IT General

Happy Memorial Day weekend. It's the unofficial start of summer, even though the weather doesn't seem to cooperate. Hopefully, you have some time off and can stream some of the new movies that arrived last week, including Ladies First on Netflix and One Battle After Another on Prime Video.

Pope Leo XIV has issued his first official piece of religious guidance to billions of Catholics. And it's all about AI.

It came in the form of a 42,300-word papal encyclical titled "Magnifica Humanitas" ("Magnificent Humanity"). Encyclicals aren't papal law, exactly, but act as authoritative guidance on social and moral issues for members of the Catholic Church. This one, the first since Leo was chosen, came with even more pomp and circumstance than usual, with the leader himself attending its presentation alongside Anthropic founder Chris Olah.

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The Pope has spoken previously about regulating AI, imploring industry leaders to more carefully consider the ethical implications of AI in their work. Last May, when explaining why he chose the name Leo, the pope specifically cited AI as one of his primary reasons.

"There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour."

The encyclical goes further, diving into AI's impact on jobs, education, and child safety in a message to leaders around the world.

"We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend," Olah said. "Today is just the beginning — the start of a long collaboration between those of us who are building this and those who can see what we, from the inside, cannot."

Here are the main takeaways from the Holy See:

The Catholic Church is worried about AI taking over jobs, too. Tying "Magnifica Humanitas" to other labor-related encyclicals throughout the Church's history, Pope Leo calls the automation of jobs a threat to workers, citing widespread deskilling and greater labor surveillance with AI systems in place.

"Today, the convergence of automation, robotics and AI is rapidly transforming the very structure of work. It is said that this will bring great improvements for everyone. In reality, however, the 'new ways' of working are not necessarily better."

The leader warned that current AI hype is akin to a modern Tower of Babel, comparing the pursuit of advanced technology to the biblical story of a group of humans trying to reach heaven. He called on leaders to temper their ambition and recenter humanity.

He also joined a growing number of child safety advocates and regulators who want to address screen time and its effect on children: "Psychological and psychiatric literature has documented with growing insistence how early and unsupervised exposure to digital devices and social media can negatively impact sleep, attention span, control of emotions and relationships, especially during the most vulnerable stages of life, at times with tragic consequences."

In addition, Leo called out AI's role in exacerbating misinformation and devaluing critical thinking, especially in schools, saying the technology has a dehumanizing force in the classroom.

While simultaneously issuing the first formal condemnation of the transatlantic slave trade, Pope Leo called exploitative tech manufacturing processes and global AI training a "new form of slavery."

"In some regions of the world, children and adolescents work in dangerous conditions, crushing the materials from which rare earth elements are extracted...The bodies of these people are scarred, injured and worn down so that computational flow may continue uninterruptedly," he said. "This reality ​deeply challenges the moral conscience of our time."

The Pope also connected the rise of artificial intelligence to ongoing global warfare, calling out private incentives and warning against entrusting AI systems with "lethal decisions." He called for placing "the most rigorous ethical constraints" on weapons developed using AI.

"A subtle temptation may emerge, namely the thought that the problems are too big and we are too small, and that ​our choices, therefore, cannot make a difference," the Pope wrote. "Certainly, not everyone has the same power to make a difference. Yet, no one is without responsibility. We all have our own areas for action."

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The Raspberry Pi is a do-it-all system, and that led to many people using it in their homelabs. However, in recent years, mini PCs have replaced Raspberry Pis in serious homelabs. Here's why that happened, and why it's not a bad thing.

According to the American Pet Products Association, 87% of dog parents who travel do so by car. It's not hard to understand why. Boarding costs have climbed, pet-friendly hotels are more available than ever, and for many, the idea of leaving their dog behind for a week simply isn't an option.

In celebration of Memorial Day and as summer approaches, now is the perfect time to head to Home Depot and score some tools for DIY projects. If you need some new tools or additional battery packs, you'll be happy to hear Home Depot's buy-one-get-one deal is back, not to mention huge savings on power tools that you don't want to miss.

With most Android phones now shipping without a charger in the box, picking the right aftermarket charger has become more important than ever. Luckily, the USB Power Delivery (USB PD) standard has made this much easier by standardizing fast charging across brands.

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Tesla has issued a slew of recalls for the Model Y and Cybertruck, including one over missing labels that could lead to crashes.

A new report in Security Week warns about a cyberattack that infected 5,561 GitHub open-source repositories with malware.

Cybersecurity researchers at SafeDep detailed how the May 18 supply chain attack, dubbed Megalodon, took advantage of GitHub Actions workflows to ultimately harvest user credentials and other data. A full list of the compromised GitHub repositories is available in the SafeDep security report.

The report also details how the hackers pulled off the attack:

On May 18, 2026, an automated campaign codenamed megalodon pushed 5,718 malicious commits to 5,561 GitHub repositories in a six-hour window. Using throwaway accounts and forged author identities (build-bot, auto-ci, ci-bot, pipeline-bot), the attacker injected GitHub Actions workflows containing base64-encoded bash payloads that exfiltrate CI secrets, cloud credentials, SSH keys, OIDC tokens, and source code secrets to a C2 server at 216.126.225.129:8443.

A blog post at StepSecurity also documented the details of the attack.

"Megalodon is a textbook direct Poisoned Pipeline Execution (d-PPE) attack, a class of CI/CD attack where an adversary with write access to a repository injects malicious code directly into workflow definition files, causing the CI system to execute attacker-controlled commands on the next pipeline run," the blog post reads. (Emphasis in original.)

SafeDep researchers warned GitHub users affected by the attack to revert their repositories and audit all workflow files.

On May 20, GitHub published a blog post about unauthorized access to GitHub-owned repositories via a compromised employee device, but the company hasn't said anything about the alleged Megalodon attack.

However, on April 1, the company published a blog post detailing a new trend of cyberattacks on the open-source supply chain, which often begin by compromising GitHub Actions workflows, as in the Megalodon attack. The blog post includes tips for open-source projects on how "to secure your GitHub Actions workflows" to prevent exactly these types of attacks in the future.

I've run a NAS for years, but it always felt like something was missing. Adding a Raspberry Pi to the mix changed everything. It's a small, cheap upgrade that quietly solved problems I didn't even know I had.

As a movie enthusiast, I’m always looking for a good thriller with a unique story where tension, danger, and uncertainty reign supreme. Whether it’s psychological mind games, a high-stakes mystery, or pulse-pounding action, it should tap into something primal that keeps me on the edge of my seat, with my eyes glued to the screen.

Krispy Kreme employees affected by a Nov. 2024 company data breach can still claim their portion of a $1.6 million pie.

The class action lawsuit was brought forth by impacted individuals after their personal information — including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, biometric data, and financial account credentials — was exposed in a 2024 cyberattack targeting the company's employee data. Krispy Kreme disclosed the breach in December 2024 and settled the class action case in March.

But the June deadline to claim your money is fast approaching.

The data breach impacted 161,000 current and former Krispy Kreme employees; individuals whose information was exposed should have received a notice from the company via email.

If you believe you were affected but didn't receive an alert, you can contact the settlement administrator at (877) 239-1879.

The deadline to file a claim online or by mail is June 22.

Settlement class members can either submit an itemized claim form for up to $3,500 in losses, or accept a $75 single time payment. If you want to opt out of the settlement, you have until June 6 to decline either online or by mail.

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If you're just getting started with self-hosting apps and services in your homelab, there are a number of mistakes you should try to avoid. These are the five biggest mistakes that I see self-hosters make, and how you can avoid them.