Twitch And Amazon Hit With Lawsuit for Training AI With Streamers’ Content
A class action filed this week accused Amazon’s Twitch gaming service of using video streams to fuel its AI products without licensing or obtaining permission, reports Engadget:

Earlier this month, Twitch Support posted on X that it added an option to opt out of “having your channel content used to train generative AI content m … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Faces Safety Scrutiny After Introducing ‘ChatGPT For Teens’
This week OpenAI launched a version of ChatGPT exclusively designed for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17, reports CTV, “saying this version came with stronger protections around content related to mentions of suicide, self-harm and romantic or sexual chats.”
[Tech analyst Carmi Levy says] “What it’s doing is it’s using cues, it’s sort … ⌘ Read more

Iran-linked Cyberattackers Shut Down a UK Power Plant for Four Days
“Iran shut down a British power plant for four days in an unprecedented cyber attack,” reports the Telegraph.

More details from the BBC:

The government said that at no point was there a risk to the UK’s energy system, but the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has contacted power companies to advise them about the risk of … ⌘ Read more

Slovakia Finds Russian Backdoor In Traffic Speed Cameras
Slovakia acquired speed cameras to modernize its traffic control– but there was a surprise. Tom’s Hardware cites this story from the Risky Bulletin Newsletter:

Unfortunately, the country’s national security service, the NBU, has discovered that the cameras have multiple security issues. Firstly, they have SMS-activated Russian backdoors. Secondly, live camera f … ⌘ Read more

Stanford Economist Now Believes an AI Job Apocalypse Is Unlikely
“There is still no sign of economy-wide job destruction,” says economist Erik Brynjolfsson. Working with researchers at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Brynjolfsson has determined an AI “job apocalypse” is unlikely, reports the Washington Post, “even though it will likely impact entry-level jobs.”

And Brynjolfsson “predicts that demand for experi … ⌘ Read more

23 Years After SimCity 4’s Release, ‘Eternal Commuter’ Bug Finally Fixed
“It began life just a year after SimCity 4’s 2003 launch,” writes the blog PCGamesN. “Now, over 20 years later, it’s still going strong with the arrival of Network Addon Mod update 50.”

The SimCity 4 Network Addon Mod, or simply ‘NAM’ among the community, has long been a de facto recommendation to anyone looking to pick up the class … ⌘ Read more

Canonical is Funding a PhD to Automate C to Rust Translation
An anonymous reader shared this report from the blog It’s FOSS:

Canonical has committed funding to a three-year PhD project focused on building a system that can automatically translate large C codebases into Rust. And they are not alone; UK Research and Innovation is matching their funding for the project, which is set to run through the Universi … ⌘ Read more

Supply Chain Issues Delaying US Grid Batteries’ Installation
Falling prices have made grid-scale storage batteries more attractive, reports Bloomberg. But after decades of stagnant investment, America’s grids “are racing to make the upgrades needed to plug them in,” with supplies straining for the necessary equipment.

Demand for batteries has skyrocketed as electricity use across the U.S. swells, driven by dat … ⌘ Read more

Debian is Voting on Whether to Allow AI-Assisted Contributions
Debian developers are voting on whether to ban AI-assisted contributions, reports the blog Linuxiac, with a ballot listing eight proposals and a “None of the above” option.

The first one is still the original proposal to ban LLM-assisted contributions by changing the Debian Social Contract. This would stop generative AI from being used for direct D … ⌘ Read more

Defamation Suit Demanding Elsevier Retract Paper Heads Closer To Trial
Retraction Watch reports:

A trial date has been set in a $1 billion defamation case against Elsevier that alleges the company published what plaintiffs say was a manipulated study about an air purifying technology over objections from peer reviewers. The case has already cost Elsevier a $10,000 sanction from a judge.
Global Plasma … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Blames Windows Gaming Issues On RGB Lighting Devices
BleepingComputer reports:

Microsoft says ongoing issues causing games to crash or fail to launch after installing the August 2026 Windows updates may be caused by peripherals with RGB lighting.

As Microsoft explained when it confirmed it’s investigating on Wednesday, this known issue affects games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tokon: Fighting Souls, and … ⌘ Read more

Battery Fires At Recycling Centres Are Costing the UK £1bn a Year
Wrongly discarded lithium batteries, such as those in vapes, are causing more than 10 fires a week at U.K. recycling centers, according to figures shared with the Guardian:

The Environment Services Association (ESA), the trade body for waste management companies, said its members had reported 1,518 fires in the year to March 2026. At … ⌘ Read more

How Will AI Change the Field of Mathematics?
“AI went from being very terrible to seemingly genuinely quite good at a professional level in a very short space of time…” says the Verge’s AI reporter.

