JW Filshill, one of Scotland’s oldest independent food and drinks wholesalers, is using Podfather logistics software to improve customer service. 

A new project aimed at exploring the role drone technology can play in improving yield, fruit quality and forecasting in UK strawberry production is a pivotal step towards enhancing food security.

The U.S. is sending additional fighter jets and a warship to the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman to increase security in the wake of Iranian attempts to seize commercial ships there. The Pentagon says the USS Thomas Hudner, a destroyer, and a number of F-35 fighter jets will be heading to the region. Defense officials last week announced the deployment of F-16s to the area over the past weekend and there have been A-10 attack aircraft there for nearly two weeks in response to the Iranian activity. The latest deployments come after Iran tried to seize two oil tankers near the strait early this month, opening fire on one of them.

The post US sending fighter jets, warship to Gulf region to protect ships from Iranian seizures first appeared on Federal News Network.

New guidance from lead cybersecurity agencies and industry partners provides both individual developers and large companies with software supply chain security best practices

The post NSA, CISA call on software developers, suppliers to improve open source software management practices first appeared on Federal News Network.

Learn how AI is reshaping government operations and what lies ahead for its responsible adoption

The post Future forward: Building trustworthy AI in government first appeared on Federal News Network.

Transition experts say cooperating with GSA is critical to ensure the Trump administration has the cybersecurity resources necessary to protect sensitive data.

The post Trump team vulnerable to cyber threats by not signing transition memos, experts warn first appeared on Federal News Network.

Some parts of the system are more difficult to automate, including operations like biometric fingerprinting.

The post At CBP, automated software testing is integral to the mission first appeared on Federal News Network.

During this exclusive webinar, moderator Jared Serbu and guest Lily Zeleke, acting DCIO for information enterprise, Office of the DoD CIO with the Department of Defense will discuss software modernization strategy at the Department of Defense. In addition, Cindi Stuebner, futurist and senior director, industry markets, defense business line at Pegasystems will provide an industry perspective.

The post For DoD, software modernization and cloud adoption go hand-in-hand first appeared on Federal News Network.

Learn how initiatives in the Air Force, Defense Logistics Agency and Navy are reinventing warehouse operations so that DoD teams can gain end-to-end visibility across their inventories, facilities and even people. Download our exclusive ebook.

The post Strategic approaches to modernizing DoD warehouse operations first appeared on Federal News Network.

Some 20,000 civilian employees work in the organic industrial base, supplying DoD with items it can't get from industry in enough quantity or not not at all.

The post These rarely seen DoD civilians matter a lot in times of war first appeared on Federal News Network.

A vendor of computer vision software protested a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency award to systems integrator CACI.

The post What happens when a company that didn’t bid files an award protest? first appeared on Federal News Network.

Lisa Sanders, the director of science and technology for SOCOM, said Congress gave them authority to test out new approaches to SBIR agreements.

The post SOCOM cuts years out of some SBIR phase 3 awards first appeared on Federal News Network.

To achieve shorter award times, the service wants to move away from overly prescriptive contract requirements and instead allow vendors to propose solutions.

The post Army wants to cut award times to six months first appeared on Federal News Network.

The added training will begin in October and comes as the Army tries to reverse years of dismal recruiting when it failed to meet its enlistment goals.

The post As recruiting rebounds, the Army will expand basic training to rebuild the force for modern warfare first appeared on Federal News Network.

CES claims to be the "most powerful tech event in the world", but in the age of software and AI, is the show still necessary?

Apple iPhone iOS 14.8 patches security exploit used by Pegasus spyware

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian

Russian doctor who criticised war in Ukraine sentenced to five years in prison

As we count down to the 11.11 shopping extravaganza, why don't you get some shopping ideas by checking out what the HWZ writers and editors want to buy. #11.11

Computacenter, Compugen, and Ingram Micro Canada won Cisco Canada’s contest to dream big about building AI-based solutions.

In this guest post, ESET's Tony Anscombe suggests that despite their benefits, awareness campaigns alone are not enough to encourage widespread adoption of cybersecurity best practices.

