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Google added 25M paid subscriptions in Q1, reaching 350M total, as YouTube and Google One grow.

Surprise! Fusion startup Zap Energy says it will be developing fission reactors alongside its fusion devices.

Doom is coming to the MCU! The fan favorite villain Doctor Doom will be making his long awaited arrival when Avengers: Doomsday premieres this December. But with the expansive scope of the Multiverse Saga, some fans may need a refresher before going into this epic crossover. Fortunately, Dan Casey is here to break down all the essential storylines since Avengers: Endgame you need to remember on today’s Nerdist video!

The post Every Marvel Story to Revisit Before Avengers: Doomsday appeared first on Nerdist.

Increasingly desperate negotiations. A plea from the president himself. An eleventh-hour sleight of hand, followed by a surprise vote in the dead of night. 

Over the past month, chaos has unfolded on Capitol Hill as House Republicans fracture over a central question: Should the federal government need a warrant to spy on US citizens?

According to most interpretations of the Fourth Amendment, the answer is a simple yes. But for nearly two decades, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has created a nifty loophole. The law authorizes warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals abroad, but in practice, it allows intelligence agencies to scoop up the electronic communications of US citizens, too. Agents can then perform “backdoor searches” on records that would normally require a warrant to obtain—querying databases for Americans’ phone calls, text messages, and emails.

Privacy hawks and civil libertarians have long warned that the program undermines Americans’ constitutional right to privacy. Yet when Congress last reauthorized the program in 2024, Democrats were largely in favor. Joe Biden signed it into law with minor reforms; Donald Trump urged Republicans to “KILL” it.

But much has changed in the past two years, and FISA reform advocates say the 2024 changes have failed to stymie abuses. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has collided with an unprecedented push by the Trump administration to expand government spy powers. ICE is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new surveillance technology while the FBI buys up Americans’ cell phone location data from commercial brokers. Shortly after returning to office, Trump fired all three Democrats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent body tasked with advising the executive branch and reviewing programs like Section 702. And in May, the FBI shuttered an internal office that audits for Section 702 abuses.

Now that Trump stands to benefit from the spy program himself, he’s demanding that Republicans pass a “clean” reauthorization, pushing a bill through without any amendments. The law is set to expire Thursday, and despite the bill clearing a procedural vote in the House today, deep divisions remain in the Republican Party. GOP privacy hardliners have insisted that any reauthorization of Section 702 must include a warrant requirement for government searches of Americans’ communications.

Meanwhile, all but four House Democrats are opposing a clean reauthorization, as the abuses of Trump’s second term have crystallized the dangers of handing warrantless surveillance powers to an aspiring authoritarian. Administration officials have publicly labeled anti-ICE protesters “domestic terrorists,” ICE agents have collected biometric data from activists, and Trump has used the Justice Department to go after his political enemies.

Congressional staffers familiar with the negotiations told me that the growing bipartisan opposition to Section 702 marks a significant opportunity to reform America’s outdated surveillance laws. “It’s very clear that the presidency being in a different hand has totally changed the dynamic,” said one Democratic staffer, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “While AI is part of that new opportunity, I really think it’s because people are cognizant of how dangerous it is to have a federal government with someone like Stephen Miller actively going around talking about domestic terrorists.”

Earlier this month, the Lever and the American Prospect reported that the Democratic-led Congressional Black Caucus planned to support a clean reauthorization of the program, despite its use in federal surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists in 2020. A few days later, facing media scrutiny, the caucus came out against a clean reauthorization and called for a judicial warrant requirement and a ban on backdoor searches.

“As it stands, the Trump Administration has already committed serious violations that undermine democratic norms. We cannot allow federal law enforcement officers to have unfettered and unregulated access to information to persecute political opponents or intimidate American citizens,” CBC members wrote in a statement. 

In fact, FBI searches of US citizens’ data under Section 702 rose 35 percent last year to more than 7,000 queries, according to a letter the agency sent to Congress in March. An April report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board found that the FBI also conducted 839 “sensitive” searches in 2025—queries related to journalists, elected officials, political candidates, and religious groups—up more than 200 percent from 2024.

Critics say that those findings underscore that the 2024 reforms—which included a requirement that the deputy director of the FBI approve “sensitive” searches—did not go far enough.

“Until two months ago, the Deputy Director was Dan Bongino, a longtime conspiracy theorist who has frequently called for baseless investigations of his political opponents. His replacement, Andrew Bailey, is a highly partisan election denier who recently directed a raid on a Georgia election office to justify Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter on April 13.

Wyden also deposited a classified Dear Colleague letter with House Security, detailing a secret legal interpretation of Section 702 that “directly affects the privacy rights of Americans.” That letter has made a splash in Washington, DC, two staffers told me, even though it’s largely been absent from mainstream media coverage. In other words, the public doesn’t know the full scope of the spy law that Congress is battling over. 

“I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized,” Wyden said in a Senate floor speech last month. “In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information.”

Some reporting has incorrectly conflated Wyden’s warning with a classified March 17 opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That ruling found compliance issues with how intelligence agencies used “filtering tools” to query Section 702 data, winnowing down the results without specifically searching for a target, and therefore evading oversight. Wyden’s warning is about a different classified opinion, sources told me.

“Senator Wyden does not cry wolf,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director for liberty and national security at the Brennan Center for Justice. “In the past, when he has said that there’s a secret legal interpretation that will shock Americans, he has been right.” Goitein pointed to Edward Snowden’s leaks of classified documents revealing a massive, indiscriminate global surveillance operation by the National Security Agency and its allies. Two years before the leaks, Wyden had warned the public of a secret intelligence court interpretation of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

“Through the Snowden disclosure, we found out what that was. And that was that the NSA was collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk, and it was doing it based on a legal interpretation that the phone records of every American in the country were relevant to specific foreign intelligence investigations,” said Goitein. “That’s not a plausible interpretation of the law.”

ORNL says portable detector kit can separate real GPS signals from fake ones even at equal strength

GPS spoofing, which sends fake satellite-like signals, and GPS jamming, which drowns receivers in noise, are increasingly serious problems. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have created what they say is the most effective system yet for detecting GPS interference, which could help blunt such attacks.…

The ongoing effort to convert CBS News into a pro-Trump, pro-MAGA enterprise is proving to be a spectacular ratings failure for the network. Status reported Tuesday that “CBS Evening News” with anchor Tony Dokoupil is now averaging 3.7 million viewers, while the network’s target is 4 million viewers. In fact, the Dokoupil era led to the second-lowest ratings in April that has occurred this…

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A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | GOP uses shooting to shill for Trump’s gaudy ballroom…

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Biological changes and loneliness aren’t the only problems Peter Parker will have to deal with in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Since no one in the world, including Happy Hogan, remembers him after No Way Home, Peter no longer has access to Stark Industries technology. That means no nano suit or cutting edge weaponry. Fortunately, as the film’s screenplay shows, he won’t be completely out of luck. He knows how to build his own useful superhero tools.

Marvel Studios/Sony Pictures

The first three annotated pages of the Spider-Man: Brand New Day script shared by Entertainment Weekly reveal just how important Peter Parker’s mysterious physical change will be to the film’s plot. That’s a matter for biologists, though. What about the concerns of engineers on both Earth-616 and our own? The screenplay also covers that. It reveals how Spider-Man will get by without the late Tony Stark’s tech. He’ll use his own modified devices to help with his suit, crimefighting, and his loneliness.

“No more Stark money or gadgets,” reads a handwritten note on page one of the script. “All of his tech needs to have been made by Peter.” That homemade tech will include E.V., which the script says is Peter’s AI Assistant. While the script shows the program running numbers after he asks it to “check the calibration” on his “targeting matrix,” she also fills another role in his life. Another annotation says that “sadly” E.V. is “the closest thing Peter has to a friend.”

Aww.

