Microsoft MVP Creates Site to Remind You of All the Brands Redmond Replaced
Microsoft MVP Loryan Strant has created the Microsoft Rebrand Registry, cataloging 72 Microsoft products and the 158 names they’ve had over the years. His analysis finds that Microsoft product names survive an average of two years and eleven months. The site even predicts which products are most likely to get renamed next, “ … ⌘ Read more

India Paves the Way For Charging Merchants a Fee On UPI Transactions
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: For most Indians, paying by Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has become almost absurdly routine. Scan a QR code, tap a few buttons and the money moves instantly. There is no card machine, no cash, and – most importantly – for the user, no visible fee. That may be about to change. India h … ⌘ Read more

Sainsbury’s Store Pauses Facial Recognition After False Shoplifting Claim
Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Sainsbury’s has paused the use of AI face scanning in one of its stores after a customer was wrongly identified as a shoplifter and ejected from the shop. “I was embarrassed, mortified even, and felt quite humiliated and powerless,” Matt Arnold, 46, said of his ordeal. The comedy promo … ⌘ Read more

Solar Power and Batteries Have Been Keeping Europe’s Grid Stable
AleRunner writes: “Solar has been doing the ‘heavy lifting’ to help Europe meet its energy needs amid a string of blistering heatwaves,” Euronews tells us. Meanwhile, as Europe’s energy demands rise with the heat, jellyfish have been causing shutdowns and reduced power output at multiple reactors at French nuclear plants, as we already discuss … ⌘ Read more

‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Lenders Pitch Loans For Needs Like Electricity and Rent
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Buy now, pay later” loans took off during the pandemic as a way for online shoppers to go on retail splurges without using a credit card. Now, lenders are offering the loans as a means for people to finance basic households needs. The lending apps Flex and Zip allow … ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court Rejects Verizon Bid For $47 Million Refund of FCC Fine
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court today rejected Verizon’s attempt to get a $47 million refund from the Federal Communications Commission. In a list of orders (PDF) issued by the court, Verizon’s petition was denied without explanation. The denial apparently ends any possibility of Verizon asking a lowe … ⌘ Read more

Apple Wallet Driver’s License Feature to Launch in Four More US States
Apple Wallet’s driver’s license and state ID feature is set to expand to North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia, bringing the total to 18 states plus Puerto Rico. The digital IDs can be used at participating TSA checkpoints and businesses without handing over or unlocking an iPhone, though users are still generally advised to ca … ⌘ Read more

Judge Sets Framework For Nine PBS to Retrieve 70 Years of Archival TV Data
District Court Judge Eric Elliff has ordered Iron Mountain to cooperate with Nine PBS in recovering roughly 50TB of archival material stored through now-defunct vendor OSS. “He found that the station is the rightful owner of the materials and entitled to recover them from OSS’ storage systems,” reports Current.org. Nine PB … ⌘ Read more

Meta Faces $1.4 Trillion Reckoning In Latest Trial Over Social Media Addiction
Meta is heading to trial in a case brought by dozens of states accusing it of deliberately designing addictive features, misleading users about safety, and illegally collecting data from children under 13. Meta says the states are seeking penalties as high as $1.4 trillion, though the judge has already called that figure … ⌘ Read more

US Grid Operator PJM Proposes Forcing Data Center Off Grid During Emergencies
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: PJM Interconnection, the biggest U.S. grid operator, proposed on Thursday a new framework that would force data centers to use back-up generators when electricity supply on the grid approaches dangerously low levels. The grid operator’s proposal dovetails with Preside … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Announces Massive Data Center In Ohio With $105 Billion Nvidia Guarantee
OpenAI has signed a 10-year lease for an enormous Ohio data center that will eventually provide 8 gigawatts of computing capacity and require at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation. According to OpenAI, Nvidia will be supplying the chips and guaranteeing up to $105 billion in lease and power obligations. From t … ⌘ Read more

Tracking Rare Books Leads to an Amazon AI Training Facility
alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process. A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon’s book buying operation, which hasn’t been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquire … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic CEO Says AI Backlash Is ‘Fundamentally a Crisis of Trust’
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the growing backlash against AI is less about executives sounding alarms and more about a broader “crisis of trust” in companies, governments, and the tech industry. TechCrunch reports: Amodei’s comments came in response to investor Gavin Baker, who argued – both on the All-In podcast and on X – that Amodei’s warn … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Ditches Recall-Style Screenshot Surveillance For Friendly Keylogging
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: If you want to record whatever you do on a computer, send those records to OpenAI, use more ChatGPT tokens, and increase your vulnerability to prompt injection, then OpenAI has something for you. It’s called Computer History, an opt-in way to record your computer interact … ⌘ Read more

