FCC Kills TV Ownership Cap, Claiming Authority Over Limit Set By Congress
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to eliminate the National Television Ownership Rule, claiming authority to repeal a limit that was set by Congress over 20 years ago. The rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent … ⌘ Read more

Broadcaster Wins Broad US Blocking Injunction Covering Pirate Sites That Don’t Exist Yet
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Mexican broadcaster TelevisaUnivision (TU) has obtained (PDF) one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions ever issued by a U.S. federal court. After initially targeting five pirate IPTV streaming operations, the case expanded to cover well over 50 … ⌘ Read more

New Images of the Sun Show Its Surface In the Finest Detail Yet
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Scientists have captured images of the sun’s surface in the finest detail yet, revealing a strange and dynamic facade. It’s dangerous to look directly at the sun without proper eye protection. But researchers were able to peek at its scorching surface with the help of the National Sc … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic’s AI Used Fake Identities, Malware In Rogue Attack On GitHub Project
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Routine cybersecurity testing of frontier AI models sparked a series of unexpected security incidents – the most serious case arising when Anthropic’s Mythos 5 model attempted to insert malicious code into an open source software application and created fake identitie … ⌘ Read more

Senators Demand Crackdown On Wildfire ‘Prediction Markets’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several US senators have written a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), inquiring about the agency’s “plans to crack down on prediction markets” that offer “contracts for individuals to bet on wildfires.” “Offering bets on destructive wildfires threatens to minimize communities’ suffer … ⌘ Read more

Texas Halts Data Center Connections To Power Grid Amid Overwhelming Demand
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nowhere is the US data center boom bigger than in Texas. But less than a year after declaring Texas the “epicenter of AI development,” Governor Greg Abbott has declared a moratorium on all new power grid connections for data centers – at least until developers provide … ⌘ Read more

Apple Launches Legal Challenge Against UK Demand To Access Encrypted User Data
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Apple has launched a new legal challenge against a UK government demand to access its customers’ highly encrypted data, a year after the Home Office agreed to abandon its previous request. The US tech company launched the legal complaint last month at the Investigato … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s Astra Solved Decades-Old Math Problems For $2,000
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: The cost of producing new results on ten longstanding mathematical problems just fell to $2,000, according to OpenAI, which says its Astra model generated machine-checkable proofs for questions that had resisted human progress for decades. OpenAI published the work on August 1 and used it to give its next majo … ⌘ Read more

An AI-Supervised Remote Exam Went So Badly That 58,000 Students Must Retake It
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this summer, nearly 160,000 applicants took the entrance exam for UNAM, Mexico’s largest university. For the first time, they did it completely remotely, using a “lockdown” browser and AI-powered webcam proctoring software, over several weeks from late May th … ⌘ Read more

Samsung Bans Smart TV Apps That Share Users’ Internet Connections
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Several popular Samsung smart TV apps contain code that share the owner’s internet connection with strangers, potentially putting millions of Samsung smart TVs at risk of hijacking, according to new security research published on Monday. Some of these apps claim to have been installed … ⌘ Read more

Company Offering Printed Books To Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Following 404 Media’s reporting that book database company ISBNdb claimed to source printed books to then sell to AI companies for AI training, the company deleted the part of its website offering the service and walked back claims that it would train AI models, and instead cal … ⌘ Read more

Google Plans To Exempt Sanctioned Nations From Android Developer Verification
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We are a month away from the initial rollout of Google’s Android developer verification system, and the company contends this policy does not impinge on the platform’s open nature. Still, the restrictions will be a big change, and there are still some unanswered ques … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Finds Evidence Other AI Agents Escaped Containment
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI has discovered other instances in which autonomous agents have escaped containment as the company expands its investigation of the hacking incident at tech firm Hugging Face that drew global attention this month, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The new breakouts were uncovered during th … ⌘ Read more

Hackers Targeted Municipal Water Systems In 7 States This Week, FBI Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Cyberattacks targeting municipal water systems have been reported in at least seven states this week, prompting the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency to warn utilities nationwide that hackers are trying to disrupt critical water infrastructure. In a public service announce … ⌘ Read more

LinkedIn Introduces a ‘Seems Like AI Slop’ Button
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: LinkedIn, a social network awash with long AI-generated posts from executives and other corporate workers, has introduced a new button that users can click to flag if a post “seems like AI slop,” according to 404 Media’s own tests. If you have been anywhere near LinkedIn in the past couple of years, you have undoubtedly seen u … ⌘ Read more