Peter also came up with a way to maintain and patch up his new, homemade super suit. (It’s made with “real fabric, seams, wrinkles” and inspired by his encounter with the other two Spider-Mans in No Way Home.) For that Holland’s Peter built his own “fabricator.” Another notation calls the device a “3D printer on steroids,” the kind of machine “that could be made by a kid genius w/limited funds.”

It’s very fortunate for Spider-Man that Peter Parker is a kid genius. Because when you no longer have access to Stark Industries super tech you have to get by on your own. Your own super tech.

The post BRAND NEW DAY Script Reveals How Peter Survives Without Stark Tech appeared first on Nerdist.

Second try's a charm?

Microsoft and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned that attackers are exploiting a zero-click Windows flaw that can expose sensitive information on vulnerable systems.…

Rep. Jim Jordan went to Fox News to defend President Donald Trump’s revenge quest against former FBI Director James Comey, who was indicted Tuesday over a social media post the Department of Justice claims amounted to a threat against Trump’s life. Asked about the case, which is virtually identical to the case previously dismissed by a federal judge last year, Jordan decided to run around in…

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Microsoft readies the axe once again for yesterday's security

Microsoft has warned users still clinging to legacy TLS versions that the end is nigh for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 on POP3 and IMAP4 connections to Exchange Online.…

The AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has raised $100 million, led by Sequoia, months after raising a previous $100 million.

By Phil Galewitz for KFF Schmeeka Simpson of Omaha works as a patient navigator for the American Civil Liberties Union and an administrative assistant at Nebraskans for Peace, plus picks up shifts at a Dunkin’ shop. Still, even with three jobs, she worries about losing her health coverage when Nebraska, on May 1, becomes the first state to require certain Medicaid enrollees to work…

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Authors say it acquired an LLM that was trained on their copyrighted data, and judge keeps asking for more info

Databricks cannot shake a class action lawsuit targeting its LLM, which several book authors contend was created with a database that contained pirated versions of some of their copyrighted books – and about 196,000 titles in all.…

Disney Lorcana prepares to enter its next set rotation with Wilds Unknown, a set that adds new deck synergies based around popular Pixar characters. Due for a wide release on May 15, it won’t likely radically shift the metagame as much as July’s planned rotation, which drops several older sets from active use. However, it does feature big changes to the types of products released for individual Lorcana sets as well as a novel new design feature (one that most Magic fans should be familiar with) that could gradually become a bigger part of Lorcana over time.

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The selling point of Wilds Unknown is the introduction of three new Disney properties, all of which were produced and animated by Pixar. Characters from Toy Story appear in the new set, along with characters from Brave and The Incredibles. While the Brave characters don’t bring any new mechanics or specific theming to the table, characters from The Incredibles and Toy Story synergize with their respective franchises thanks to two new classifications—Super and Toy. Many of the major characters from the set have abilities that specifically interact with one of these characterizations. Woody – Jungle Guide, for instance, grants all other Toy cards +1 defense, while Mr Incredible – Super Strong allows a player to draw a card whenever a Super challenges another character.

One of my first takeaways when looking through Wilds Unknown is that this set seems to use classifications (Lorcana’s equivalent to typal decks) a lot more aggressively compared to earlier Lorcana sets. Lorcana has always had space for certain themed decks (Princesses, of course, were a part of Lorcana since the beginning). But these decks didn’t really start to synergize with each other until several sets were released. However, players can build a semi-decent Toy deck right out of the gate, or a Super deck pretty easily. We haven’t seen this much intra-set synergy since Lorcana introduced the Madrigal family from Encanto in Ursula’s Return. Perhaps coincidentally, Wilds Unknown also introduces a ton of new Madrigal cards, allowing for some fresh new card combos in those decks.

Ravensburger

What I really like about the new Toys and Supers classifications is that players have options when building decks. Players can opt for an Amber/Sapphire combo if they want to team up Woody with Sid, who can banish Toy cards in exchange for lore. Or, players can opt for an Amber/Emerald deck combination to pair Woody up with his best friend Buzz Lightyear. Likewise, the Incredibles feature heavily in Steel, Ruby, and Amethyst, giving players multiple options from which to build decks themed around a single franchise.

