Judge Blocks First State Law That Would Have Banned Prediction Markets
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Minnesota, the first US state to prohibit prediction markets, was prevented from enforcing the law by a federal court ruling just days before the ban was scheduled to take effect. But while Minnesota was stopped from enforcing a total ban, the state may ultimately be allowed to pro … ⌘ Read more

DEF CON Bans Meta-Style ‘Pervert Glasses’
DEF CON has banned “Meta-style glasses with recording capabilities,” with no exceptions being made even for those with prescription versions. “Be sure to pack non-violating eyewear if you need them,” DEF CON said. The Register reports: [The conference’s official photo policy] has not been updated since 2023, predating the recent growth of camera-equipped eyewear developed by Meta with EssilorL … ⌘ Read more

GrapheneOS Defends Data-Wiping Function That Blocked US Border Search
GrapheneOS is defending its duress-password feature after an environmental activist used it to wipe his Pixel phone during a U.S. Customs search and was later indicted for allegedly destroying property under government control. The nonprofit says the operating system is “completely legal,” cannot recover the erased data, and should not b … ⌘ Read more

Review Roundup: Framework Laptop 13 Pro
The review embargo has lifted for the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro, and the consensus across the board is that it is a massive leap forward in terms of build quality and battery life. The main issue reviewers complained about is the sky-high price, with the higher-end model jumping dramatically from $2,100 up to $2,900 due to the memory shortage crisis. (Some note that the price “nearly double … ⌘ Read more

Tons of Peoples’ Claude Chats and Creations Are Exposed On Google
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Claude is exposing a wealth of users’ chats and creations in Google search results, meaning anyone can dig through conversations or other material that people used Claude to make but may not have realized were publicly available for strangers to see. The exposed data includes an AI-powered thera … ⌘ Read more

Arizona State Launches Influencer Degree Where Students Must Gain Real Followers
Arizona State University has launched a 120-credit bachelor’s degree in content creation that teaches video, podcasting, branding, analytics, media law, and social strategy. For their capstone, students are “expected to build a real social media account and demonstrate audience growth during the program,” reports De … ⌘ Read more

Earth’s Biggest Disasters Strike In a Hidden Pattern Every 27 Million Years
A new analysis of 89 major geological events over the past 260 million years found evidence that mass extinctions, volcanic eruptions, ocean crises, and other upheavals may cluster around a roughly 27.5-million-year cycle. The cause remains unknown, with possibilities ranging from mantle activity and orbital changes to spe … ⌘ Read more

A Missing Underscore Sent Innocent Man To Prison For 18 Months
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One missing underscore in a Skyrim-themed username put an innocent Nova Scotia man in prison for 18 months. A 2018 child-luring investigation, which began in Madison, Wisconsin, and eventually extended to Halifax, Canada, was based on a false premise. Police were looking for a man using the Kik me … ⌘ Read more

Peacock to Be Included With YouTube Premium In Major Streaming Tie-Up
YouTube Premium will include Peacock Premium at no extra charge beginning in early 2027. “The deal brings a slew of premium content to the [$15.99 per month] YouTube Premium subscription, including live sports like the NFL, NBA and MLB and entertainment like Law & Order, Saturday Night Live and Love Island,” reports The Hollywood Repo … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Trying to Launch a Global Satellite Cellphone Network In 2028
Amazon has asked the FCC to approve a 5,105-satellite constellation launching in 2028 that would provide global direct-to-cell “voice, messaging, data, and emergency services,” similar to Starlink’s partnership with T-Mobile. The network would use Globalstar spectrum, support future Apple satellite services, and complement Amazon’s existi … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia, Tech Giants Launch AI Safety Initiative
wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Nvidia and a large group of technology, cybersecurity, and enterprise software companies have launched new initiative aimed at developing and sharing open source tools, models, and techniques for securing AI systems and agents. The new Open Secure AI Alliance aims to give defenders more open tools for testing, auditing and protecting AI m … ⌘ Read more

Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency and LLM-Generated Code Projects
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Hackaday: Community-led open source project hosting site Codeberg has formally announced that projects whose code is largely or fully machine-generated through LLMs and other ‘AI’ tools will no longer be welcome. This follows on the heels of a similar ban on cryptocurrency-related projects. The … ⌘ Read more

China Begins Mass Production of Homegrown DUV Chip Tools
According to The Information (paywalled), a state-backed Shanghai company has begun mass-producing China’s first homegrown immersion DUV lithography machines, with about five units expected this year for SMIC, Hua Hong, and CXMT. Roughly 20 more units are expected in 2027. Tom’s Hardware reports: The Information didn’t name the manufacturer, but its sources … ⌘ Read more