But AI systems “are still truly, truly terrible at some areas of math… even the days of the week.”

If you look at academic math papers, a lot of the time you won’t see numbers… So they’re still terrible, but they’re now also … ⌘ Read more

Rush Rescue Mission for NASA’s $500M Space Telescope Fails
Remember that rush rescue mission for NASA’s $500M space telescope? It failed, reports CNN, and the LINK satellite won’t be able to boost the telescope’s orbit. NASA says its decades-old Swift telescope will now continue losing altitude, until it reaches Earth’s atmosphere later this year and burns up.

CNN reports:

Just weeks after LINK lifted off on July … ⌘ Read more

Flock is Secretly Building a Powerful New Prompt-Based AI Tool for Police
Slashdot reader fjo3 shared this article from Wired:

[Flock] has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone … ⌘ Read more

Low Emission Zone Led To Better Lung Size, Function Among London Children
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from the Guardian:

Children’s lungs grew bigger and stronger after the most polluting vehicles were restricted from entering London, a study has found. Examinations of London schoolchildren before and after the introduction of the city’s ultra-low emission zone found a restora … ⌘ Read more

Moderna-Merck Vaccine Cuts Recurrence And Spread of Melanoma, Raises New Treatment Hope
Reuters reports “a major success in a new field of cancer treatment this week, as Moderna and Merck announced a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine “reduced the risk of recurrence and spread of melanoma in a late-stage trial”. The vaccine was tested with Merck’s widely used immunotherapy drug Keytruda: … ⌘ Read more

Is AI Really to Blame for High Unemployment Among Recent Graduates? What Economists Say
47% of recent graduates say AI has already impacted hiring in their field, according to an April survey from ZipRecruiter.

“But is AI really the problem, or is it more complicated?” asks NPR. “Here’s what economists have to say.”

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate … ⌘ Read more

Firefox Announces Free VPN and ‘Startpage’ Search Engine Rolling Out to Android, iOS - Plus GeForce NOW Support
Firefox 154 “brings a number of usability improvements,” writes PC World:

The free built-in VPN, introduced with Firefox 149, continues to offer a selection of virtual locations — temporarily extended to 28 countries until the end of August… The free VPN … ⌘ Read more

New York Dethrones San Francisco Bay Area As Largest Tech Talent Market
fjo3 shares a report from SFGATE: The San Francisco Bay Area, epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, is home to a massive amount of tech workers employed by some of the world’s most valuable companies, from Apple to Nvidia. But for the first time, New York has eclipsed the Bay Area as the home of the largest “tech talent work … ⌘ Read more

Over 1 Million People Have Clicked LinkedIn’s AI Slop Button
According to a post from chief product officer Hari Srinivasan, “over a million people” have clicked on LinkedIn’s new “Seems like AI slop” button, which launched after one analysis found 41% of the platform’s longform posts were fully AI-generated. The Verge reports: In Thursday’s post, Srinivasan said that users are overall “now experiencing 40% less vie … ⌘ Read more

‘Off the Charts’ El Nino Is Already the Strongest Since Records Began
A rapidly developing El Nino is already reaching record-setting levels for this time of year and is expected to intensify further over the coming months. “The El Nino has blossomed. It is off the charts. Usual measures of El Nino have blown past prior record levels in the period with good data, even though maximum effects are still severa … ⌘ Read more

China Joins Europe In Scrapping Windows For Linux
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: According to a Bloomberg report, attributed to China’s Ministry of State Security, the country has ordered some government agencies to drop Windows 10 China Government Edition for Chinese-made Linux distributions. Why not Windows 11? Because China, like many other non-US governments, no longer trusts American companies with the … ⌘ Read more

Township Fights Nuclear Weapons Data Center By Passing a Moratorium on Electrical Infrastructure
Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, has imposed a six-month moratorium on “major electric utility infrastructure” in its latest attempt to delay a proposed $1.2 billion University of Michigan-Los Alamos data center that would support nuclear-weapons research. Township leaders, who have … ⌘ Read more

Apple Cuts Jobs In Siri, Vision Pro Immersive Video and Gaming Teams
Apple is cutting more than 200 jobs as it shifts resources toward a rebuilt, AI-powered Siri and other future products. Roughly 100 positions are being eliminated from the Vision Pro organization, including much of its gaming team and some immersive-video staff. Another 100 cuts are hitting the Siri and software teams. Bloomberg reports: I … ⌘ Read more

