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In a rare disclosure, the U.S. Space Force announced that its secretive X-37B spaceplane will execute a series of maneuvers before returning back to Earth. SpaceNews reports: The reusable spacecraft, which has been in orbit since December 28, 2023, will perform aerobraking maneuvers to alter its trajectory around Earth, the Space Force said Oct. 10. This technique involves making multiple passes through the planet's upper atmosphere, using atmospheric drag to modify the vehicle's orbit while conserving fuel. These maneuvers also are intended to showcase responsible space operations, the Space Force said. The aerobraking enables the spaceplane to change orbits and comply with space debris mitigation rules by safely discarding the service module. The X-37B, manufactured by Boeing, is jointly operated by the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Since its launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the spaceplane has been conducting radiation effect experiments and testing space domain awareness technologies in a highly elliptical orbit. [...] After completing its aerobraking maneuvers, the X-37B will resume its testing and experimentation objectives. Once these are accomplished, the vehicle will de-orbit and return to Earth, utilizing its autonomous landing system to touch down horizontally like a conventional aircraft. The Space Force has not disclosed the expected duration of the current mission.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, NYC-based software developer Nick Spreen received a surprising alert on his iPhone 15 Pro, delivered through an early test version of Apple's upcoming Apple Intelligence text message summary feature. "No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment," the AI-penned message reads, summing up the content of several separate breakup texts from his girlfriend -- that arrived on his birthday, no less. Spreen shared a screenshot of the AI-generated message in a now-viral tweet on the X social network, writing, "for anyone who's wondered what an apple intelligence summary of a breakup text looks like." Spreen told Ars Technica that the screenshot does not show his ex-girlfriend's full real name, just a nickname. This summary feature of Apple Intelligence, announced by the iPhone maker in June, isn't expected to fully ship until an iOS 18.1 update in the fall. However, it has been available in a public beta test of iOS 18 since July, which is what Spreen is running on his iPhone. It works akin to something like a stripped-down ChatGPT, reading your incoming text messages and delivering its own simplified version of their content. On X, Spreen replied to skepticism over whether the message was real in a follow-up post. "Yes this was real / yes it happened yesterday / yes it was my birthday," Spreen wrote. In response to a question about it being a fair summary of his girlfriend's messages, he wrote, "it is." We reached out to Spreen directly via email and he delivered his own summary of his girlfriend's messages. "It was something along the lines of i can't believe you just did that, we're done, i want my stuff. we had an argument in a bar and I got up and left, then she sent the text," he wrote. How did he feel about getting the news via AI summary? "I do feel like it added a level of distance to it that wasn't a bad thing," he told Ars Technica. "Maybe a bit like a personal assistant who stays professional and has your back even in the most awful situations, but yeah, more than anything it felt unreal and dystopian."

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At Tesla's "We, Robot" event at Warner Bros. Studios tonight, Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Cybercab, Robovan, and an updated version of the Optimus robot. Slashdot is at the event capturing photos and getting demos of everything announced. You can follow along on X. Below is a summary of each of the offerings. Tesla Cybercab: The Tesla Cybercab is a futuristic, fully autonomous robotaxi designed without a steering wheel or pedals, positioned to revolutionize mass transit with extremely low operating costs. It features a sleek design with upward-opening butterfly doors and a compact cabin that seats two passengers. Musk said the Cybercab uses inductive charging instead of a traditional plug-in. "Something we're also doing is and it's really high time we did this is inductive charging. So the robotaxi has no plug it just goes over the inductive charger and charges so yeah, it's kind of how it should be." The vehicle is expected to cost under $30,000. Regulatory approval will be needed before it can go into production, which is projected to begin by 2026 or 2027. Tesla Robovan: The Tesla Robovan is a dustbuster-shaped electric passenger van featuring sliding glass doors, a bright interior, and carriage-style seating for up to 20 passengers. "One of the things we want to do and we've seen this with the CyberTruck is we want to change the look of the roads the future should look like the future," said Musk. Musk also claimed that autonomy will "turn parking lots into parks," as fewer cars will be needed and they won't sit idle for most of the day. Pricing and release details were not disclosed. Tesla Optimus: The updated Tesla Optimus robot is a humanoid designed to handle everyday tasks, such as retrieving packages or serving drinks. Optimus walked on stage and interacted with attendees, though its current capabilities are still limited. Elon Musk envisions the robot as a transformative product, with plans to produce millions of units at a price of around $20,000. "It'll be able to do anything you want. So it can be a teacher, babysit your kids, it can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks. Whatever you can think of, it will do." Optimus is expected to start performing useful tasks by the end of the year, with broader availability projected by the end of next year. In closing, Musk said: "I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind. Because I think everyone of the 8 billion people of Earth, I think everyone's going to want their Optimus buddy." Developing...