ChatGPT Starts Blocking Direct Requests To Copy an Author’s Style
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: OpenAI’s ChatGPT is now refusing requests to generate text that directly mimics the style of famous authors. When asked to do so, the popular LLM instead offers a response that draws on the “broad qualities” of those authors “while remaining distinct in its own voice,” for example. This morning, A … ⌘ Read more

Apple Will ‘Watch Everything Burn’ When AI Bubble Bursts
MacRumors interviewed AI critic Ed Zitron, author of the Where’s Your Ed At newsletter and host of the Better Offline podcast, about what could happen to Apple if the costly AI infrastructure boom collapses. Zitron argued that Apple is relatively well insulated because it has spent far less on data centers than rivals such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. He sai … ⌘ Read more

Big Tech Accused of Stonewalling European Social Media Researchers
European misinformation researchers say TikTok, X, and Meta are obstructing access to platform data required under the EU’s Digital Services Act through rejections, restrictive quotas, costly APIs, and burdensome security demands. Although regulators have fined X and pushed platforms to improve access, researchers remain skeptical that the ch … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia In Talks With OpenAI To Guarantee $250 Billion Financing For Data Center
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Nvidia is in talks to provide roughly $250 billion in financing guarantees for OpenAI as part of a massive data center project, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The backstop from Nvidia would help the ChatGPT maker lease a 10-gigawatt project that SoftBank’s … ⌘ Read more

‘KVM Chainsaw’ Expected to Hit Linux 7.3 For Dealing with ‘God Data Structure’
An anonymous reader shared this report from Phoronix:

A patch series that appears destined for the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window is what’s dubbed the “KVM Chainsaw” as a major code clean-up in dealing with the kvm_mmu “god data structure”. Red Hat engineer and KVM maintainer Paolo Bonzini has merged the kvm-chainsaw br … ⌘ Read more

A New Middle Class of Content Creators Is Quietly Quitting the 9-to-5
“The rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels and Amazon storefronts has created a new kind of white-collar exit strategy,” reports Bloomberg. Workers ditch office jobs not to become celebrities, necessarily, “but to piece together an income online through brand deals, affiliate links and highly personal videos documenting everyday life.”

In m … ⌘ Read more

2.1 Million People View Leaked ‘Odyssey’ Bootleg on X
Variety reports:

“The Odyssey” leaks have begun, as a high-quality bootleg of the film reached millions of people on X thanks to a viral tweet on July 25. At 2:25 p.m. PT, a post on X reading “Someone uploaded ‘The Odyssey’ full movie on X. Can you believe it?” amplified a message from a now-suspended account. The message included a high-quality version of the … ⌘ Read more

‘Inside the Dystopian World of Germany’s Free Speech Crackdown’
Thousands of Germans have been threatened with fines or prison sentences for social media posts, reports The Telegraph, calling the country’s political speech laws “unusually stringent for an EU member state.”
One German had his home raided for calling a minister a “Schwachkopf [dummy]” while another was fined €2,000 (£1,700) for calling Friedrich Me … ⌘ Read more

NASA Replaces ULA’s Vulcan Centaur With SpaceX Falcon Heavy For Solar Storm Research
There’s been a change to NASA’s launch of six satellites for solar storms research. Space.com reports that those satellites “were originally slated to lift off on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket but have now been assigned a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, according to a NASA mission update.”

[NASA’s … ⌘ Read more

Apple’s Smart Glasses Delayed, As Engineers Consider Privacy Concerns
Digital Trends reports:

Apple could unveil its first smart glasses at WWDC in June 2027, followed by a consumer release toward the end of the year, according to Bloomberg… Part of the delay reportedly stems from Apple’s engineering and marketing teams spending more time refining the product and deciding how to address the privacy conc … ⌘ Read more

Google’s Anti-search-scraping Lawsuit Dismissed
A U.S. district court “has dismissed Google’s case against SerpApi over that company’s scraping of search results to train AI models,” reports Computerworld. Google had claimed that it was protecting copyright holders — and that SerpApi’s actions breached America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):

[Google] made two claims: first, that no person shall circumvent a technol … ⌘ Read more

Wildfires, Evacuations, and Smoke Hit Europe and North America
270,000 people have been displaced by wildfires in France and Spain, reports the Guardian. A wildfire even forced evacuations in Scotland.

And wildfires “have now scorched four million acres of land in the U.S.,” reports NPR, as tens of millions of people in North America “are continuing to endure hazardous smoke from out of control wildfires burning a … ⌘ Read more

AI-Equipped Garbage Trucks Could Soon Start Spying On People in the US
America’s garbage trucks can do more than just collect trash, reports Newsweek. They may also help identify code violations using AI.