EU Commission warns Temu to fix consumer protection violations

No Comment: when art overcomes war in Gaza

The European Union (EU) has set a high bar by tackling domain name system (DNS) abuse head on via government regulation and seems to have successfully resisted attempts to water down DNS stewardship obligations. Recent guidance from a key European Commission cooperation group (the NIS Cooperation Group) handling sections of the Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2) intends for a robust implementation of Article 28, which will go a long way toward helping to mitigate some of the longstanding problems that persist in the DNS.

80 out of 120 workers trying to unionize reportedly quit due to RTO mandate.

The Internet Society has announced the 2024 Jonathan B. Postel Service Award recipients, honoring Steve Crocker and Xing Li for their pioneering work in advancing the global Internet infrastructure.

He's not the first Apple exec to take a multi-stage approach to retirement.

The right MSP tools are crucial for doing a job the right way. As an IT technician, your clients will be keen to observe how fast and efficient you are. But as a managed service provider, there are essential tools you need aside from the ones you use for troubleshooting, maintenance, and repair. These tools […]

Source: MSP Tools: 4 Must Have Software for a Managed Service Provider - Technibble.com

October is Cybersecurity Month, and this is a fantastic opportunity for Managed Service Providers.

Source: Free Cybersecurity Awareness Month Campaign for MSPs - Technibble.com

Part 2 of a three-part series summarizing the findings of a new and unsettling report on climate change.

The speed of human perception is surprisingly slow, say neuroscientists. That has important implications for our understanding of cognition and for the limits of brain computer interfaces.

Warzone Mobile’s November update is kicking older phones to the curb. If your device can’t keep up, enjoy the game until May 2025.

Find the latest Warhammer Tacticus Codes here! Keep reading for more!

But only in the event of a warp-drive equivalent to a space shuttle disaster.

The Royal Observatory Greenwich has announced the winners of the 16th annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest.

The post See the Photos that Won the Royal Observatory Greenwich's Astronomy Photographer of the Year Awards appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Location: Main Library- PN4835.B85

[Excerpt from the summary released by the Senate Armed Services Committee of the version of the NDAA for FY 2025 approved by the SASC and to be voted on by the full Senate.]

A proposal to expand registration for a possible military draft to young women as well as young men is moving forward again this year in Congress, along with a seductively simple-seeming but in practice unfeasible proposal to switch from the current system in which young men are required to register with the Selective Service System (SSS) to a system in which the SSS tries to identify and locate everyone eligible for a future draft and automatically register them based on other existing Federal databases from the Social Security Administration, IRS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, etc.

Today both the U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee and the full U.S. House of Representatives approved different proposals to expand and/or make it harder to avoid the requirement for men ages 18-26 to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft.

The proposals for changes to Selective Service registration were approved during consideration of the Senate and House versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, a "must-pass" annual bill that typically runs to more than a thousand pages.

The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) approved a version of the NDAA that would expand Selective Service registration to include young women as well as young men. This version of the NDAA will now go to the floor as the starting point for consideration and approval by the full Senate.

Also today the full House of Representatives approved a different version of the NDAA that would make Selective Service registration automatic while keeping it for men only.

A House amendment proposed by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), a West Point graduate and Army veteran, which would have replaced the provision to make draft registration automatic with a provision to repeal the Military Selective Service Act, was not "made in order" by the Rules Committee to be considered or voted on by the full House. There was no separate House floor vote on the proposed change to Selective Service registration, only a single vote on the entirety of the NDAA as a package.

The SASC markup was conducted in closed session, and only a summary of highlights of the version adopted by the SASC was released. It's not clear whether the SASC version also includes the provision in the House version of the NDAA to try to make Selective Service registration 'automatic' or only the provision to expand the registration requirement (with which compliance is currently low) to young women as well as young men. A spokesperson for the SASC told The Hill today that the full text of the Senate version of the NDAA won't be released until sometime in July.

Floor amendments are still possible in the Senate before it approves its version of the NDAA. But as of now, it seems likely that competing bad proposals with respect to expansion and/or attempted enforcement through automation of Selective Service -- one from the Republican-majority House to try to make it automatic, and one from the Democratic-majority Senate to expand it to women -- will be included in the House and Senate versions of the NDAA and go to the eventual House-Senate conference committee to sort out in closed-door negotiations late this year, after the elections.