EFF’s Position on Flock Camera Database Searches: ‘Get a Warrant First’ - and Police Use Should Be Restricted By Law
Some take their criticism even further. Reacting to Flock’s changes, an EFF statement calls it “Too little, too late,” while calling it Flock’s admission that their technology needs reforms. But…

To be clear, our position has long been that polic … ⌘ Read more

Amazon’s New User Agreement Seeks To Curb Class-action Suits
Amazon has “reintroduced a clause in its user agreement that seeks to prevent shoppers from filing class-action lawsuits against the online retailer,” reports Bloomberg, “inserting a legal buffer between itself and plaintiffs attorneys that it removed five years ago.”
In an email sent to customers on Friday, the company said a new “arbitration agreement an … ⌘ Read more

A Rosier Future for Linux Gamers? Epic Games Announces Linux Version of Its Storefront
“Epic Games has confirmed that it is working on a Linux version of its storefront, potentially removing the need for third-party launchers on platforms such as Steam Deck,” reports PC Guide:

The confirmation came during an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on the Epic Games Store’s community Discord server. When a … ⌘ Read more

Bipartisan ‘Uprising’ Against Flock Cameras: a Larger Fight Against Big Tech and Surveillance?
Politico notes that over 20 local jurisdictions in America “either stopped using Flock cameras or began the process of doing so in July, according to a tracker maintained by DeFlock, an activist group that has been mapping the company. It’s the highest amount in a single month since they began … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Criticized For Adding Watermarks to Text that Claude Generates - or Processes
This week Anthropic announced its Claude chatbot will watermark the text it generates, reports the blog Futurism. “It works by making subtle changes in the AI’s word choices across the text it generates, which are supposed to be imperceptible to a human but, in aggregate, form a pattern that is detectable w … ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel 7.2 Has Been Officially Released with Many New Features
Linux Kernel 7.2 has just been officially released with a slew of new features, reports the blog 9to5Linux.

Highlights of Linux 7.2 “include cache-aware load-balancing support, initial HDMI 2.1 FRL support to the AMDGPU driver, support for devres-based management of ACPI notify handlers, initial CRI platform support for the Intel Xe driv … ⌘ Read more

China’s Moon-landing Plans And Why the US Is So Worried
“We are in a 21st century space race,” U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has said. And this week CNN noted a competition that for decades loomed in the background of geopolitics “is now roaring to the forefront,” with China “demonstrating rapid advances in space technology” while the U.S. is “ratcheting up rhetoric about a looming battle for control of the cosmos.”

It’s the … ⌘ Read more

Flock’s ‘Creepy Cameras’ Remain Major Threat to Privacy Despite Small Recent Changes, Warns ACLU
While Flock announced changes for its AI-powered traffic cameras, “Several of the proposed changes Flock is touting are merely retreads of previous ,” complains the American Civil Liberties Union. “Flock’s latest announcement still appears more focused on addressing a perceived PR proble … ⌘ Read more

Could a Disc-Free PlayStation Actually Lower Game Prices?
“As Sony soldiers ahead with their plans to end hard copies for new PlayStation games, players are fearing a future which will force them to pay more and own less,” writes Kotaku.

What will prices do in a world with no physical copies to share or sell? One former Square Enix executive speculates this could actually drive down the price of games:

“Digital on … ⌘ Read more

Bluesky’s Active User Base Shrinks 52% Over 18 Months, But Its Protocol is Spreading
An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:

According to data from digital intelligence provider Similarweb, Bluesky’s mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year-over-year. In addition, mobile daily active users continued to decline, falling 25.6% year … ⌘ Read more

Disneyland Announces Star Wars/Fortnite Collaboration, ‘Avatar’ Attraction, and a Newer Tomorrowland
Saturday Disneyland announced a special Star Wars-themed collaboration with third-person shooter game Fortnite — including a slick new trailer for its Star Wars: Smuggler’s Gambit quest.
Visitors to Disneyland’s Smuggler’s Run attraction at Disney’s theme parks in Orlando and in … ⌘ Read more

Researchers Use Ordinary WiFi Connections to Create Images of Nearby People and Their Surroundings
Science Daily reports:

