas, typical birds from the region, roam freely around the place and inspired the name of the residence.Save this picture!Save this picture!More than a home, the house was designed as a space for pause. A place to read, rest, contemplate the landscape and share moments with friends. The resident's desire was to create an environment for meeting and reading, where architecture would dialogue with poetry.Save this picture!In architecture, poetry is made with drawing, and the freer it is, the deeper it is. Here, the poetic line materializes in a winding wall, which divides the house into two worlds. On one side, the welcome space: bright, full of sounds, music and movement, with an open view of the mountains. On the other, the space for retreat: silent, introspective, immersed in the shadows of the forest, dedicated to rest and reading.Save this picture!Save this picture!The materiality reinforces this connection with the landscape. The winding wall, covered in black stones, contrasts with the white stoned floor. The house is both a shelter and a living experience. A single material, the stones, defines its essence. Seriema House is time, river, mountain, cave. It is, above all, poetry.Save this picture!Project gallerySee allShow lessAbout this officeTETRO ArquiteturaOfficePublished on March 31, 2025Cite: "Seriema House / TETRO Arquitetura" [Casa Seriema / TETRO Arquitetura] 31 Mar 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028352/seriema-house-tetro-arquitetura&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Early warning systems for natural disasters have undoubtedly saved countless lives. Detectors that monitor signs of impending earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes, among others, provide crucial hours sometimes days for us to take evasive action.What if we could do the same thing for heart attacks? A group of French researchers working with some U.S. colleagues, have designed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool that could help do just that, they report in the European Heart Journal.Early Detection for Heart AttacksCardiac events contribute to over 5 million deaths a year. They often strike like a bolt from the blue sometimes killing people without warning signs and no known history of heart disease. To look for hidden patterns that might provide potential heart attack victims a heads up, the researchers first investigated electrocardiograms data from over 240,000 patients. They essentially looked at several million hours of heartbeats."By analyzing their electrical signal for 24 hours, we realized that we could identify the subjects susceptible of developing a serious heart arrhythmia within the next two weeks, Laurent Fiorina, an author of the study and researcher at the Paris Cardiovascular Research Centre (PARCC), said in a press release. If left untreated, this type of arrhythmia can progress towards a fatal cardiac arrest.They probed the data with AI tools and identified weak signals that could precede arrhythmia. Based on that information, the research team developed an AI algorithm that could identify people at risk of any arrhythmia serious enough to trigger cardiac arrest. They based their tool on an artificial neural network that simulates how the brain talks to the heart.Read More: Repairing the Damage After a Heart AttackPotentially Life-Saving PredictionsThe tool could predict such events within two weeks in over 70 percent of cases. The monitoring method could potentially change how heart disease is detected and treated.Until now we'd been trying to identify patients at risk over the medium and long term, but were incapable of predicting what could happen in the minutes, hours or days that precede a cardiac arrest, Eloi Marijon, research director at PARCC and an author of the study, said in a press release. Now, thanks to artificial intelligence, we can predict these events in the very short term and potentially take action before it's too late."The team will continue to refine the tool, then test it in clinical trials to ensure its accuracy. If it pasts those tests, well have the equivalent of a warning siren that tells us to seek help to prevent a heart attack.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.