It's possible that either or both of these proposals were included as "bargaining chips" intended to be withdrawn in exchange for concessions on other issues during the conference negotiations. The conference committee could include either, neither, both, or some other compromise on Selective Service in its final package of compromises, which typically are voted on and approved "en bloc" without further amendments.

Either of these misguided proposals would be the most significant change to the Military Selective Service Act since 1980. There have been no hearings, debate, or recorded vote on either of these proposals, and there appear unlikely to be any. The decision will probably be made in secret by the House-Senate conference committee for the NDAA.

"Firestorm erupts over requiring women to sign up for military draft", reads the headline on a story today on TheHill.com.

Unfortunately, that firestorm amounts mostly to an exchange of sound bites and social-media posts, not a real debate, much less a hearing with independent witnesses, in either the House or Senate. It focuses on the proposal included in the Senate version of the annual National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA) to expand registration with the Selective Service System to include young women as well as young men, rather than on what may be a more significant proposal in the House version of the same bill to try to make draft registration automatic by basing the list of potential draftees on information aggregated from other Federal records rather than provided by registrants themselves -- denying potential draftees the chance to indicate their opposition to being drafted, and to obstruct the mobilization for total war, by opting out of draft registration.

Most importantly, the current "debate" ignores both the profound and quite possibly insolvable practical problems with trying to compile a registry of potential draftees from other existing Federal databases, and the more fundamental issue with any contingency planning or preparation for a draft: the way that, even when a draft is not active, the perceived availability of a draft as a fallback emboldens warmakers to embark on wars that people wouldn't volunteer to fight.

[First published on Antiwar.com.]

[“I have an amendment at the desk.” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan introduces a proposal from the Selective Service System to automate draft registration in the House Armed Services Committee, May 22, 2024.]

Under fire for proposing an ill-considered amendment to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to “automatically” register all young men in the U.S. for a possible military draft, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) has issued a statement that casts more doubt on her understanding of the current draft law and on the wisdom of her proposed changes to Selective Service registration.

Rep. Houlahan starts by claiming that “This new legislation saves taxpayers significant money.” But there’s absolutely no evidence to support this claim.

[Originally published by Responsible Statecraft, the journal of the Quincy Institute]

Two proposals that would radically alter the current system for registering Americans for a future draft were introduced recently in Congress without any hearings or debate.

They raise practical issues about whether any draft today would even be possible.

As part of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, the House voted this month to make registration with the Selective Service System of all draft-eligible men ages 18-26 “automatic.” In addition, the version of the NDAA on its way to the Senate floor would expand draft registration to include young women now, too.

Debate about the draft has typically been framed around whether the U.S. “needs'' a draft. Debate about women and the draft has been framed around whether women “should” be required to register. But the bigger question we face is three fold: will women sign up voluntarily (if in fact registration is not “automatic”), is “automatic” registration based on other databases feasible, and can registration or a draft – for men and/or women -- even be enforced.

When I was invited to testify before the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) in 2019, I told them that “any proposal that includes a compulsory element is a naïve fantasy unless it includes a credible enforcement plan and budget.... Women will be more likely to resist being forced into the military than men have been, and more people will support them in their resistance.”

[First published on Antiwar.com]

Fantasies underlying push for conscription are delusional and dangerous.

Doubling down on their recent war-game exercises and report on the (un)readiness of the U.S. to activate a military draft, Taren Sylvester and Katherine Kuzminski of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) have a new article in War on the Rocks, “Preparing for the Possibility of a Draft Without Panic,” laying out why they think the U.S. needs to prepare for a draft in order to be able to win an all-out war with China over Taiwan.

CNAS and War on the Rocks like to describe themselves as “realists”. But their arguments for stepped-up planning and preparation for a draft are strikingly unrealistic, in at least four respects:

Fewer young Americans are willing to fight the government’s wars.

[Also published on Antiwar.com. Portions of this article were first published by Responsible Statecraft and are reprinted by permission.]

Of men in the U.S. who turned 18 in 2023, fewer than 40% signed up for the draft – down from more than 60% in 2020 before the start of the war in Ukraine.

This eye-popping and previously undisclosed admission, as well as other revelations equally damning to plans to increase readiness to activate a draft, was included in documents released recently by the Selective Service System (SSS) in response to a Freedom Of Information Act request.

Library - Art Library, Location - OSIZ, Call number - FOLIO TR820.6 .A34 2016

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