Following the death of former leader Melissa Hortman, Minnesota House Democrats have selected State Rep. Zack Stephenson to lead the caucus. Stephenson, who was elected in 2018 and previously co-chaired the chamber’s Ways and Means Committee, was chosen by the 66-member DFL caucus in a closed-door meeting, succeeding Hortman who served for eight years. Stephenson, who was mentored by Hortman, will now lead the Democrats at a crucial time, as the legislature prepares for a potential special session and the upcoming 2026 regular session. His selection comes amidst the backdrop of a tied legislature, a special election, and ongoing grief over the loss of their former leader.
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Cloudflare will now block AI crawlers from accessing website content without permission, a move impacting AI model training. This policy, effective immediately for new domains, allows website owners to choose whether to allow AI scraping. Furthermore, Cloudflare will introduce a “pay per crawl” model, allowing publishers to charge AI crawlers for content access. As a major content delivery network, Cloudflare’s influence on roughly 16% of global internet traffic means this policy could significantly alter how AI companies obtain data.
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The hastily launched doge.gov website, intended to showcase Elon Musk’s government efficiency initiatives, suffers from a critical security vulnerability. Its database, accessible and editable by the public, has already been exploited, resulting in unauthorized entries appearing on the live site. This unsecured system, hosted on Cloudflare Pages rather than government servers, raises serious concerns about data integrity and the website’s overall reliability. The vulnerability highlights the risks associated with rapid deployment of government websites without adequate security measures.
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John Q. Hosedrinker