The Pentagon's public casualty count for Operation Epic Fury also fell from 18 to 14 deaths last week.

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"I think right now we're going to enter a very, very busy period of administrative policymaking and I expect that to continue," said Will Yeatman.

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"As has been pointed out, the HUD has lost something along the lines of 1,800 personnel just over the last two or three years," said Mitchell Miller.

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"In fact, the biggest impacts could well be on radiation workers, and as I said, their doses are, on average, pretty low across the [U.S.]," said Edwin Lyman.

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For how useful USB thumb drives are for quickly toting around and copying files from one computer to another, they can be a bit of a security headache. Programs can be loaded on them with all kinds of malware; they can be obscured in some ways that are difficult to detect, and they can be set up to execute certain programs when they’re plugged in. The general wisdom is to simply avoid untrusted USB devices completely, but that sort of abstinence-only policy rarely works in the real world. If, for some reason, an untrusted USB device absolutely needs to be used, many of these security issues can be mitigated with this tool.

Built by [Novamostra], the device is simple on the surface: it’s a Raspberry Pi Pico mated to a 2-in-1 USB splitter cable. But with the USB Neutralizer software they have written loaded onto the Pico, it automatically destroys the ability of any connected USB thumb drive to load files. The program works by deleting the first and last 34 Logical Block Addressing (LBA) sectors on the drive immediately when it’s plugged in, without doing anything else. This effectively corrupts the drive bad enough to prevent malicious software in the partitions from doing anything, allowing the user to (relatively) safely put the USB drive into their computer and format it for re-use. The code for this tool is also open-source and reviewable on the project’s GitHub page.

Of course, this isn’t a perfect security solution for all USB attacks. It doesn’t erase or replace the firmware on the drive itself, and although firmware-level attacks are rare they’re not out of the question for all users, all the time. It also won’t prevent a malicious physical attack like this high-voltage one, and it may also not stop hidden or obscured partitions or devices programmed for storage and some other nefarious purpose simultaneously, like a USB HID. But still, this solves a great many of the problems associated with getting new drives from semi-untrustworthy sources, like retailers or friends whose computer skills we don’t fully trust.

The National Guard troops will be deployed in D.C. until January 2029.

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Google offers a lot of very useful free office apps, including Google Docs, Google Sheets, Gmail, Google Slides, and more. Many beginners fail to take advantage of the integration between these apps, however. Using the power of Google Drive, you can save yourself a lot of busywork and get things done far more quickly.

Although the bipartisan legislation to close that loophole has now passed the House, it has not yet been introduced in the Senate.

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"If you're gonna change a system, you do need to train managers on how to use it and how to do performance management and review," said John Hatton.

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"At a high level, both the judicial and the legislative branch are facing unprecedented threats," said Isa Ulloa.

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"When we think about family readiness as a crucial component to military readiness, we think back to wellbeing," said Gabby L’Esperance.

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Google offers some very convenient and highly advanced software—there's no doubt about that—but it comes at the cost of pervasive user tracking. Not everyone is comfortable with that, and some of those who have yet to ditch Google surely have a nagging sense of unease, knowing their private lives are logged, monitored, tracked, and profiled. You can do something about it, and learning about great alternatives is a start.

Keeping a hard drive on a drawer is probably the most common approach to storing files over the long term. A lot of people don't do it properly, though, to the point I've actually discouraged this practice previously.

"This is an opportunity to show that government can deliver in new ways because at this point we've got nothing left to lose," said Merici Vinton.

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"If you're taking your family on a vacation, your plane is less likely to hit a flock of birds because of NOAA's NEXRAD data," said Denice Ross.

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Lawmakers aired broad bipartisan frustration at the gridlock that has prevented on-time appropriations for years but differed on the specifics of how to fix it.

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"The cost of healthcare services don't rise like regular inflation. It's about twice the rate of inflation," said Thiago Glieger.

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"I always say if performance matters, it's not a unnecessary tool. If performance is a report card, it's just a waste of time," said John Mullins.

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"Going two years without a review would be like flying blind without having the information that's key to how the agency is performing," said Lori Atkinson.

© Government Accountability Office

The new estimate includes the cost of the war to date as well as expenses like meal pay that are anticipated through the end of the fiscal year.

© AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin