Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock’s Cameras to Stalk People
404 Media remembers how a Florida police office looked up his ex-girlfriend’s license plate in the Flock automated license plate reader system at least 69 times in 2024 — even searching for her mom’s license plate at least 24 times. The police office was charged with stalking and hacking-related offenses, serving one day in prison with five … ⌘ Read more

Gamers Sue PlayStation: It’s Not Clear They’re Selling Licenses Rather Than Ownership of Games
The gaming news site Aftermath reports:

Four gamers are suing Sony Interactive Entertainment for allegedly breaking a California law that requires digital storefronts selling games to make it clear people are buying licenses, not actually owning the games.

Sony Interactive Entertainment … ⌘ Read more

Epic Games Announces Lore Open-Source Version Control System
Epic Games has released Lore, an MIT-licensed version control system written in Rust and designed specifically for “games and entertainment purposes with large file sizes,” reports Phoronix. From the report: While there is Git LFS for large file storage with Git, Epic Games has crated Lore as a version control system designed entirely around the large fi … ⌘ Read more

Binance Set To Lose Permission To Operate In EU
Binance is expected to lose permission to serve EU customers in July after Greek regulators reportedly decided to reject its MiCA license application. Reuters reports: Under new EU rules, called MiCA, crypto firms have until the end of June to obtain a licence to allow them to keep servicing clients across the bloc. Binance’s application, made to Greece’s market regulator, is set … ⌘ Read more

10 Netflix Originals Are Leaving the Streamer Very Soon
Several Netflix Originals are scheduled to leave the platform soon. As the streamer’s catalog evolves, it adds and removes titles based on their performance and licensing agreements. Since this strategy applies to original content as well, several of the streamer’s own titles are marked for removal next month. From gripping dramas to fun stand-up comedies, […]

The post [10 Netflix Originals Are Leaving the Streamer … ⌘ Read more

Russell Crowe’s Action Movie With Hemsworth Brothers Is Leaving Netflix
A 2024 action thriller starring Russell Crowe and two Hemsworth brothers will be removed from Netflix soon. The removal is part of the streamer’s monthly catalog refresh, which includes dropping titles whose licensing agreements have expired. Land of Bad exits Netflix in July Netflix subscribers won’t be able to stream Land of Bad on the […]

The post [Russell Crowe’s Action Movie With Hemsworth Bro … ⌘ Read more

All Seasons of 3 Fan-Favorite Shows Are Leaving Netflix This Fall
Three popular television shows are leaving Netflix’s library this fall. These shows have been a cultural phenomenon and have garnered a dedicated following over the years. However, due to their expiring licensing agreements, the streamer will be dropping them from its platform. Seinfeld and two more acquired shows are leaving Netflix in October Netflix will […]

The post [All Seasons of 3 Fan-Favorite Shows Are Le … ⌘ Read more

Mapping Every Flock License Plate Reader Near US World Cup Stadiums
Most US World Cup stadiums are surrounded by surveillance cameras. Want to know if you’re being watched on your way to a match? These maps will help you. ⌘ Read more

Air Canada pilot accused of flying for 17 years without proper license
The 59-year-old pilot faces seven charges, including fraud, forging documents and public mischief. ⌘ Read more

NHS Prescribes Half a Million Copilot Licenses For Its Paperwork Headache
NHS England plans to roll out Microsoft Copilot to 505,000 clinicians and support staff after a 30,000-person pilot claimed the AI assistant saved users an average of 43 minutes a day on administrative work. The Register reports: The rollout won’t happen overnight. NHS England said that each trust will receive a central allocation of … ⌘ Read more

Lightweight Pragtical Code Editor Adds SDL GPU Backend
Pragtical, the lightweight open-source code editor that prides itself on using just ~50MB of RAM and ~10MB of disk space while being a full-featured code editor, is tacking on more features. Most notable with the new Pragtical release is adding an SDL-based GPU back-end for this MIT-licensed editor… ⌘ Read more

Police Sued After Imprisoning Innocent Man Placed Near Violent Crime By Flock License Plate Reader
“When Hugo Parra was arrested last year on felony charges, his pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears,” reports the Times of San Diego:

San Diego police had a description of the Alfa Romeo car he was riding in [but no license plate number] and a witness who identified him during … ⌘ Read more

Flock license plate reader wrongly linked a San Diego man to a violent crime
Article URL: https://timesofsandiego.com/crime/2026/06/07/a-flock-license-plate-reader-linked-a-san-diego-man-to-a-violent-crime-he-was-five-miles-away/

Comments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4843842 … ⌘ Read more

BSA Lashes Out At Mandatory Open-Source Licensing
Longtime Slashdot reader Elektroschock writes: The American Business Software Alliance (BSA) does not consider mandatory open-source licensing to be an appropriate indicator of sovereignty. This is among the “pointed messages” they sent to the French government consultation (closed) today. “What protects Europe is the ability to govern, audit, and mitigate risk, not where a c … ⌘ Read more

Reserve Bank loosens usage of word ‘bank’
All licensed deposit-takers will be able to refer to use the “bank” in their name from late 2028, with industry reaction being positive overall towards the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s decision.

The move comes after consultation last year and loosens up the hitherto tight restrictions surrounding usage of the words “bank”, “banker” and “banking”. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) received 12 submissions on the matter. ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Deliberately Bricking All Office For Mac 2019/2021 Installations
Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac will reportedly drop into “reduced functionality mode” on July 13, 2026, when a license-validation certificate expires, leaving perpetually licensed apps able to open files but not edit or save them. Slashdot reader joshuark shares a report from OSnews: “Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Announces Open-Source “Intelligent Terminal”
Microsoft today announced their newest open-source creation… Under the MIT license it’s the Intelligent Terminal… ⌘ Read more

Ombredanne: An AI agent ported our codebase from Python to Rust
Over on the AboutCode blog, lead
maintainer Philippe Ombredanne writes
about an agentic LLM system porting the ScanCode\
Toolkit to Rust. In the process, the LLM (or the people behind it)
infringed the ScanCode trademark, stripped copyright and license notices,
“and started an outreach campaign, without ev … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products
Article URL: https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Microsoft_Office_2019_and_2021_for_Mac_view-only_conversion_(2026)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48341578

Points: 14

# Comments: 1 ⌘ Read more

Cybercrime Crew Claims It Hacked Mike Lindell’s MyPillow
Plus: A ransomware group is now stealing data in person, BusPatrol wants to hand its license plate surveillance data to the cops, and more. ⌘ Read more

Amazon Is Making an AI-Animated ‘Good Advice Cupcake’ TV Show. Its Original Creator Is Furious
Loryn Brantz created The Good Advice Cupcake for BuzzFeed years ago. The company licensed the character for a new Amazon series—made with AI—without her consent. ⌘ Read more

Of course, @movq@www.uninformativ.de! Most of my points are also included in your list.

First of all, programming is what I really do enjoy the most. So, it doesn’t make any sense at all to not do this anymore. “But you could use your now free time to do something much cooler and more valuable!”, others might reply. Fuck no, I don’t want to waste my time with other shit that doesn’t fulfill me, why on earth would I want to do that?

All this hallucination reduces quality badly. In my experience, it’s also happening much more rapidly than I expected. Even though developers are still supposed to own and understand whatever has been generated under their name and even be responsible for that, the sad reality is that teammates often blindly trust the AI output. “But I asked the AI and it told me that $this was impossible”, “I’ve no idea either, but the AI just generated it” are responses I get more often. What really makes my angry is when I point out a flaw and suggest an alternative and this is the reaction. It happened several times that just trying it out and seeing it clearly work to proof my point only took me half a minute, but people still did something handwavy else instead.