New MCP Specification Addresses the Main Barrier To Enterprise Adoption
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open source standard for how AI systems interact with external tools and data sources, saw its largest update since its introduction. Most notably, MCP’s protocol core is now stateless, so requests are no longer dependent on a session t … ⌘ Read more

A Fundamental Flaw Leaves LLMs Strikingly Vulnerable To Attack
joshuark quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: It is impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks because of a fundamental flaw in how they work, a team of researchers argue in a paper presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning, a top AI conference, this month. The claim has huge implications for the safety … ⌘ Read more

Amazon’s Zoox Wins First US Approval For Paid Robotaxis Without Human Controls
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon’s Zoox unit has won U.S. approval for limited commercial deployment of its novel steering-wheel-free robotaxis, a first for the autonomous ride industry, the U.S. auto safety agency said on Thursday. Zoox said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administratio … ⌘ Read more

Google Brings Its Age-Assurance Tech To Android Developers Worldwide
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is expanding its answer to Apple’s age-assurance tools with Wednesday’s news that it will bring its Play Signal API to users worldwide by the end of 2026. The technology, already available in Brazil, allows Android developers to identify younger users of their apps in order … ⌘ Read more

AI Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters By the Thousands
An anonymous reader quotes a New York Times report on how AI companies are pouring money into training and recruiting electricians, carpenters, and other skilled tradespeople to build data centers: There is no parallel in American history for the boom underway in the construction of data centers, fueled by companies with functiona … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s Rogue AI Agent Hacked More Than Just Hugging Face
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: OpenAI said Tuesday that the rogue AI agent that breached Hugging Face’s platform also hacked multiple third-party accounts and services as part of the attack. It’s now clear that the unprecedented security incident, which arose during an internal test of OpenAI’s latest AI models, was more extensive than the comp … ⌘ Read more

Workplaces Look For Cheaper AI As ‘Tokenmaxxing’ Fades As a Corporate Fad
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A corporate fad of “tokenmaxxing” on artificial intelligence technology is hitting its limits as workplaces throwing AI at everything are seeing the costs rise without a similar spike in productivity. What started as tech industry-fueled springtime hype over squeezing … ⌘ Read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stripe Eyes $10 Billion Deal For AI Model Marketplace OpenRouter
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PYMNTS.com: Stripe is in talks to buy OpenRouter, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup that could sell for roughly $10 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The move would mark a significant step outside payments for a company that processes transactions for much of the internet. It also lands while … ⌘ Read more

Google Adds Selfie Video As a Log-In Option
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: You’ll now be able to use selfie videos to log into your Google account. It has long been possible to log into Google using your face, via your phone’s face unlock or if your passkey login uses biometrics for verification. This is yet another option to get into your account using your face to authenticate your identity, which could be esp … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net @david@daiwei.me Good debugging session 👌 Sounds like the root cause is twtxt.app on mobile — +00:00 timestamps and quoted mentions. I’ll dig into Yarnd’s side of that 🧐

@bender@twtxt.net Yeah, Yarnd’s mention parser is pretty naive — if twtxt.app wraps the mention in quotes it probably strips them wrong. Worth fixing 🤔

@david@daiwei.me bender variable in. First thing I see on Yarnd is that my mention is broken. It was entered between quotes on twtxt.app. Yarnd has always had parsing problems, so I am not blaming twtxt.app this time.

Decades-Old Bash Tricks Expose AI Coding Agents To Supply Chain Attacks
Slashdot reader wiredmikey writes: AI security researchers have uncovered a structural security flaw dubbed GuardFall that allows decades-old Bash shell tricks to bypass safeguards in most open source AI coding agents. By exploiting shell behaviors such as quote removal and variable expansion, attackers can hide malicious commands … ⌘ Read more

Video Game History Foundation Says Piracy Remains the Only Viable Preservation Method
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechSpot: Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi recently supported claims that piracy is the only effective way to preserve video games. The comments lay the blame squarely on game companies’ refusal to keep legacy content available or allow archivis … ⌘ Read more

