An anonymous reader shares a report: The most seductive narrative in American work culture right now isn't that AI will take your job. It's that AI will save you from it. That's the version the industry has spent the last three years selling to millions of nervous people who are eager to buy it. Yes, some white-collar jobs will disappear. But for most other roles, the argument goes, AI is a force multiplier. You become a more capable, more indispensable lawyer, consultant, writer, coder, financial analyst -- and so on. The tools work for you, you work less hard, everybody wins. But a new study published in Harvard Business Review follows that premise to its actual conclusion, and what it finds there isn't a productivity revolution. It finds companies are at risk of becoming burnout machines. As part of what they describe as "in-progress research," UC Berkeley researchers spent eight months inside a 200-person tech company watching what happened when workers genuinely embraced AI. What they found across more than 40 "in-depth" interviews was that nobody was pressured at this company. Nobody was told to hit new targets. People just started doing more because the tools made more feel doable. But because they could do these things, work began bleeding into lunch breaks and late evenings. The employees' to-do lists expanded to fill every hour that AI freed up, and then kept going.

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The Food and Drug Administration has refused to review Moderna's application for an mRNA flu vaccine, the company revealed Tuesday.

While the move came as a surprise to the high-profile vaccine maker, it is just the latest hostility toward vaccines—and mRNA vaccines in particular—from an agency overseen by the fervent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In his first year in office, Kennedy has already dramatically slashed childhood vaccine recommendations and canceled $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic threats.

In a news release late Tuesday, Moderna said it was blindsided by the FDA's refusal, which the FDA cited as being due to the design of the company's Phase 3 trial for its mRNA flu vaccine, dubbed mRNA-1010. Specifically, the FDA's rejection was over the comparator vaccine Moderna used.

In the trial, which enrolled nearly 41,000 participants and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, Moderna compared the safety and efficacy of mRNA-1010 to licensed standard-dose influenza vaccines, including Fluarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline. The trial found that mRNA-1010 was superior to the comparators.

Moderna said the FDA reviewed and accepted its trial design on at least two occasions (in April 2024 and again in August 2025) before it applied for approval of mRNA-1010. It also noted that Fluarix has been used as a comparator vaccine in previous flu vaccine trials, which tested vaccines that went on to earn approval.

But in a letter dated February 3, Vinay Prasad, the FDA's top vaccine regulator under the Trump administration, informed Moderna that the agency does not consider the trial "adequate and well-controlled" because the comparator vaccine "does not reflect the best-available standard of care."

In its news release, Moderna noted that neither the FDA's regulation nor its guidance to industry makes any reference to a requirement of the "best-available standard of care" in comparators.

"This decision by [the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research], which did not identify any safety or efficacy concerns with our product, does not further our shared goal of enhancing America's leadership in developing innovative medicines," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in the release. "It should not be controversial to conduct a comprehensive review of a flu vaccine submission that uses an FDA-approved vaccine as a comparator in a study that was discussed and agreed on with CBER prior to starting."

Moderna said it has requested a meeting with the FDA to understand the basis of the refusal. "We look forward to engaging with CBER to understand the path forward as quickly as possible so that America's seniors, and those with underlying conditions, continue to have access to American-made innovations."

The company noted that mRNA-1010 has already been accepted for review in the European Union, Canada, and Australia.

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The National Cancer Institute is using federal funds to study whether cancer can be cured by ivermectin, a cheap, off-patent anti-parasitic and deworming drug that fringe medical groups falsely claimed could treat COVID-19 during the pandemic and have since touted as a cure-all.

Large, high-quality clinical trials have resoundingly concluded that ivermectin is not effective against COVID-19. And there is no old or new scientific evidence to support a hypothesis that ivermectin can cure cancer—or justify any such federal expenditure. But, under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who is otherwise well-known for claiming to have a parasitic worm in his brain—numerous members of the medical fringe are now in powerful federal positions or otherwise hold sway with the administration.

During a January 30 event, Anthony Letai, a cancer researcher the Trump administration installed as the director of the NCI in September, said the NCI was pursuing ivermectin.

"There are enough reports of it, enough interest in it, that we actually did—ivermectin, in particular—did engage in sort of a better preclinical study of its properties and its ability to kill cancer cells and we'll probably have those results in a few months. So we are taking it seriously."

The comments were highlighted today in a report from KFF Health News. Ars Technica was also at the event, "Reclaiming Science: The People’s NIH," which was hosted by the MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] Institute. In the rest of his comments, Letai seemed to make a noticeable effort to temper expectations while also trying to avoid offending any ivermectin believers. "It's not going to be a cure-all for cancer," he said. At another point, he said that even if there are signals of anti-cancer properties in the preclinical studies, "I can tell you again, it's not a really strong signal."

But, he quickly noted, "this doesn't rule out... individual reports of people having taken it that had a response to their cancer. This doesn't invalidate their personal experience."

"Ridiculous"

KFF noted that among those individual reports is one from Mel Gibson, who said in a January 2025 episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast that a regimen of drugs that includes ivermectin cured stage 4 cancers in three of his friends. The episode has been viewed more than 12 million times.

NCI scientists who spoke to KFF under the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation blasted the funding. "I am shocked and appalled," one said. "We are moving funds away from so much promising research in order to do a preclinical study based on nonscientific ideas. It’s absurd."

Another called the suggestion that the NCI had previously overlooked ivermectin's potential "ridiculous."

"This is not a new idea they came up with," the NCI scientist said.

While the revelation that the NCI is funding research based on fringe anecdotes rather than scientific evidence is spurring backlash, it also raises new questions about Letai, who was otherwise a respected cancer researcher prior to taking the role of NCI director.

In an interview with STAT News last month, Letai was asked if there were ethical lines he wouldn't cross for the administration. He responded: "My job is to progress the mission of the National Cancer Institute to reduce suffering from cancer with the resources that I’m given. If it got to a point where I couldn’t do my job, I would feel required to quit."

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Windows 8 is remembered most for its oddball touchscreen-focused full-screen Start menu, but it also introduced a number of under-the-hood enhancements to Windows. One of those was UEFI Secure Boot, a mechanism for verifying PC bootloaders to ensure that unverified software can't be loaded at startup. Secure Boot was enabled but technically optional for Windows 8 and Windows 10, but it became a formal system requirement for installing Windows starting with Windows 11 in 2021.

Secure Boot has relied on the same security certificates to verify bootloaders since 2011, during the development cycle for Windows 8. But those original certificates are set to expire in June and October of this year, something Microsoft is highlighting in a post today.

This certificate expiration date isn't news—Microsoft and most major PC makers have been talking about it for months or years, and behind-the-scenes work to get the Windows ecosystem ready has been happening for some time. And renewing security certificates is the kind of routine occurrence that most users only notice when something goes wrong.

But the downside is that the certificate expiration may cause problems for PCs that don't pull down the patches before the June 2026 deadline. While these PCs will continue to function, expired certificates can prevent Microsoft from patching newly discovered Secure Boot vulnerabilities and can also keep those PCs from booting and installing newer operating system versions that use the new 2023-era certificates.

"If a device does not receive the new Secure Boot certificates before the 2011 certificates expire, the PC will continue to function normally, and existing software will keep running," writes Nuno Costa, a program manager in Microsoft's Windows Servicing and Delivery division.

"However, the device will enter a degraded security state that limits its ability to receive future boot-level protections. As new boot‐level vulnerabilities are discovered, affected systems become increasingly exposed because they can no longer install new mitigations. Over time, this may also lead to compatibility issues, as newer operating systems, firmware, hardware, or Secure Boot–dependent software may fail to load."

Making sure you've got the new certificates

For most systems, including older ones that aren't being actively supported by their manufacturers, Microsoft is relying on Windows Update to provide updated certificates. For fully patched, functioning PCs running supported versions of Windows with Secure Boot enabled, the transition should be seamless, and you may in fact already be using the new certificates without realizing it.

This is possible because UEFI-based systems have a small amount of NVRAM that can be used to store variables between boots; generally, both Windows and Linux operating systems using LVFS for firmware updates ought to be able to update any given system's NVRAM with the new certificates. PCs will only have problems deploying the new certificates if NVRAM is full or fragmented in some way, or if the PC manufacturer is shipping buggy firmware that doesn't support this kind of update.

As detailed by a Dell support page, the easiest way to see if your PC has the new certificates is to run a PowerShell command that checks the certificate stored in the "active db," which is the one currently used to boot the PC.

A screenshot from a Windows 11 PC that is already using the new 2023 Secure Boot certificates to boot (the first command has returned "true") but which does not have the new certificates baked into its UEFI firmware (the second command has returned "false.") This is normal behavior for older PCs; for newer PCs, check to see if a BIOS update is available. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

To check this, right-click either the PowerShell or Terminal app and run it as an Administrator, and type ([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match 'Windows UEFI CA 2023'). If this command returns "true," then your PC is using the new certificate, and you're good to go.

If it returns "false," here are some steps to enable Windows Update to install the new certificates for you.

• Make sure you're running a supported version of Windows. For Windows 11, that means version 24H2 or 25H2. For Windows 10, you need to enroll the PC in the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, which consumers can do for free after jumping through a couple of hoops.
• Make sure Secure Boot is enabled in the BIOS and working properly. To check from within Windows, type Windows + R to open a Run window, type msinfo32, and press Enter. In the msinfo32 app, make sure Secure Boot State is set to "on."
• Check to see whether there's a firmware update available for your PC. These may fix bugs preventing the new certificates from being installed.
• Especially for older PCs that originally shipped with Windows 8 or Windows 10, it may help to do a factory reset of your Secure Boot keys from within your PC's BIOS settings. This can help ensure that there is enough free space in your PC's NVRAM to store the new certificates.
  • If you do this on a system with BitLocker encryption enabled, make sure you have your recovery key handy so you can unlock your drive.

The second thing to check is the "default db," which shows whether the new Secure Boot certificates are baked into your PC's firmware. If they are, even resetting Secure Boot settings to the defaults in your PC's BIOS will still allow you to boot operating systems that use the new certificates.

To check this, open PowerShell or Terminal again and type ([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI dbdefault).bytes) -match 'Windows UEFI CA 2023'). If this command returns "true," your system is running an updated BIOS with the new Secure Boot certificates built in. Older PCs and systems without a BIOS update installed will return "false" here.

Microsoft's Costa says that "many newer PCs built since 2024, and almost all the devices shipped in 2025, already include the certificates" and won't need to be updated at all. And PCs several years older than that may be able to get the certificates via a BIOS update.

In the US, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft all have lists of specific systems and firmware versions, while Asus provides more general information about how to get the new certificates via Windows Update, the MyAsus app, or the Asus website. The oldest of the PCs listed generally date back to 2019 or 2020. If your PC shipped with Windows 11 out of the box, there ought to be a BIOS update with the new certificates available, though that may not be true of every system that meets the requirements for upgrading to Windows 11.

Microsoft encourages home users who can't install the new certificates to use its customer support services for help. Detailed documentation is also available for IT shops and other large organizations that manage their own updates.

"The Secure Boot certificate update marks a generational refresh of the trust foundation that modern PCs rely on at startup," writes Costa. "By renewing these certificates, the Windows ecosystem is ensuring that future innovations in hardware, firmware, and operating systems can continue to build on a secure, industry‐aligned boot process."

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On Friday, a body that advises US judges revised the document it created to help judges grapple with scientific issues. The move came after a group of Republican state attorneys general wrote a letter to complain about the document's chapter on climate change, with one of the letter's criticisms being that it treated human influence on climate as a fact. In response to the letter, the Federal Judicial Center has now deleted the entire chapter.

The Federal Judicial Center has been established by statute as the "research and education agency of the judicial branch of the United States Government." As part of that role, it prepares documents that can serve as reference material for judges unfamiliar with topics that find their way into the courtroom. Among those projects is the "Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence," now in its fourth edition. Prepared in collaboration with the National Academies of Science, the document covers the process of science and specific topics that regularly appear before the courts, like statistical techniques, DNA-based identification, and chemical exposures.

When initially released in December, the fourth edition included material on climate change prepared by two authors at Columbia University. But a group of attorneys general from Republican-leaning states objected to this content. At the end of January, they sent a letter to the leadership of the Federal Judicial Center outlining their issues. Many of them focus on the text that accepts the reality of human-driven climate change as a fact.

"Nothing is 'independent' or 'impartial' in issuing a document on behalf of America’s judges declaring that only one preferred view is 'within the boundaries of scientifically sound knowledge,'" the letter complains, while ignoring many topics where the document does exactly that. But the objections are only about one specific area of science: "The Fourth Edition places the judiciary firmly on one side of some of the most hotly disputed questions in current litigation: climate-related science and 'attribution.'”

In short, the state attorneys general object to the document treating facts as facts, as there have been lawsuits that contested them. "Among other things, the Manual states that human activities have 'unequivocally warmed the climate,' that it is 'extremely likely' human influence drives ocean warming, and that researchers are 'virtually certain' about ocean acidification," their letter states, "treating contested litigation positions as settled fact." In other words, they're arguing that, if someone is ignorant enough to start a suit based on ignorance of well-established science, then the Federal Judicial Center should join them in their ignorance.

The attorneys general also complain that the report calls the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change an "authoritative science body," citing a conservative Canadian public policy think tank that disagreed with that assessment.

These complaints were mixed in with some more potentially reasonable complaints about how the climate chapter gave specific suggestions on how to legally approach some issues, and assigned significance to one or two recent studies that haven't yet been validated by follow-on work. But the letter's authors would not settle for revisions based on a few reasonable complaints; instead, they demand the entire chapter be removed because it accurately reflects the status of climate science.

Naturally, the Federal Judicial Center has agreed. We have confirmed that the current version of the document no longer includes a chapter on climate science, even though the foreword by Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan still mentions it.

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The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly investigating ABC’s The View in what FCC Democrat Anna Gomez called an attempt to intimidate critics of the Trump administration.

“Let’s be clear on what this is. This is government intimidation, not a legitimate investigation," Gomez said in a statement Friday night. "Like many other so-called ‘investigations’ before it, the FCC will announce an investigation but never carry one out, reach a conclusion, or take any meaningful action. The real purpose is to weaponize the FCC’s regulatory authority to intimidate perceived critics of this administration and chill protected speech."

The FCC hasn't announced the investigation but previously gave several indications that it would occur sooner or later. After pressuring ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in September that it would be "worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether The View and some of these other programs" are violating the agency's equal-time rule. The Carr FCC followed that up in January by issuing a warning to late-night and daytime talk shows that they may no longer qualify for the bona fide news exemption to the equal-time rule.

Fox News reported Friday that the FCC is launching an investigation into The View "amid the agency's crackdown on equal time for political candidates." A source at the FCC told Fox that the probe was triggered by the show's interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

"Fake news is not getting a free pass anymore," Fox News quoted its FCC source as saying. Fox said its source indicated that ABC would have to provide "equal airtime for Republican candidates on the ballot like incumbent Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn and his primary rivals," and for "Ahmad Hassan, the little-known candidate running against Talarico and [US Rep. Jasmine] Crockett in the Democratic primary."

President Trump posted a link to the Fox News story on his Truth Social account. The investigation was also confirmed by Reuters, which reported on Saturday that a source said the FCC opened a probe into whether the "daytime talk show violated equal time rules for interviews with political candidates after an appearance by a Democratic Texas Senate candidate."

We contacted the FCC today and will update this article if it provides any information on the reported investigation.

FCC fights Trump's war against media

In July, a White House spokesperson called The View co-host Joy Behar an “irrelevant loser” after she said Trump was jealous of former President Barack Obama. Trump has frequently called on the FCC to revoke licenses from ABC and other networks. The FCC issues licenses to individual broadcast stations, not national news networks, but many affiliated stations are owned and operated by the network.

Although the FCC is classified as an independent agency under US law, Carr has declared that the FCC is no longer independent from the White House and made it clear he takes orders from Trump. While former FCC chairs Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai rejected Trump's calls to revoke broadcast licenses from news organizations that Trump dislikes, Carr has repeatedly threatened station licenses on Trump's behalf. During the Kimmel controversy, Carr said that stations could face fines or license revocations if they continued to run Kimmel's show.

