Password Managers’ Promises That They Can’t See Your Vault Aren’t Always True

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Password Managers’ Promise That They Can’t See Your Vault Aren’t Always True (Maria)

The author writes, “Over the past 15 years, password managers have grown from a niche security tool used by the technology savvy into an indispensable security tool for the masses, with an estimated 94 million U.S. adults using them. They store not only passwords for pension, financial and email accounts, but also cryptocurrency credentials, payment card numbers and other sensitive data. … New research shows that these claims aren’t always true, particularly when account recovery is in place.”

Inside Epstein’s Network (Sean)

From The Economist: “On January 30th the Justice Department published over 3 [million] pages of documents. … The archive is too big for anyone to have read even a fraction. Fortunately, a group of software engineers has turned the PDFs into a format that is easier to analyse. Using Reducto, an AI tool, they have identified which files contained emails; extracted the listed senders, recipients, dates, subjects and message bodies; and posted them on a website called Jmail.world. In total, the group processed 1.4 [million] emails, finishing its work on February 11th. The Economist has collaborated with it to assign each message to unique individuals regardless of spellings or email addresses, and researched the backgrounds of the 500 people who appear most often.”

A ‘Clown’ Who Wouldn’t Go Away: Inside Obama’s Team’s Blind Spot on Trump (Reader Steve)

The author writes, “For eight years, President Barack Obama’s aides marveled that no amount of mockery, dismissal or scandal could make Donald Trump go away. Their bewilderment is threaded through hundreds of interviews with administration officials released Tuesday in a far-reaching oral history of the Obama presidency. Throughout, Obama’s advisers — some of the nation’s most accomplished political and policy experts — described their ongoing education about an electorate increasingly influenced by whatever the nascent social media told them.”

‘Deliberate Targeting of Vital Body Parts’: X-Rays Taken After Iran Protests Expose Extent of Catastrophic Injuries (Russ)

From The Guardian: “The image of Anahita’s head is one of more than 75 sets of medical images — primarily X-rays and CT scans — shared with the Guardian from one hospital in a major city in Iran, taken over the course of a single evening during the regime’s January crackdown on protesters. The plain, grayscale images tell their own story of the deadly violence inflicted on protesters and onlookers by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).”

The US Lost $35B in Clean Energy Projects Last Year (Laura)

The author writes, “According to a new report from the clean energy think tank E2, new investment in clean energy projects last year was dwarfed by a cascade of cancellations for projects already in progress. For every dollar announced in new clean energy projects, companies canceled, closed, or downsized roughly three dollars’ worth. In total, at least roughly $35 billion in projects were abandoned last year, compared to just $3.4 billion in cancellations in 2023 and 2024 combined.”

From One President to Another, a Love Letter With an Edge (Al)

From The New York Times: “To open a series of essays about U.S. presidents, George W. Bush pays tribute to George Washington, who ‘ensured America wouldn’t become a monarchy, or worse.’”

Transparent Toilets Take Tokyo’s Culture of Hygiene to the Next Level (Dana)

From Architectural Digest: “At first glance, the concept sounds absurd — maybe even inappropriate. How can a city council commission transparent toilets as vestiges of urban privacy? The surprising answer comes from Japan’s Shigeru Ban, winner of the Pritzker Prize among other honors. Why glass, you may ask? For a reason that we may take for granted. For a reason that we may take for granted. Shigeru Ban’s design … aims to bring innovative design to the public hygiene sector.”