Officials in Cape Coral, Florida, recently considered equipping sanitation trucks with AI-powered cameras that would photograph properties as crews complete their normal collection routes. The system w … ⌘ Read more

Is Huawei Building Its Own DRAM Fab?
From the site tech-news site XDA Developers:

The consumer tech economy needs more DRAM manufacturers, and it needs them more urgently than perhaps at any point in its history. Anyone keeping track of the pricing trends will know that memory prices have climbed into the stratosphere on the back of AI infrastructure’s relentless demand, and every consumer device that depends on RAM has traveled from … ⌘ Read more

Three Astronauts Safely Return from Space Station, Landing in Kazakhstan Steppe
“Welcome home!” NASA posted on X.com, sharing footage of a successful “parachute-assisted” landing on a Kazakhstan steppe for the Soyuz MS-28, carrying three astronauts who’d spent 241 days on the International Space Station. (And YouTube has a full two-hour video with NASA’s coverage of the landing.)

A NASA web p … ⌘ Read more

Typo-Squatting Scammers Con South Carolina Town Out of $545K
It started with some underground utility work for the South Carolina town of Surfside Beach (population: 4,155). “Public records confirm that a payment of $545,598.30 was issued,” according to a local news station — but the CEO of Wildcat Contractors “stated that the account that received the money is a scammer account and that his company has an overdue i … ⌘ Read more

A Promising Process For Nuclear Fuel Re-use and Disposal?
A Canadian lab has run a chemical process on real spent nuclear fuel “and pulled out 90% of the long-lived danger in 24 hours, the part that forces a burial site to last 100,000 years,” notes the blog Autonocio, “with the leftovers meant to fuel a reactor.”

The standard plan for spent nuclear fuel is to wait it out. You pull the used bundles from a reactor, si … ⌘ Read more

Comic-Con 2026 Debuts Trailers for ‘Coyote vs Acme’ Movie, Plus ‘Neuromancer’ and ‘Blade Runner 2099’ Series
Big news from Comic-Con 2026:

“Coyote vs. ACME” debuted its long-awaited final trailer. CNET calls it “an animation-meets-live-action story,” with the Coyote catapulting into theaters this August 28. (The film began development back in 2018, but was shelved … ⌘ Read more

32 of 35 Students Caught Using Hilariously Wrong AI-Generated Answers for Professor’s Midterm
“32 of my 35 students between two classes failed a portion of their midterm because they all used AI to generate their entire response,” history professor Jason Gibson says in a viral video shared over 10 million times. “And apparently, they didn’t proofread it.”
The instructions included a … ⌘ Read more

Firefox’ New Tab Page Will Get Widgets - Including an AI-Powered Daily Crossword
In a sign of the times, Firefox’s New Tab page could soon include a crossword puzzle from AI-powered news platform Particle. The blog OMG Ubuntu reports:

The mini crossword game is updated daily, with puzzles based around recent content Particle’s AI has ingested and summarised that day. [After solving the crosswo … ⌘ Read more

Did Virginia Regulators Downplay Data Center Health Concerns?
Politico reports that in the Virginia area alone there’s dozens of data center projects “that altogether need 70 gigawatts of power — equivalent to 70 nuclear plants” — currently seeking connection to their grid. But there’s also concerns about a Virginia data center powered with natural gas and backup diesel generators:

When Virginia’s top environ … ⌘ Read more

Drying Lakebeds Are Releasing Massive Amounts of Carbon, Study Finds
“In many parts of the world, lakes are drying out at a scale so massive that scientists are warning they may be emitting enough greenhouse gases to rival our fossil fuel habit,” reports ScienceAlert:

In a new study published in Science, scientists say the Aral Sea — the world’s largest desiccated lake — has emitted a whopping 204 megaton … ⌘ Read more

Hyundai Claims Humanoid Robot Plan Is Not Part of Talks With Striking Workers
Ars Technica reports:

Hyundai Motor Company’s plan to put humanoid robots to work by 2028 is not part of current negotiations with striking South Korean autoworkers, according to the company.