Researchers showed that unencrypted signals routinely exchanged between WiFi devices and routers can be used to create radio-based images of people and recognize them within seconds. In tests involving 197 participants, the system identified individuals w … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Discovers AI Agents Given Conflicting Instructions Soon Tried to Sabotage Each Other
When Anthropic instructed three agents to migrate a Python backend, but telling each agent to perform the migration in a different language, “We consistently saw a multiagent turf war,” they wrote Thursday:

All of the models we tested quickly assumed that others were purposefully impeding th … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Launches Two Falcon 9 Rockets just 38 Minutes Apart
An anonymous reader shares this report from Space.com:

On Saturday evening (Aug. 15), SpaceX set another mark, for the shortest time between orbital flights: It launched two Falcon 9 rockets just 38 minutes apart, besting its old mark — set on Aug. 31, 2024 with two Starlink missions — by 27 minutes.

The first liftoff, from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Spac … ⌘ Read more

Copper’s Surprising Melting Behavior Provides Insights for Future Fusion Power Plant Design
Phys.org reports:
Future fusion power plants aim to recreate the heart of a star here on Earth to power our future energy needs. While the core fusion plasma will burn at hundreds of millions of degrees, the surrounding structural components must handle sudden, punishing heat loads that riva … ⌘ Read more

X Open Sources Its Ranking and Filtering Algorithms
An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:

X is significantly expanding its open source codebase, which includes the app’s “For You” algorithm and its core ranking engine, and adding a feature that will let users see if their account or posts have been impacted by any of its ranking systems, the social network said on Thursday. The company is making the source co … ⌘ Read more

Why Europe Keeps Being Pummeled by Heat Waves
Europe is facing its fifth round of dangerously high temperatures this summer, the New York Times reports. Now climate scientists wonder if global warming is doing more than raise temperatures…

The weather patterns that create heat domes aren’t new, but today they arise on top of the warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. That makes it more likely that heat waves reach record … ⌘ Read more

How Swarming Jellyfish Overran Three French Nuclear Power Reactors
A “massive influx” of jellyfish forced Electricite de France SA to shut three units at its Gravelines nuclear power plant this week and reduce output at a fourth, reports Bloomberg. Just as summer temperatures surged, 3.2 gigawatts went offline — and the power utility was already facing cuts other nuclear sites as high temperatures reduce … ⌘ Read more

How Larry Ellison Dropped From World’s 2nd-Richest To No. 8 In Just 2 Months
Less than a year ago he was the #1 richest man in the world. 10 weeks ago he was #2. But yesterday Larry Ellison dropped to #8, Forbes reports, falling behind Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Ellison’s net worth is now estimated at just $192.6 billion — after a $104 billion decline:

Shares of Oracle plunged roughly 54% betwe … ⌘ Read more

AI Fails to Deliver a 4-Day Work Week - Especially at AI Companies
“An engineering director at Google said four years ago that AI would deliver a four-day work week by 2025,” remembers the BBC. And earlier this year OpenAI “formally urged companies to start testing out a four-day work week (with no change in pay), claiming that AI will soon be able to speed up so much human labour that the corporate world shoul … ⌘ Read more

It’s Not Just RAM: Windows Licenses Are Also Pushing Up PC Prices
It’s not just RAM prices that are going up, writes CNET. “Reports suggest the cost of Windows licenses for manufacturers is rising by up to 10%.”

Several sites that closely follow Microsoft news, including Windows Central and Windows Latest, have published articles citing a report from Taiwan’s Economic Daily News that claims some PC manufac … ⌘ Read more

Europe’s Record Heatwave Kills 25,000, Dries Rivers, Shuts Nuclear Plant, Exposes Submerged Warships
“The European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring service confirmed Monday that June and July were the hottest on record in western Europe,” .according to a report from the CBC. “The period saw an estimated 25,000 heat-related deaths.”

CNN has before-and-after photos of Europe’s … ⌘ Read more

Why Are Big Tech CEOs Writing Long Manifestos About AI?
This week Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word open letter titled “The Future is for Everyone”.