The learning effect is drastically reduced. The more time I spend on a topic, the better the odds that whatever I learned actually makes it over into long-term memory. It’s like if a collegue just says “do it like that” or “this solves your problem”, but neither explains the why or how. Somehow, people are still convinced that it’s a completely different story when you replace the human counterpart with a computer program in this equation.

Skills are unlearned. It’s like with automation in general, just much worse. You end up in a state where you’ve no clue how anything works under the hood or how to actually find out important information that are needed to solve your problem. You’re screwed when a process breaks out of the blue. Even though it can become also rather terrible, with classical automation you’re typically still be able to decipher how exactly the thing was supposed to do something.

The energy consumption is sooo high, I absolutely do not want to be a part in burning down our planet. I’m sure I find (and probably have long found without knowing) other ways to contribute to worsen our climate crisis.

The scraper part is already covered in detail in your list. :-)

I’m convinced that license and copyright violations are only played down or even refused entirely because companies want to make big money quickly. With the work of others of course. Their double standards are obvious, they still try to actively keep their own stuff secret and out of any training sets. At most for internal use only. Virtually noone in charge is interested in good long-term solutions. Short-term for the win, when disaster eventually strikes, the causers are long gone, the responsibilities in other hands.

Vendor lock-in is something that lots of folks are only realizing very slowly. It’s completely crazy to me. This drug dealer routine should be well-known by now. It’s fucking everywhere. Yet, people are always surprised when they found themselves caught in it.

Adding new AI stuff only increases complexity. But complexity is the enemy that everybody should fear and reduce as much as possible. Of course, this is not limited to AI at all. And everywhere I look around, people in charge looooove to make things way more complicated than they ever need to be. Yet, simplicity is the real art and much harder to achieve.

I don’t understand why we have to go back full force to the ambiguity of natural languages. This alone should be more than enough to realize what a stupid idea all that is. Linked to that is that the “instruction set” is interpreted differently with newer model versions. I mean, is has to be. Why else would somebody want to upgrade in the first place than to get more Powerful™ Features™?

Some people argue that with AI the democratization is empowered. However, in my view, the exact opposite is the case. Models are getting so large that you can basically not run them locally or even train them. So, you have to rely on whatever the vendor offers you and runs for you. In the end, this only gives the owners more power, the multi billionaires. Not exactly what I understand by democratization.

Finally, technology assessments are missing completely. Or they are faked such that mostly only the (questionable) benefits are listed. But all the negative impact is just ignored.

Let’s keep some popcorn around for when this all explodes. :-)

AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes
Article URL: https://itsfoss.com/news/amd-vivado-bait-and-switch-on-linux-users/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48307231

Points: 5

# Comments: 0 ⌘ Read more

Company Behind School Bus AI Cameras Wants To Share Footage With Police
joshuark writes: BusPatrol, a company that has installed AI-powered cameras in tens of thousands of school buses around the U.S., now plans to turn those cameras into automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), capturing the location of every vehicle the buses drive past, and give that data to law enforcement, 404 Media has learned. Bus … ⌘ Read more

Spain Blocks Polymarket and Kalshi
Spain has temporarily blocked Polymarket and Kalshi while it investigates whether the prediction-market platforms are violating gambling laws by operating without a license. Engadget reports: The country’s ministry in charge of consumer affairs said it blocked the websites as a precautionary measure pending an official investigation. This investigation will determine if the platforms violate Spain’s gambl … ⌘ Read more

AMD (Xilinx) is Excluding Linux From the Free Tier For Its FPGA Dev Tool
Long-time Slashdot reader Sun writes:

AMD has announced a change to the way they are licensing Vivado, their FPGA development tool… Hidden between the lines of the announcement [of a new model starting with the 2026.1 release] is the change to the free of charge tier. AMD is adding more devices to be supported in this tier, … ⌘ Read more