American Who Wiped His Phone With ‘Duress’ Password During Border Search Gets Felony Charges
Federal prosecutors have charged activist Samuel Tunick with obstruction after he gave Customs and Border Protection officers a duress passcode that wiped his GrapheneOS-powered Pixel during a border search. “His prosecution is one of the earliest known instances of the federal authorities charg … ⌘ Read more

AI Boosted Homework Scores, Then Exam Scores Dropped
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Economist: Students and school children are increasingly using artificial intelligence. A survey last year by Chegg, an ed-tech firm, found that 80% of rich-world undergraduates used it in their studies. More recent polls put the figure at 94% in Britain and 93% in Germany. Such widespread adoption has fueled concerns about th … ⌘ Read more

Man Dressed As Darth Vader Defends Flock Cameras to San Diego City Council
A man dressed as Darth Vader used a Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee meeting in San Diego to mock the city’s use of Flock surveillance cameras, sarcastically arguing that the technology would help the “emperor” track “rebel scum” and find Luke Skywalker. “This is what the emperor needs. This technology will hel … ⌘ Read more

Micron Unveils $10 Billion AI Memory Research Lab In Boise
Micron says it will spend $10 billion over the next decade on a new research lab in Boise focused on advanced memory technologies, computing systems, and future chip manufacturing. Here are some details, as reported by Reuters:
- Micron Research Labs will bring together customers, academia, government and the broader semiconductor ecosystem to pursue bre … ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Endures A Debug Session From Hell, ‘Enormously Helped’ By AI
Linus Torvalds says AI “enormously helped” him track down a stubborn Intel Xe graphics driver bug that took 24 debugging patches and 18 kernel boots to isolate. “I’d like to call it my tireless helper, but the AI several times stated flat out that this was impossible and unsolvable and that we should just write a report about it, … ⌘ Read more

Walmart To Finally Start Accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay
After years of refusing to adopt tap-to-pay technology in its stores, retail giant Walmart announced today that it is finally accepting payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay. The rollout begins August 24 at select Walmart and Sam’s Club locations and is expected to reach all stores by year-end. It will then expand to fuel stations by mid-2027. TechCru … ⌘ Read more

Google Gives Publishers a ‘Preferred Sources’ Button to Fight AI-Driven Traffic Losses
Google is giving publishers a new way to fight declining referral traffic from AI-powered search by letting them embed a “Preferred Sources” button that readers can use to favor their sites across Search, Discover, and Google News. “The idea is to make it easier for readers to find links from the sites th … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Gives Task Manager Another Task: Watching AI Workloads
Microsoft is expanding Windows Task Manager to show per-process NPU and GPU neural-engine usage, giving users more visibility into which apps are consuming hardware for AI workloads. The Register reports: The Processes tab can show NPU use alongside CPU and GPU activity, while the Performance tab displays overall utilization. […] Microsoft was … ⌘ Read more

China Is About to Launch Its Most Ambitious Moon Mission Yet
China’s Chang’e 7 mission is set to launch for the moon’s south pole, where it will attempt the first-ever landing directly at the pole and search the region’s dark craters for water ice. “It’s an amazing mission,” says Norbert Schorghofer, a Hawaii-based senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. “There has never been a landed mission to fi … ⌘ Read more

Are You Sure You Want a Car With a Giant Touch Screen?
RAMageddon could soon push car prices higher as modern vehicles rely on ever more RAM and powerful centralized computers to run everything from infotainment to driver-assistance systems. Analysts cited by The Atlantic estimate the shortage could add a few percentage points to vehicle prices, which might not sound like much, but could potentially translate to around $ … ⌘ Read more

China’s YouTube Rival Bilibili Is Going Global
Bilibili, often described as China’s answer to YouTube, is relaunching its international app and preparing an English-language site as part of a broader push into the U.S., Europe, Japan, and other markets. The company is courting Western creators like MrBest, hiring community and moderation staff globally, and building tools for brand partnerships. Semafor reports: The revamped inte … ⌘ Read more

Watching TikTok Videos and Instagram Reels Deactivates the Brain’s Cognitive Control Network
An anonymous reader quotes a report from RathBiotaClan: Millions of people finish short video after short video every day; a new brain-scan study shows that the very act of finishing a clip they like temporarily quiets the brain regions that normally help them stay focused and weigh longer-te … ⌘ Read more