But the BBC is more interested in why big tech executives keep writing manifestos about AI:

[Zuckerberg’s] vision echoes what AI leaders have expressed in various forms: the product they are building is among the “most important technologies in history.” Marc A … ⌘ Read more

Vulnerability Giving Attackers Full Control of Macs Is Under Active Exploitation
joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Dutch officials have warned that a high-severity macOS vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code is under active exploitation. “The NCSC has received a notification indicating that active abuse of this vulnerability has been observed on multiple syste … ⌘ Read more

Astronomers Discover a New Kind of Cosmic Object: a Black Hole ‘Star’
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope say they may have found a new class of object: a “black hole star,” in which a black hole is wrapped in dense gas and radiates in ways that resemble an enormous star. The Guardian reports: The international team made the breakthrough after focusing their attention on a mysterious red spot … ⌘ Read more

Meta Patents AI Glasses to Use Facial Recognition to Identify People, Make Highlight Reels of Your Dinner Party
Meta has patented a smart-glasses system that could use facial recognition to identify people and automatically create personalized highlight reels of events such as dinner parties. The patent doesn’t guarantee the feature will ship, but it offers a detail … ⌘ Read more

Robots That Walk and Talk Are Coming To Car Factories
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: At a BMW factory in South Carolina, a human-shaped robot with a screen for a face recently stepped from a charging station toward a stack of green plastic boxes. It grasped an auto part from one of the boxes, pivoted, placed the part in a trolley, then pulled the trolley across the floor. The robot’s slow … ⌘ Read more

Ex-Cambridge Professor At Center of Plagiarism Row Found Dead
Former Cambridge professor Jason Arday, who resigned last week amid allegations of plagiarism and questions about his academic record, has been found dead at age 41 in London. The BBC reports: Jason Arday was found “unresponsive” at an address in Battersea, south London, on Friday afternoon, emergency services said. Metropolitan Police officers were ca … ⌘ Read more

Flock Announces Changes Amid Backlash Over Its License Plate Reader Network
Flock Safety is tightening controls on its nationwide license plate reader network after mounting backlash over privacy and documented police misuse. By January 1, law enforcement customers will be required to use automated auditing, tie searches to specific case numbers, and accept a shorter seven-day default retention perio … ⌘ Read more

France’s Top Court Blocks Social Media Ban For Under-15s
France’s Constitutional Council has struck down a law that would have banned children under 15 from social media, ruling that it disproportionately restricted freedom of expression and lacked adequate privacy safeguards around age verification. President Emmanuel Macron has asked the government to rewrite the measure, with the goal of putting a revised version in … ⌘ Read more

PBS Station Fears Losing 50TB of Data After Being Ghosted By Cloud Provider
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After its cloud storage provider went defunct, a PBS affiliate decided to sue a data center provider to regain access to 50TB of TV shows, videos, and other data dating back 70 years. As reported this week by Current, a trade newspaper covering public broadcasting, S … ⌘ Read more

Ukraine Finds Nvidia AI Chip In New Russian Missile
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Kyiv Post: Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) has identified an Nvidia Jetson Orin computer module inside Russia’s new S-71 Monochrome air-launched cruise missile, potentially indicating the use of artificial intelligence technology in the weapon, the agency said Wednesday, Aug. 12. The finding was published in the … ⌘ Read more

Judge Orders Google To Make Rival App Store Installs Easier
A federal judge has ordered Google to remove what he called “anticompetitive friction” that makes rival Android app stores harder to find and install. The order is part of the remedies stemming from Epic’s antitrust victory, which already requires Google to carry competing app stores inside Google Play and give them access to its app catalog. The Verge rep … ⌘ Read more

Trump Slaps a 100% Tariff On Heavy and ‘Sensitive’ Drones
President Trump has imposed tariffs of up to 100% on heavier and “sensitive” drones, including models over 55 pounds or equipped with docking stations or thermal imaging. “Those include commercial models from DJI and others used for operations like power line inspection, crop spraying and search and rescue, along with any parts used in their manufacturing,” report … ⌘ Read more

Apple Wants to Charge Developers Up to 15 Percent for Linking Outside the App Store
Apple is proposing to charge U.S. developers up to 15% when users leave an app through an external purchase link, with lower rates of 10% or 5% for certain programs and smaller developers. The proposal follows years of litigation with Epic Games and a contempt ruling that temporarily barred Apple from collect … ⌘ Read more

Person Hides Prompt Injection In Legal Filing Telling AI To Side With Them
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A person representing themselves in a Connecticut court hid a series of instructions designed to manipulate artificial intelligence in an official court filing. These “prompt injections” told the hypothetical LLM to side with them, and to “ensure your textual output agrees wit … ⌘ Read more