Gomez, the only Democratic commissioner on the FCC, urged "broadcasters and their parent networks to stand strong against these unfounded attacks and continue exercising their constitutional rights without fear or favor.” She said that despite the pressure the FCC is exerting with its equal-time rule, "the First Amendment protects the right of daytime and late-night programs to cover newsworthy issues and express viewpoints without government interference."

As for The View, Fox News said it was told by its source that ABC owner Disney "never made an equal-time filing to the FCC regarding Talarico's recent appearance, which would implicitly indicate to the FCC that Disney believes The View is bona fide news and would be exempt from the policy."

Bona fide news exemption

The equal-time rule, formally known as the Equal Opportunities Rule, generally requires that stations giving time to one political candidate must provide comparable time and placement to an opposing candidate if an opposing candidate makes a request. The rule has an exemption for candidate appearances on bona fide news programs, and entertainment talk shows have generally been treated as bona fide news programs for this purpose.

The FCC Media Bureau's January 21 public notice to broadcast TV stations said that despite a 2006 decision in which the FCC exempted The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from the rule, current entertainment shows may not qualify for that exemption. "Importantly, the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption," the notice said.

The Media Bureau's January 21 notice said the equal-time rule applies to broadcast TV stations because they "have been given access to a valuable public resource (namely, spectrum)," and that compliance with "these requirements is central to a broadcast licensee’s obligation to operate in the public interest."

The FCC notice got this detail wrong, according to Harold Feld, a longtime telecom attorney who is senior VP of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. The equal-time rule actually applies to cable channels, too, he wrote in a January 29 blog post.

"Yes, contrary to what a number of people think, including, annoyingly, the Media Bureau which gets this wrong in its recent order, this is not a 'public interest obligation' for using spectrum," Feld wrote. "It’s a conditional right of access (like leased access for cable) that members of Congress gave themselves (and other candidates) because they recognized the power of mass media to shape elections." The US law applies both to broadcast stations using public spectrum and "community antenna television," the old name for cable TV, Feld pointed out.

This doesn't actually mean that people can file FCC complaints against the Fox News cable channel, though, Feld wrote. This is because the FCC "has consistently interpreted Section 315(c) since it was added as applying only to 'local origination cablecasting,' meaning locally originated programming and not the national cable channels that cable operators distribute as part of their bundle," he wrote.

Leno ruling just one of many

In any case, Feld said the Media Bureau's "guidance ignores all of the other precedent that creates settled law as to how the FCC evaluates eligibility for an exemption on which broadcast shows have relied." While the FCC cited its Jay Leno decision, Feld said the Leno ruling was "merely one of a long line of FCC decisions expanding the definition of 'news interview' and 'news show.'"

The FCC started loosening its definitions of news shows and news interviews in the mid-1980s, Feld wrote. "In what many consider a landmark decision in 1984, the FCC held that the Phil Donahue Show—a daytime interview show—qualified as a bona fide news show and that interviews on the show were bona fide news interviews if they met the same criteria as those on traditional news shows," he wrote. "The FCC rapidly broadened the range of shows to include mixed entertainment/news programs such as Good Morning America, Sally Jessy Raphael (much more 'tabloid' style), and Howard Stern (back when he was a 'shock jock' on broadcast)."

The long line of FCC decisions indicated that "the fact that a program included segments designed solely for entertainment did not automatically disqualify an appearance by a candidate from the exemption provided (a) the candidate was selected by the show for 'newsworthiness;' (b) the show was regularly scheduled (and therefore not a campaign event); and (c) the show controlled the interview questions and editing," Feld wrote.

Feld said the FCC public notice indicates that under the current leadership, even traditional news shows might not be given the bona fide exemption if the FCC determines the show is "designed to 'advance the candidacy' of a particular individual." If Carr punishes ABC or another network, the target might be able to prove in court that the FCC overstepped its authority. But as seen in the Kimmel episode, Carr doesn't need to take any official action to cause a problem for a media company.

"As is often the case, the fact that a broadcaster would ultimately win if it ever got to court matters less than the pain selective enforcement causes," Feld wrote.

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