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AMD is launching a new chip to rival Nvidia's upcoming Blackwell chips, which Nvidia called the "world's most powerful chip" for AI when unveiled earlier this year. CNBC reports: The Instinct MI325X, as the chip is called, will start production before the end of 2024, AMD said Thursday during an event announcing the new product. If AMD's AI chips are seen by developers and cloud giants as a close substitute for Nvidia's products, it could put pricing pressure on Nvidia, which has enjoyed roughly 75% gross margins while its GPUs have been in high demand over the past year. In the past few years, Nvidia has dominated the majority of the data center GPU market, but AMD is historically in second place. Now, AMD is aiming to take share from its Silicon Valley rival or at least to capture a big chunk of the market, which it says will be worth $500 billion by 2028. AMD didn't reveal new major cloud or internet customers for its Instinct GPUs at the event, but the company has previously disclosed that both Meta and Microsoft buy its AI GPUs and that OpenAI uses them for some applications. The company also did not disclose pricing for the Instinct MI325X, which is typically sold as part of a complete server. With the launch of the MI325X, AMD is accelerating its product schedule to release new chips on an annual schedule to better compete with Nvidia and take advantage of the boom in AI chips. The new AI chip is the successor to the MI300X, which started shipping late last year. AMD's 2025 chip will be called MI350, and its 2026 chip will be called MI400, the company said.

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TechCrunch's Carly Page reports: Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest asset managers, has confirmed that over 77,000 customers had personal information compromised during an August data breach, including Social Security numbers and driver's licenses. The Boston, Massachusetts-based investment firm said in a filing with Maine's attorney general on Wednesday that an unnamed third party accessed information from its systems between August 17 and August 19 "using two customer accounts that they had recently established." "We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took steps to terminate the access," Fidelity said in a letter sent to those affected, adding that the incident did not involve any access to customers' Fidelity accounts. Fidelity confirmed that a total of 77,099 customers were affected by the breach, and its completed review of the compromised data determined that customers' personal information was affected. When reached by TechCrunch, Fidelity did not say how the creation of two Fidelity customer accounts allowed access to the data of thousands of other customers. In another data breach notice filed with New Hampshire's attorney general, Fidelity revealed that the third party "accessed and retrieved certain documents related to Fidelity customers and other individuals by submitting fraudulent requests to an internal database that housed images of documents pertaining to Fidelity customers." Fidelity said the data breach included customers' Social Security numbers and driver's licenses, according to a separate data breach notice filed by Fidelity with the Massachusetts' attorney general. No information about the breach was found on Fidelity's website at the time of writing.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Amazon might not have ChatGPT, but it has a roadmap that includes developing even more advanced forms of artificial intelligence -- including AI agents that are hell-bent on helping you buy stuff. The ecommerce company is already sprinkling ChatGPT-like AI over its website and apps -- today announcing, among other enhancements, AI-generated shopping guides for hundreds of different product categories. Executives at the company say its engineers are also exploring more ambitious AI services, including autonomous AI shopping agents that recommend goods to a customer or even add items to their cart. "It's on our roadmap. We're working on it, prototyping it, and when we think it's good enough, we'll release it in whatever form makes sense," says Trishul Chilimbi, a VP and distinguished scientist at Amazon who works on applying the company's core AI to its products and services. Chilimbi says the first step toward AI agents will likely be chatbots that proactively recommend products based on what they know of your habits and interests, as well as a grasp of broader trends. He acknowledges that making this feel nonintrusive will be crucial. "If it's no good and annoying, then you'll tune it out," he says. "But if it comes up with surprising things that are interesting, you'll use it more." [...] Like many tech companies, Amazon is looking beyond chat and turning its attention toward the potential of so-called agents, which use LLMs but attempt to carry out useful tasks on users' behalf either by writing code on-the-fly, inputing text, or moving a computer's cursor. Future AI agents might, for instance, navigate various websites to sort out a parking ticket, or they might operate a PC to file a tax return. Getting LLM-powered programs to do this reliably is elusive, however, because such tasks are vastly more complex than simple queries and require a new level of precision and reliability. Amazon's agents are, of course, likely to be more focused on helping customers find and buy whatever they need or want. A Rufus agent might notice when the next book in a series someone is reading becomes available and then automatically recommend it, add it to your cart, or even buy it for you, says Rajiv Mehta, a vice president at Amazon who works on conversational AI shopping. "It could say, 'We have one bought for you. We can ship it today, and it will arrive tomorrow morning at your door. Would you like that?'" Mehta says. He adds that Amazon is thinking about how advertising can be incorporated into its model's recommendation. Chilimbi and Mehta say that eventually, an agent might go on a shopping spree when a customer says, "I'm going on a camping trip, buy me everything I need." An extreme, though not impossible, scenario would involve agents that decide for themselves when a customer needs something, and then buy and ship it to their door. "You could maybe give it a budget," Chilimbi says with a grin.

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Ubuntu 24.10 'Oracular Oriole', the latest version of the popular Linux distro, introduces several enhancements including a revamped GNOME Initial Setup for ARM64 devices, updated file management features, and a more seamless experience with dialog boxes that adjust to aspect ratios. Celebrating Ubuntu's 20th anniversary, this release also "offers a few touches for those who want to go down memory lane," reports Tom's Hardware. "When the system boots up, you'll see the 20 Years Ubuntu logo right at the bottom of the screen. You can also set the desktop background to the original Ubuntu 4.10 wallpaper, and a Warty Brown accent color is an available option if you want to complete the feel. To round out the experience, Ubuntu 24.10 uses the original startup sound from 4.10, which plays every time you log in." From the report: The most significant change, as OMG! Ubuntu notes that ARM64 devices now use GNOME Initial Setup, which offers a cleaner, slicker way of setting up the operating system after the first install. When I set up Ubuntu 24.10 in a virtual machine in my MacBook Air, it felt easier to install and use than my MacBook and Windows laptops. We also get updated dialog boxes that adjust based on the Windows aspect ratio, making it useful for portrait devices like smartphones and tablets. Several other quality-of-life updates in Ubuntu 24.10, like new File Manager features, make navigating your bookmarks and internal drives easier on the sidebar. Apps also now use the default File Manager when browsing your hard drive, providing a more seamless experience. And, if you run a search on non-indexed folders, you'll find an info button that will explain why your search query is taking longer than usual.

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Microsoft is enhancing passkey support in Windows 11 with a redesigned Windows Hello experience that allows users to sync passkeys to their Microsoft account or third-party providers like 1Password and Bitwarden. The Verge reports: A new API for third-party password and passkey managers means developers can plug directly into the Windows 11 experience, so you can use the same passkey from your mobile device to authenticate on your PC. Right now it's possible in some apps to do this through QR codes and other ways to authenticate from a mobile device, but Microsoft's full support means the passkeys experience on Windows is about to get a lot better. Microsoft is also redesigning the Windows Hello prompt, including the ability to setup syncing of passkeys to your Microsoft account or saving them elsewhere. Once you've completed a one-time setup process you can use facial recognition, fingerprint, or PIN to authenticate with a passkey across multiple Windows 11 devices. Windows Insiders will get access to these new passkey features "in the coming months."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The Internet Archive and Wayback Machine went down on Tuesday following a sustained cyber attack. In addition, the Archive's user data has been compromised. If you've ever logged into the site to pore over its ample archives, it's time to change your passwords. [...] A pro-Palestenian hacktivist group called SN_BLACKMETA has taken responsibility for the hack on X and Telegram. "They are under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of 'Israel,'" the group said on X when someone asked them why they'd gone after the Archive. The group elaborated on its reasoning in a now-deleted post on X. Jason Scott, an archivist at the Archive, screenshotted it and shared it. "Everyone calls this organization 'non-profit', but if its roots are truly in the United States, as we believe, then every 'free' service they offer bleeds millions of lives. Foreign nations are not carrying their values beyond their borders. Many petty children are crying in the comments and most of those comments are from a group of Zionist bots and fake accounts," the post said. SN_BLACKMETA also claimed responsibility for a six-day DDoS attack on the Archive back in May. "Since the attacks began on Sunday, the DDoS intrusion has been launching tens of thousands of fake information requests per second. The source of the attack is unknown," Chris Freeland, Director of Library Services at the Archive said in a post about the attacks back in May. SN_BLACKMETA launched its Telegram channel on November 23 and has claimed responsibility for a number of other attacks including a six-day DDoS run at Arab financial institutions and various attacks on Israeli tech companies in the spring.

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The FBI created a cryptocurrency as part of an investigation into price manipulation in crypto markets, the government revealed on Wednesday. From a report: The FBI's Ethereum-based token, NexFundAI, was created with the help of "cooperating witnesses." As a result of the investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged three "market makers" and nine people for allegedly engaging in schemes to boost the prices of certain crypto assets. The Department of Justice charged 18 people and entities for "widespread fraud and manipulation" in crypto markets. The defendants allegedly made false claims about their tokens and executed so-called "wash trades" to create the impression of an active trading market, prosecutors claim. The three market makers -- ZMQuant, CLS Global, and MyTrade -- allegedly wash traded or conspired to wash trade on behalf of NexFundAI, an Ethereum-based token they didn't realize was created by the FBI. "What the FBI uncovered in this case is essentially a new twist to old-school financial crime," Jodi Cohen, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston division, said in a statement. "What we uncovered has resulted in charges against the leadership of four cryptocurrency companies, and four crypto 'market makers' and their employees who are accused of spearheading a sophisticated trading scheme that allegedly bilked honest investors out of millions of dollars."

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A new study suggests game piracy costs publishers 19% of revenue on average when digital rights management (DRM) protections are cracked. Research associate William Volckmann at UNC analyzed 86 games using Denuvo DRM on Steam between 2014-2022. The study, published in Entertainment Computing, found cracks appearing in the first week after release led to 20% revenue loss, dropping to 5% for cracks after six weeks. Volckmann used Steam user reviews and player counts as proxies for sales data.

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smooth wombat writes: The Windows 11 24H2 update has had a host of issues associated with it including disappearing mouse cursors and blue screens related to Intel drivers. Now comes word that the new update leaves behind over 8 GB of undeletable cache files. According to Windows Latest, attempts to delete the cache via the Control Panel are unsuccessful. Although you can select the cache for deletion and initiate the deletion process, the cache remains. Various other methods to remove the Windows update cache failed, too. It only cleared after a clean Windows installation altogether.

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Any breach of what climate scientists agree is the safer limit on global warming would result in "irreversible consequences" for the planet, said a major academic study published on Wednesday. From a eport: Even temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius before bringing temperatures back down -- a scenario known as an "overshoot" -- could cause sea level rises and other disastrous repercussions that might last millenia. This "does away with the notion that overshoot delivers a similar climate outcome" to a future where more was done earlier to curb global warming, said Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, who led the study co-authored by 30 scientists. The findings, three years in the making, are urgent, as the goal of capping global temperature rises at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is slipping out of reach. Emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases must nearly halve by 2030 if the world is to reach 1.5C -- the more ambitious target enshrined in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

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The European Union has delayed the introduction of a new biometric entry-check system for non-EU citizens, which was due to be introduced on Nov. 10, after Germany, France and the Netherlands said border computer systems were not yet ready. From a report: "Nov. 10 is no longer on the table," EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told reporters. She said there was no new timetable, but that the possibility of a phased introduction was being looked at. The Entry/Exit System (EES) is supposed to create a digital record linking a travel document to biometric readings confirming a person's identity, removing the need to manually stamp passports at the EU's external border. It would require non-EU citizens arriving in the Schengen free-travel area to register their fingerprints, provide a facial scan and answer questions about their stay.

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An anonymous reader writes: A massive storm has been raging on Jupiter for centuries, and, for the most part, has appeared very serious. A new series of detailed images, however, revealed that the famous red cyclone can get a little squiggly, bulging into different shapes and sizes over a short period of time. Astronomers used the Hubble space telescope to look at Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) from December 2023 to March 2024, and they observed the massive storm changing dimensions over the 90-day period. The reason behind this unexpected shapeshifting is unknown, but it revealed that the famous red storm is not as stable as it seemed. The results of the Hubble observations are detailed in a study published Wednesday in The Planetary Science Journal. Using Hubble's observations, the team of astronomers behind the new study measured the Great Red Spot's size, shape, brightness, color, and vorticity over one full oscillation cycle. The combined images act like a time-lapse of the storm's changing behavior, revealing its famous red eye varying in size, while its core gets brighter when the Great Red Spot is at its largest during the 90-day cycle.

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Retailers across the U.S. are grappling with the aftermath of Redbox's bankruptcy, tasked with removing 24,000 abandoned DVD-dispensing machines. CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and others are facing logistical challenges and potential safety hazards, according to WSJ. The 890-pound kiosks, often hardwired into stores' electrical systems, require specialized removal. Further reading: Redbox App Axed, Dashing People's Hopes of Keeping Purchased Content.