While Brave doesn’t haven’t the same level of synergies as its fellow Pixar franchises, it features one of the most potent card combos in the game. The legendary Merida card Merida – Formidable Archer, automatically deals 2 extra damage whenever an action card damages an opposing character. To guarantee at least one interaction, Merida can pull the Three Arrows card from the discard when she enters play. Three Arrows deals 2 damage to an opposing character, and then 1 damage to either the same character or a different one. When coupled with Merida’s ability, Three Arrows super-charges into a seven damage action, which can wipe out most cards very quickly.

The other novel new design feature in Wilds Unknown is the introduction of a cycle of cards across all six colors. Card cycles are very common in Magic: The Gathering and feature cards of a similar theme or mechanic. In Wilds Unknown, there are a total of 12 Traveler cards, two of each color. Each Traveler card (which includes a Sensational Six member, along with three princesses and three villains) has an ability that only activates when the card quests after another character card has been played. Although the design of these cards don’t seem particularly special, cycle cards are a rich design space in Magic: The Gathering and other card games and I’m excited to see how they’re incorporated more within Lorcana.

Ravensburger

Publisher Ravensburger has also beefed up the product releases for Wilds Unknown, adding several new products to their release slate. In addition to the standard Illumineer’s Trove and booster packs (both of which were provided for review by the publisher) Ravensburger is also now publishing Prerelease Packs and two-player starter deck sets. The Prerelease set comes with six booster packs, plus one of six promo cards and a set of dice. While I personally would have liked to see a Build and Battle box-style set similar to Pokemon, the Prerelease Packs are long overdue and provide an easy way for fans to get hyped for the new set’s release. Pre-release parties may also help bolster player count numbers in stores and potentially set players up to attend local weekly events at stores as well.  This product is good for the overall health of the game.

The other new product release are two-player starter decks, which replace the single deck starter decks that have been a standby of every other deck of the franchise. I’m a big believer in pre-constructed decks as a must-have for starter decks and I think that two-person starter decks are far better than a single deck. After all, players can easily bring a friend aboard with an extra deck (Lorcana needs two players to play under almost every circumstance) and there’s no need to try to find the “perfect deck” to match a player’s playstyle when there’s only a single product. We weren’t provided with the new decks to review, but I’m confident that the new decks are an easy entry point for Lorcana. The player decks, by and large, have always hit well in my household.

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How to Start Playing the DISNEY LORCANA Trading Card Game

I think Wilds Unknown is one of the more focused Lorcana sets we’ve had in quite some time. The new franchises are given all the shine in the deck, but there are still a couple of other franchises mixed in for good measure. What’s more – those franchises are supported immediately with some unique decks that could be impactful (or at least fun to play) right out of the gate. While I can’t speak to whether Wilds Unknown will be super impactful for the metagame, especially as Lorcana is about to rotate sets, the shift to sets that more heavily rely on a few set themes is good for the health of the game.

Not only does it provide more than aesthetic differences between sets, it also ensures that each set has several easy starting places for players looking to build their own decks. Players won’t have to go outside of Wilds Unknown to build a Toy deck, or a Supers deck, or even decks built around the Seven Dwarves. Hopefully, these decks can be supplemented in future sets, quickly allowing them to make an impact in competitive play.

Wilds Unknown is a strong set that marks a big shift for Lorcana. By focusing on new decks instead of continuously building up a handful of competitive decks, it makes it easier for new players to break into the game. Although there’s a potential handoff should these new typal decks ever become too powerful, I like the idea of good decks that can be built from a single set. What will be interesting is whether Lorcana’s designer continue to grow typal decks in sets, or if Wilds Unknown is a unique flash in the pan meant to kickstart the Pixar era of Disney Lorcana.

The post DISNEY LORCANA’s WILDS UNKNOWN Set Puts Pixar Characters in Play (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday weakened a landmark Civil Rights-era law that has increased minority representation in Congress and elsewhere, striking down a majority Black congressional district in Louisiana and opening the door for more redistricting across the country that could aid Republican efforts to control the House.