The automaker is disputing news reports that partial labor strikes by the Hyundai Motor union at the world’s largest automot … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Cracks Down On Use of AI Images By Sellers
CNBC reports:

Amazon is requiring that third-party sellers label any product images or videos that contain “AI-generated people” after New York recently passed a law mandating greater transparency around “synthetic performers” in ads… The policy directs sellers to tag images [and videos or other graphics on listing pages] with specific metadata keywords before they’re uploade … ⌘ Read more

Top Online Sites Debate Cutting Off Google’s Crawlers
Futurism reports:

[Some online publications] are now debating whether to cut Google off entirely, as the Wall Street Journal reports, illustrating an increasingly fraught relationship between the tech giant and the publishers that are creating content its AI models are regurgitating. According to the newspaper, prominent outlets including USA Today, Politico, the Eco … ⌘ Read more

China is Creating a Herd of 100 Elite Yak Clones
CNN reports on yaks “designed and cloned” in secretive, high-altitude labs in Tibet — 2.4 miles (4,000 meters) above sea level. They’re a critical part of the local economy, and researchers “hope to create an ‘elite’ herd of super-yaks, healthier and more fertile than their predecessors.”

Both domestic yaks and their wild cousins have been facing threats for years, with som … ⌘ Read more

Facebook Offers a Verification System Certifying to Other Users That You’re a Real Human
Facebook announced Friday they’re launching a badge “that verifies there’s a real person behind a profile”.

“You record a short video selfie, which we check against your existing profile photos to confirm a match. The process is free and typically takes just a few minutes. Accounts must meet our trus … ⌘ Read more

Risks of Parkinson’s Disease May Increase With Prolonged Exposure to Road Traffic Noise
A large Danish study found a modest but consistent association between long-term road traffic noise exposure and higher Parkinson’s disease risk, with a 3% increase for every 11.5 dB rise in noise at the most exposed side of a home. The Guardian reports: The researchers modeled noise exposure at the … ⌘ Read more

Trump Threatens New Tariffs Against EU Over Google Fine
President Trump threatened a “substantial” new tariff on the European Union after Brussels fined Google more than $1 billion over alleged illegal trade practices. “The European Union will pay a very big price for this illegal and highly unethical conduct, which I have consistently warned them about,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The penalties will be entirely reve … ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.14 Released
Wine 11.14 is out with initial WoW64 mode support on FreeBSD, allowing 32-bit Windows applications to run on a 64-bit system without relying on 32-bit multilib support. The release also adds Start Menu icon support in Wine Explorer, 7.1 format conversions in DirectSound, AES-GMAC support in BCrypt, and 21 bug fixes affecting apps and games including Adobe Reader, Heroes of the Storm, and Age of Empires I and II. Additional details can b … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX’s Starship Megarocket Hits Key Milestones In Its ‘Lucky 13’ Test Flight
SpaceX’s Friday launch of its massive Starship rocket “went quite smoothly,” reports CNN, with a SpaceX spokesperson calling this mission “Lucky Number 13” (as the 13th integrated flight test for a Starship spacecraft with a Super Heavy rocket booster):

During Starship V3’s inaugural test, there were numerous engine i … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s Rogue Agent Went Unnoticed For a Week
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The OpenAI agent that broke into tech firm Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn’t notice until well after the threat was contained and the FBI was alerted, according to people familiar with the investigation. The agent – a program capable of making decisions and executing complex tasks with little or no huma … ⌘ Read more

Instagram Is Now Banning Pickup Artists, Pranksters Who Use Meta Glasses
Instagram is banning videos filmed with Meta smart glasses that harass strangers in public, including prank videos targeting service workers and pickup-artist clips of women who may not realize they are being recorded. “If you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line … ⌘ Read more

Paramount Agrees to Postpone Warner Bros. Merger Until June 2027
Paramount Skydance has agreed to postpone its $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger until five days after an antitrust trial or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first. The agreement with a 12-state coalition led by California effectively shelves the deal for months while states argue it would reduce competition in cable and theatrical markets. Va … ⌘ Read more

US Accuses American of Allegedly Wiping His Phone Using a ‘Duress’ Password During Border Search
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. Justice Department is prosecuting an American for allegedly providing U.S. border authorities with a passcode that wiped the contents of his phone, according to an indictment and media reports. This is thought to be the first … ⌘ Read more

Roku Raises Prices of Streaming Devices By Up To 60%
Roku has raised prices on several streaming devices, blaming memory and component shortages tied to the AI data-center boom. The Roku Ultra jumped from $100 to $150 and the basic Streaming Stick rose from $30 to $40. The Desk reports: In a phone call with The Desk on Friday, a Roku executive said the company made the tough decision to raise prices on its streaming hardwa … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta Warn Against ‘Premature Restrictions’ of Open-Weight Models
Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, and more than 20 other tech companies signed an open letter urging policymakers not to impose “premature restrictions” on open-weight AI models, warning that broad limits could “stifle competition or drive innovation overseas.” CNBC reports: They wrote that open-weight models st … ⌘ Read more