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Intel has announced its new Arrow Lake desktop processors, marking a significant shift in the company's approach to chip design and power efficiency. The Core Ultra 200S series, set to launch on October 24, 2024, introduces a disaggregated architecture manufactured using TSMC's advanced nodes. The flagship Core Ultra 9 285K boasts 24 cores (8 performance, 16 efficiency) and can boost up to 5.7 GHz, priced at $589. Intel claims the new chips offer comparable performance to their predecessors while consuming significantly less power, with reductions of up to 136 watts in some gaming scenarios. Arrow Lake utilizes a tiled design, combining compute, GPU, SoC, and I/O components manufactured by TSMC and packaged using Intel's Foveros technology. The compute tile is built on TSMC's N3B process, while the GPU tile uses TSMC's N5P, and the I/O and SoC tiles are on TSMC's N6. Intel's Roger Chandler stated, "Arrow Lake picks up the mantle of Raptor Lake's top-end gaming performance and delivers parity performance at about half the power." Intel acknowledges that gaming performance may lag slightly behind the previous generation, with a 5% deficit in some benchmarks compared to the Core i9-14900K. The company is positioning Arrow Lake as a balanced solution, emphasizing power efficiency and content creation capabilities. The new processors require a new LGA 1851 socket and Z890 chipset, necessitating motherboard upgrades. Memory support extends to DDR5-6400, with XMP profiles potentially reaching DDR5-8000.

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David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder and chief technology officer of Basecamp-maker 37signals, has criticized Automattic's demand for 8% of vendor WP Engine's revenues as a violation of open source principles and the GPL license. He argues this, among other things, undermines the clarity and certainty of open source licensing, threatening its integrity beyond WordPress. He writes: Ruby on Rails, the open-source web framework I created, has been used to create businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars combined. Some of those businesses express their gratitude and self-interest by supporting the framework with dedicated developers, membership of The Rails Foundation, or conference sponsorships. But many also do not! And that is absolutely their right, even if it occasionally irks a little. That's the deal. That's open source. I give you a gift of code, you accept the terms of the license. There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations that might suddenly apply, if you strike it rich using the software. Then the license is meaningless, the clarity all muddled, and certainty lost. Look, Automattic can change their license away from the GPL any time they wish. The new license will only apply to new code, though, and WP Engine, or anyone else, are eligible to fork the project. That's what happened with Redis after Redis Labs dropped their BSD license and went with a commercial source-available alternative. Valkey was forked from the last free Redis version, and now that's where anyone interested in an open-source Redis implementation is likely to go. But I suspect Automattic wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to retain WordPress' shine of open source, but also be able to extract their pound of flesh from any competitor that might appear, whenever they see fit. Screw that.

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Porch pirates across the country for months have been snatching FedEx packages that contain AT&T iPhones -- within minutes or even seconds of delivery. From a report: The key to these swift crimes, investigators say: The thieves are armed with tracking numbers. Another factor that makes packages from AT&T particularly vulnerable is that AT&T typically doesn't require signature on delivery. Doorbell camera videos show the thefts in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Michigan, Georgia, Florida and Texas. The details are similar: A FedEx driver drops off a box with an iPhone from AT&T. Then a person walks up -- sometimes wearing an Amazon delivery vest -- and plucks the package off the front step. The heist can be so quick that in some videos, the FedEx driver and thief cross paths. "They know what's getting delivered and the location," said Detective Lt. Matt Arsenault from the Gardner Police Department in Massachusetts, which is investigating several recent thefts. "They meet the delivery driver at the front door and take it." Since the pandemic, parcel carriers have reported a rise in porch thefts as workers have returned to offices and fewer people are home during the day to receive packages. Now, a spate of thefts that began a few months ago is targeting FedEx deliveries for AT&T. The two companies said they were working with law enforcement to investigate, and declined to disclose how many such packages have been stolen.

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is fighting misinformation on top of a major storm cleanup in Florida as Hurricane Milton rapidly intensifies just after Hurricane Helene rocked the state. From a report: FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters on a call Tuesday that misinformation around the storms is "absolutely the worst I have ever seen," according to Politico. FEMA posted a rumor response page about the hurricane, and though it's not the first time it's taken that kind of approach, Criswell said, "I anticipated some of this, but not to the extent that we're seeing." FEMA's rumor response page includes fact-checks to claims made by former President Donald Trump, like that the agency will only provide $750 to disaster survivors. FEMA says that's just the amount provided quickly through "Serious Needs Assistance" for food and emergency supplies, but survivors could still be eligible for other types of funds, too. Other fact-checks include debunking the false claim that FEMA disaster response resources were diverted to border issues. FEMA says "Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts."

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