John Sakellariadis / Politico:
Sources: DHS clears seven CISA staffers of wrongdoing; the staffers had been accused of misleading CISA's former acting director into taking a polygraph test  —  Former DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin previously told POLITICO the staffers were under investigation for “misleading” …

Amanda Kondolojy, writing for Pocket-lint:

Though the Netflix app is largely the same on most platforms, over the weekend several Apple TV users on the unofficial Apple TV Reddit noticed some small changes to the tvOS version of the app that are making the app harder to use in subtle but very frustrating ways.

According to user iamonreddit, the most recent Netflix app update has made it slightly more difficult to use the fast-forward and rewind functions. Instead of clicking the back or forward button on the remote wheel to advance or return ten seconds, this button press now pauses the screen and brings up a frame selector. In order to actually go forward or go back, users then have to click the same button again. So essentially, what once required a single button press, now needs two.

These changes aren’t small, aren’t subtle, and don’t make fast-forwarding and rewinding merely “slightly” more difficult. The video playback interface in a streaming app is the most essential thing a streaming app does, and now Netflix’s tvOS player looks terrible and works wrong. The original report Kondolojy cites, from Reddit user “iamonreddit” (yes, you are), describes it as it is:

Did Netflix mess up the app? There are two extra clicks for a simple 10s rewind or fast forward. Instead of it going back 10s in one click, now it pauses and brings up the frame selector, and then you have to click again. Did they not do any research or usability testing before releasing this?

It’s also not smooth at all, it keeps spinning for a while and I have 1gig fiber optic internet. What a big downgrade!

They have some of the top paid employees in the world and this is what they come up with. Unless this was the result of some restrictions introduced by Apple.

Looks like they messed it up big time. Netflix used to set benchmarks for others. And here we are now. I’ve never had a single problem with their app so far, for over a decade of use.

Netflix’s gratuitously ugly new custom video player commits various crimes against accessibility. Two years ago I wrote about tvOS’s system accessibility shortcut that lets you assign triple-clicking the Back (“\<”) button to toggle captions, and the fact that Netflix didn’t support it. This cursed new player, you will be unsurprised to learn, doesn’t support it either. It also does not support the wonderful standard platform convention of temporarily turning on captions when you rewind 10 or 20 seconds, for a “What did they just say?” moment.

This regression dropping the same week that Netflix announced price hikes makes me so angry that I’m giving even more thought to downgrading my family’s Netflix account from the $27/month Premium plan to the $20/month Standard plan. Sending Netflix only $240 per year instead of $324 will show them.

Grace Kay / Business Insider:
Sources: Ross Nordeen, the last remaining cofounder at xAI, left the company on Friday; Nordeen reported directly to Elon Musk as his right-hand operator  —  Follow Grace Kay … - Elon Musk started xAI with 11 cofounders in 2023.  — The last remaining one, Ross Nordeen, has now exited the company.

Alan Rappeport, reporting for The New York Times:

President Trump’s signature will appear on U.S. dollars later this year, the Treasury Department said on Thursday. The decision to have Mr. Trump’s John Hancock on America’s paper currency represented an unprecedented change, one that the department said was being made in honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary.

Mr. Trump is set to become the first sitting U.S. president to have his signature on the greenback. His name will appear alongside that of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. As a result, the U.S. treasurer, whose name has been on the currency for more than a century, will not appear on the currency.

Raquel Coronell Uribe, reporting for NBC News:

Trump’s signature will go on the bills in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary, the Treasury said. Historically, paper currency carries the signatures of the treasury secretary and the treasurer.

“The President’s mark on history as the architect of America’s Golden Age economic revival is undeniable,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate, but also well deserved.”

It’s certainly news that the sitting president — a man whom psychologists have publicly described as showing clear “symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder — malignant narcissism” — is putting his signature on U.S. currency. But why parrot the administration’s obviously false line that this gross, embarrassing change in longstanding tradition has anything whatsoever to do with “honoring” the United States’s 250th anniversary?

It makes no more sense that putting Trump’s signature on greenbacks “honors the nation” or its history than it would to claim that doing so will cure the common cold, reverse male pattern baldness, or keep us safe from Bigfoot. Call it what it is: sycophantic ego fellatio for a deeply unpopular narcissist who is losing his already tenuous grip on reality.

The New York Post (I’m not sure if I should tell you to take this with a grain of salt, because it’s the Post and their journalistic standards are low, or, to assign this extra credibility because it’s the Post, a right-wing Murdoch rag that Trump lackeys actually talk to):

President Trump is prioritizing taking control of the Strait of Hormuz as he grows frustrated with the lack of help from allies to force open the crucial waterway. And once Trump ends Iran’s reign of terror over the shipping route, he’s considering rechristening it the “Strait of America” or even naming it after himself, sources told The Post. [...]

Trump told a Saudi investor forum Friday evening in Miami that he might decide to call the Strait after himself, rather than America.

“They have to open up the Strait of Trump — I mean Hormuz,” Trump said. “Excuse me, I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake. The Fake News will say, ‘He accidentally said.’ No, there’s no accidents with me, not too many.”

I suspect there are going to be accidents soon, as he descends further into dementia and needs adult diapers.