The FBI Wants ‘Near Real-Time’ Access to US License Plate Readers
Plus: Google publishes a live exploit for an unpatched flaw, the feds arrest two men accused of creating thousands of nonconsensual deepfake nudes, and more. ⌘ Read more

BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork
Article URL: https://xcancel.com/josefprusa/status/2054602354851254330

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245862

Points: 8

# Comments: 0 ⌘ Read more

Spotify, UMG To Let Fans Make Their Own Music With AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Billboard: Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG) announced a licensing deal for recorded music and publishing rights, enabling Spotify to launch generative AI music models in the future. With this deal, Spotify’s models will allow fans to create covers and remixes of their favorite songs from participating artists and … ⌘ Read more

A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: US lawmakers plan to introduce an amendment Thursday at a House committee markup hearing that would prohibit any recipient of federal highway funding from using automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling – a sweeping restriction that, if adopted, would bring … ⌘ Read more

A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide
One line tucked into a federal highway bill would strip funds from cities and states unless they kill their automated plate tracking programs—effectively banning the tech for all but toll collection. ⌘ Read more

FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers
The FBI is seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to automated license plate reader (ALPRs) data, which could let it query vehicle movements across the U.S. and its territories through a commercial database. 404 Media reports: “The FBI has a crucial need for accessible LPRs to provide a diverse and reliable range of collections across the United S … ⌘ Read more

Small Town Fights Over Flock’s AI-Enhanced Network of License Plate-Reading Cameras
160 miles north of New York City, a man was convicted of manslaughter “with the help of license plate reader technology,” reports a local news station. In the small town of Troy (population: 51,000), the mayor described the cameras as “a critical tool” in that investigation. But locals and city officials “have … ⌘ Read more

[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 7, 2026
Inside this week’s LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: LLMs and security; restartable sequences and TCMalloc; Fedora and GNOME bug reports; Prolly trees; Arm on s390.

• Briefs: NHS open source; Alpine outage; GCC 16.1; Incus 7.0 LTS; NetHack 5.0.0; PHP license; Quotes; …

• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more. ⌘ Read more

Valve Releases Steam Controller CAD Files Under Creative Commons License
Valve has released CAD files for the new Steam Controller and its Puck under a Creative Commons license. “The idea is to let enterprising modders create their own Steam Controller add-ons, like skins, charging stands, grip extenders or smartphone mounts,” reports Digital Foundry. From the report: The Valve release includes file … ⌘ Read more

Moving To Mainframe Can Be Cheaper Than Sticking With VMware
Gartner says some VMware customers may find it cheaper to move certain Linux VM workloads to IBM mainframes than to adopt Broadcom’s new VMware licensing, especially for fleets of hundreds of Linux VMs and mission-critical apps needing long-term stability. The Register reports: Speaking to The Register to discuss the analyst firm’s mid-April publication, … ⌘ Read more

The retirement of the PHP license
The PHP project has long shipped under its own license — except for
the parts under the Zend Engine License. The PHP project has now announced
that the PHP license has been retired, and the PHP code has been relicensed
under the three-clause BSD license. See this\
blog entry for more details.

Getting here required more than [writing an\
> RFC](https://wiki … ⌘ Read more

The California Government Is Coming For Your E-Bikes
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Standard: If state lawmakers have their way, you’ll have to get a license plate for your e-bike, and if you’re planning to buy one next year, it’ll be slower. Amid growing concerns about e-bike safety, particularly among children in Bay Area suburbs, two bills introduced this year aim to make it easier to ticket … ⌘ Read more

[$] Version-controlled databases using Prolly trees
Modern database and filesystems make pervasive use of
B-trees, which are tree
structures optimized for storing sorted lists of keys and values on block
devices.
Dolt is an Apache 2.0-licensed project that makes clever use of a
variant of a B-tree to support efficient version control for an entire database.
The data structure it uses could well be of interest to other projects. ⌘ Read more