The post Supreme Court weakens a landmark Civil Rights-era law and aids GOP efforts to control the House appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Kat at the Catalyst

In an outcome that was widely expected, the US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that New Jersey’s efforts to investigate an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center for allegedly misleading consumers violated the First Amendment.

In a 9-0 decision, the justices said a sweeping subpoena by the state’s then-attorney general, Matthew Platkin, seeking information about donors to First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a chain of anti-abortion pregnancy centers in northeastern New Jersey, “burdened First Choice’s associational rights.” The full opinion in the case can be found here. 

The decision clears the way for First Choice to proceed with a federal lawsuit challenging the subpoena. “Demands for private donor information…’chill’ protected First Amendment associational rights even when those demands contemplate disclosure only to government officials and not ‘the general public,’” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for his fellow justices.

The decision drew parallels between New Jersey’s demand for information and Alabama’s attempts in the 1950s to force the NAACP to turn over the names and addresses of all of its members in the state. The high court sided with the NAACP in the landmark 1958 ruling.

“Associational rights carry special significance for political, social, religious, and other minorities,” Gorsuch wrote. “Take that freedom away and ‘dissident expression’ stands particularly vulnerable to marginalization or outright ‘suppression by the majority,’ leaving all of society poorer for it.”

But Wednesday’s decision—the second major Supreme Court victory for the CPC industry in recent years—is likely to make it even harder for state lawmakers and attorneys general to investigate anti-abortion organizations. In 2018, the court blocked a California law that would have required pregnancy centers to inform patients about state-funded family-planning services, including abortion.

Crisis pregnancy centers, faith-based organizations whose mission is to deter women from having abortions, attract clients by offering free services such as pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, baby clothes, and diapers. But they also have a well-documented history of using misinformation and deception to dissuade abortion seekers from terminating their pregnancies. Like many CPCs, First Choice—which has served more than 36,000 clients in New Jersey since its founding in 1985—created different websites for donors and the general public, tailoring its anti-abortion message for each audience.

“Strip away the ability of individuals to work together free from governmental oversight and intrusion, and the freedom to associate may become no freedom at all.”

The question before the justices was narrow: Should First Choice be able to directly fight a state agency’s subpoena in federal court, or must it initially go to state courts? The long-accepted procedure for enforcing or challenging such a subpoena, New Jersey argued, is to first seek relief in state court, and then, should it be necessary, appeal to federal court.

But the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented First Choice, accused Platkin of “selectively target[ing] the nonprofit based on its religious speech and pro-life views.” According to ADF, the Platkin subpoena had such serious implications that First Choice should be able to seek immediate relief in the federal courts, rather than having to expend time and resources litigating the issue first in state court.

Lining up behind First Choice was a predictable collection of anti-abortion and conservative groups. But they were joined by progressive groups, including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the ACLU, which also raised concerns that the same type of subpoenas against First Choice could be weaponized against humanitarian groups, journalists, and protesters. In Wednesday’s ruling, the justices seemed to concur. As Gorsuch wrote, “Strip away the ability of individuals to work together free from governmental oversight and intrusion, and the freedom to associate may become no freedom at all—individuals deterred, groups diminished, and their protected advocacy suppressed.”

Anti-abortion groups hailed the decision. Erin Hawley, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom who argued the case before the Supreme Court in December, called the ruling a “resounding victory,” and blasted New Jersey’s investigation tactics as “blatantly unconstitutional.”

“This is a triumph for every faith-based ministry in America,” William Haun, senior counsel at Becket, a legal group that focuses on religious cases, said in a statement. “The Court made crystal clear that our First Amendment freedoms—including religious freedom—are ‘necessarily’ associative, and that keeps the federal courthouse doors open for religious groups to protect their governance from intrusive state bureaucrats.”

New sealed bootable container images and Stratis storage, too

Fedora Linux 44 has arrived – in multiple formats and for several CPU families, including some new container formats and storage options.…

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, where Democratic lawmakers questioned him on the state of the war in Iran. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, noted that Iran was previously contained without launching a war and that ongoing attacks haven’t reduced the country’s nuclear program.

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