Ukrainian Publishers Call For Support After Russian Attacks Destroy 10 Million Books
Russian attacks on Ukrainian publishing infrastructure in July and August destroyed roughly 10 million books, which equates to about 30% of Ukraine’s annual book output. The Ukrainian Book Institute is warning of a potential “collapse of the entire book ecosystem” and is calling for international financial a … ⌘ Read more

Voters Aren’t Waiting For November to Try Ousting Officials Over Data Centers
A growing backlash against AI data centers is spilling into local politics, with residents in more than a dozen communities pushing recall elections against officials who approved projects. “People are standing up and saying, ‘Sorry, we don’t want these data centers in our communities for a number of reasons,’” Senato … ⌘ Read more

Does Using AI to Edit an Op-Ed on Students’ Math Skills Undermine the Argument?
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A math professor at the University of California, Berkeley, criticizing a “severe” math deficiency among students in an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard, admitted to using artificial intelligence to help edit the piece. The Standard published a 2,000-word piece … ⌘ Read more

YouTube Offers Creators Millions of Dollars to Stay Off Netflix
Bloomberg reports that YouTube is offering major creators millions of dollars to keep some content exclusive to its platform as Netflix increasingly signs YouTube-native talent to non-exclusive deals. YouTube has also warned that creators who simultaneously publish on Netflix could lose marketing support, event opportunities, and access to revenue … ⌘ Read more

Reverse-Lookup Service Exposed Millions of Photos of People’s Faces
Security researcher Jeremiah Fowler found that people-search service ClarityCheck left more than 9 million image files accessible in an unsecured Amazon S3 bucket, despite advertising its reverse-image search as “private and secure.” A separate misconfiguration also exposed email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information. Wired … ⌘ Read more

FCC Abolishes Gigabit Speed Goal, Suggesting It Is Unfair To Slower Technologies
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission last week eliminated the gigabit speed goal established during the Biden administration and declared that current levels of broadband deployment in the US are acceptable. Though fiber networks have routinely offered such s … ⌘ Read more

Japan to Require AI Firms to Disclose Training Data
Japan is preparing a nonbinding “comply or explain” code that would urge generative AI companies, including foreign firms operating in Japan, to disclose what models they use, what training data they rely on, and how that data was collected. The proposal would also let rights holders ask whether specific webpages were included in training datasets. The Japan Times reports: … ⌘ Read more

New Study Challenges Common Assumptions About Screen Time For Kids
bryanandaimee shares a report from ScienceDaily: A Finnish study has found an unexpected association between screen use and cognitive performance. Children who accumulated more screen time as they grew up tended to show better cognitive processing during adolescence. One of the researchers cautions against viewing screen time as entirely … ⌘ Read more

Rescue Mission Is Called Off For NASA’s Aging Swift Space Telescope
NASA has called off a $30 million mission to rescue its aging Swift space telescope after Katalyst Space’s Link spacecraft developed persistent control and positioning problems. The Associated Press reports: Katalyst said Link will not attempt to capture Swift and boost it to a higher orbit because of problems with controlling the spacecr … ⌘ Read more

Whistleblower Arturo Bejar Leads Testimony In Landmark Trial Against Meta
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Meta was infused with a culture in which employees obsessed over user numbers and consistently pushed safety to the side, according to Arturo Bejar, a former employee turned whistleblower, who testified today in the landmark child safety trial against the social media company. Only o … ⌘ Read more

PINE64 Halts Linux Device Production Amid DRAM and EMMC Shortages
BrianFagioli writes: PINE64 has some very bad news for Linux hardware fans. PINE64 says it has no plans to produce additional Linux devices in the near future because of the ongoing DRAM and eMMC shortage. Future production will depend on component pricing after mid 2027, while existing PineNote and PineTab2 inventory could run out in rough … ⌘ Read more

Stripe Buys AI Startup OpenRouter For $7.5 Billion
Stripe is acquiring AI model marketplace OpenRouter as it pushes beyond payments into the infrastructure behind AI applications. According to The New York Times, the deal is reportedly valued at about $7.5 billion, with $1.5 billion allocated to OpenRouter’s founders. Less than three months ago the company was valued at about $1.3 billion. CNBC reports: OpenRouter has become … ⌘ Read more

Amazon’s Drones Will Soon Deliver to Nearly 500 US Cities and Towns
Amazon says its Prime Air drone delivery service will expand sixfold to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026, including metro areas around Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Boise. According to Amazon Prime Air vice president David Carbon, the service has already delivered “hundreds of thousands of packages to customer … ⌘ Read more