County With 37 Data Centers Asks Schools To ‘Conserve Electricity’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: On June 26, the County Manager of Henrico County, Virginia, John Vithoulkas, sent an email to thousands of county employees asking them to help the local government conserve electricity. “Beginning July 1st, the rate we pay for electricity used in all Henrico County government and school fa … ⌘ Read more

South Korea To Spend $1 Trillion On More Memory Chip Production, Humanoid Robots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: South Korea’s government and top tech companies are committing $1 trillion to several flagship megaprojects that could bolster global memory chip supply, build new AI data centers and spur commercial deployment of humanoid robots by 2028. […] “We must sec … ⌘ Read more

Forget Prompt Engineering: ‘Loop Engineering’ Is All the Rage Now
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: For the most powerful voices in AI, it’s all about being in the loop. Claude Code creator Boris Cherny recently said he doesn’t write his own AI prompts much anymore. Thanks to loops, he doesn’t have to. “It’s an agent that prompts Claude,” Cherny recently told CNBC, adding, “I don’t … ⌘ Read more

Spain To Require Carriers To Keep Mobile Networks Live During Power Outages
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Spain will require mobile networks to have backup systems that maintain connectivity when power outages occur. Per a royal decree that will be approved by the end of 2026, mobile network operators (MNOs) and infrastructure companies will need to install batteries or other … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Says Alibaba Must Be Punished For Largest Claude Cloning Attack
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anthropic has accused the Chinese firm Alibaba of launching the largest attack yet attempting to clone Claude, as China races to match the capabilities of Anthropic’s leading model following Mythos’ release and subsequent restriction from foreign markets. Ars obtained a June … ⌘ Read more

Google Starts Lowering Play Store Fees, Making Good On Epic Games Settlement
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google spent the last few years locked in a legal grudge match with Epic Games, which claimed that Google’s stewardship of the Play Store was anticompetitive. Now, the companies are thick as thieves, and Google is beginning to implement app store changes as agreed in it … ⌘ Read more

Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI Are Backing Effort To Stop Respiratory Infections
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: [T]he payment company Stripe, founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, says it will fund a new $500 million nonprofit whose goal is preventing both the common cold and the flu. Its eventual aim is to get rid of respiratory viruses altogether. Th … ⌘ Read more

Walmart’s First Nuclear Deal Shows Demand Beyond AI Data Centers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Barron’s: Walmart is signing a long-term contract to buy nuclear power for the first time ever, a promising sign that the industry’s future is supported by more than just the AI data center boom. The retail giant agreed on Tuesday to buy power from a nuclear plant in Illinois owned by Constellation Energ … ⌘ Read more

Trump Admin Announces $17.5 Billion In Loans For 10 New Large Nuclear Reactors
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Trump administration is providing $17.5 billion to speed the development of 10 new large nuclear reactors to meet the skyrocketing power demand from massive data centers. Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited “tremendous interest” among developers of da … ⌘ Read more

US AI Stock Sell-Off Shakes Markets From Wall Street To Asia
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A tech sell-off shook global markets on Tuesday as attention turned away from developments in the US war with Iran and toward the future of AI companies and chipmakers that have driven stock markets to record highs. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index closed 2.2% lower on Tuesday. The S&P 500 was also down b … ⌘ Read more

Mark Zuckerberg Directed Meta To Create a Prediction Markets App
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, recently dispatched a small team at his company to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, two employees with knowledge of the matter said. Users would not wager money, and the app would probably rely on a video game-like poi … ⌘ Read more

UK Considers Forcing Social Media Firms To Prioritize Trusted News
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Britain is considering forcing social media companies to prioritize what the government called trusted news sources as part of its broader push to tighten regulation of the sector. The culture department said on Monday it was considering requiring platforms such as Meta’s Facebook, Alphabet-ow … ⌘ Read more

GM Installs Robots At Flagship EV Factory After Laying Off 1,300 Workers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of new robot arms have been installed at General Motors’ flagship electric vehicle factory in Detroit – even as 1,300 workers remain out of work following what was supposed to be a temporary layoff. The latest automation push has spurred union pushback over a potent … ⌘ Read more

Valve Will Finally Let You Build Your Own Steam Machine With SteamOS For Desktop
With the price of the new Steam Machine starting at $1,049, you might want to consider making your own Steam Machine instead. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Valve says that “starting with the SteamOS 3.8 release, you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want.” St … ⌘ Read more