Sony Rolls Out 30-Day Online DRM Check-In For PlayStation Digital Games
Sony is reportedly rolling out a 30-day online check-in requirement for some digital PS4 and PS5 games, meaning players could temporarily lose access if their console does not reconnect to renew the license. Tom’s Hardware reports: In the info page of an affected game, you’d see a new validity period and a “remaining time” deadline … ⌘ Read more

A DOGE Affiliate Is Now in Charge of the US Government’s ID Platform
Greg Hogan will oversee Login.gov as the government seeks to integrate driver’s license and passport information into the service, making what one insider calls “a national ID.” ⌘ Read more

Get Ready for More Brain-Scanning Consumer Gadgets
Neurable, which makes noninvasive brain-computer interfaces, is licensing its technology and promises a “flood” of new third-party hardware this year and next. ⌘ Read more

The future of AI in Ubuntu
Jon Seager, VP engineering for Canonical, has posted
an update on “what Canonical and Ubuntu will do (or not) to
incorporate AI” that explains what part AI will play in the future
of the company and its distribution.

The bottom line is that Canonical is ramping up its use of AI tools
in a focused and principled manner that favours open weight models
with license terms that feel most compatible with our values, combined
with open sou … ⌘ Read more

Free Software Foundation Says ‘Responsible AI’ Licenses Which Restrict Harmful Uses are Unethical and Nonfree
The Free Software Foundation’s Licensing and Compliance Manager published a blog post this week to explicitly state that”Responsible AI” Licenses (RAIL) are nonfree and unethical. The licenses restrict AI and ML software “from being used in a specific list of h … ⌘ Read more

FSF to OnlyOffice: You Can’t Use the GNU (A)GPL to Take Software Freedom Away
Nextcloud joined a project to create a sovereign replacement for Microsoft Office called “Euro-Office”. But after that project forked OnlyOffice, OnlyOffice suspended its partnership with Nextcloud. “They removed all references to our brand/attribute as required by our license,” argued OnlyOffice CEO Lev Bannov on March 30t … ⌘ Read more

Cal.com Is Going Closed Source Because of AI
Cal is moving its flagship scheduling software from open source to a proprietary license, arguing that AI coding tools now make it much easier for attackers to scan public codebases for vulnerabilities. “Open source security always relied on people to find and fix any problems,” said Peer Richelsen, co-founder of Cal. “Now AI attackers are flaunting that transparency.” CEO Bailey Pumflee … ⌘ Read more

FSF clarifies its stance on AGPLv3 additional terms
OnlyOffice CEO Lev Bannov has recently\
claimed that the Euro-Office fork of the
OnlyOffice suite violates the GNU Affero General Public License
version 3 (AGPLv3). Krzysztof Siewicz of the Free Software
Foundation (FSF) has [published\
an article](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/agpl-is- … ⌘ Read more

[$] A build system aimed at license compliance
The OpenWrt One is a
router powered by the open-source firmware from the OpenWrt project; it was also the
subject of a keynote at SCALE in 2025
given by Denver Gingerich of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC),
which played a big role in developing the router. Gingerich returned to
the [conference in\
2026](h … ⌘ Read more

‘Negative’ Views of Broadcom Driving Thousands of VMware Migrations, Rival Says
“One of VMware’s biggest competitors, Nutanix, claims to have swiped tens of thousands of VMware customers,” reports Ars Technica. They said higher prices, forced bundling, licensing changes, and more strained partner relationships have frustrated customers and driven them away from the leading virtualization firm. From … ⌘ Read more

Relicensing versus license compatibility (FSF Blog)
The Free Software Foundation has published
a short article on relicensing versus license compatibility.

The FSF’s Licensing and\
> Compliance Lab receives many questions and license violation reports
related to projects that had their license changed by a downstream
distributor, or that are combined from two or more programs under
different licenses. We collaborated wit … ⌘ Read more