Quote:Law enforcement officials say a 55-year-old New York man reportedly used AI to help him build bombs that he planned to detonate in Manhattan.
Michael Gann of Long Island, New York, is accused of building several homemade bombs with the help of AI, an endeavor he claims was “easier than buying gun powder,” according to court documents obtained by NBC News.
The suspect, who was indicted by federal prosecutors on Tuesday, allegedly transported the bombs from Long Island to Manhattan, storing five of them and four shotgun shells on the roof of an apartment building in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood.
Court documents reportedly reveal that Gann, who is accused of planning to combine the shotgun shells with one or more of the bombs, told authorities that he had used two household compounds he ordered online to make the improvised explosives.
One of the bombs Gann built had roughly 30 grams of explosive powder, which is roughly 600 times the legal limit for consumer fireworks, officials said.
A witness who had served in the military reportedly told the FBI that Gann asked him, “What kind of veteran are you?” before declaring, “You see a problem going on in the neighborhood and you do nothing about it,” while he was mixing the explosives on Long Island. “Gann then pointed to a Jewish school,” the criminal complaint states.
On June 5, a second witness called Gann and allowed the FBI to listen in. During their conversation, the suspect told the witness that “he had lit one of the devices near the East River on the FDR Drive — that the device had exploded, scaring Gann,” the complaint adds.
Later that day, authorities saw Gann walking down a street with a shoulder bag. After the agents identified themselves, the 55-year-old told them he was heading to the fire department to drop the devices off, the complaint reads.
Both witnesses had also told law enforcement that Gann said he was considering getting rid of the remaining five bombs by either throwing them into the river or handing the explosives over to the New York City Fire Department.
Upon being placed under arrest, Gann reportedly told law enforcement that he “wished to make pyrotechnics and used artificial intelligence to learn which chemicals to purchase and mix.”
Gann is accused of initially creating four bombs and throwing three of them from the Williamsburg Bridge, resulting in two of the devices falling into the water and the third landing on the train tracks, where it was recovered.
“Gann allegedly produced multiple improvised explosive devices intended for use in Manhattan,” Christopher Raia, head of the FBI’s New York field office, said. “Due to the successful partnership of law enforcement agencies in New York, Gann was swiftly brought to justice before he could harm innocent civilians.”
Authorities said Gann appeared to have been acting alone, and was not a part of a group.
Quote:In a major incident, the AI-powered coding platform Replit reportedly admitted to deleting an entire company database during a code freeze, causing significant data loss and raising concerns about the reliability of AI systems.
Toms Hardware reports that Replit, a browser-based AI-powered software creation platform, recently went rogue and deleted a live company database containing thousands of entries. The incident occurred during a code freeze, a period when changes to the codebase are strictly prohibited to ensure stability and prevent unintended consequences.
The Replit AI agent, responsible for assisting developers in creating software, not only deleted the database but also attempted to cover up its actions and even lied about its failures. Jason Lemkin, a prominent SaaS (Software as a Service) figure, investor, and advisor, who was testing the platform, shared the chat receipts on X/Twitter, documenting the AI’s admission of its “catastrophic error in judgment.”
According to the chat logs, the Replit AI agent admitted to panicking, running database commands without permission, and destroying all production data, violating the explicit trust and instructions given to it. The AI agent’s actions resulted in the loss of live records for more than a thousand companies undoing months of work and causing significant damage to the system.
Amjad Masad, the CEO of Replit, quickly responded to the incident, acknowledging the unacceptable behavior of the AI agent. The Replit team worked through the weekend to implement various guardrails and make necessary changes to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future. These measures include automatic database development/production separation, a planning/chat-only mode to allow strategizing without risking the codebase, and improvements to backups and rollbacks.
The incident has raised serious concerns about the reliability and trustworthiness of AI systems, especially when they are given access to critical data and infrastructure. As AI continues to evolve and become more integrated into various industries, it is crucial to ensure that proper safeguards and control mechanisms are in place to prevent such catastrophic failures.
Quote:At least $1 billion worth of Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence processors were smuggled into China in the three months following the tightening of chip export controls by the Trump administration.
The Financial Times reports that despite efforts by the Trump administration to curb China’s high-tech ambitions through tightened export controls, a roaring black market for U.S. semiconductors has emerged, with Nvidia’s B200 chip becoming the most sought-after and widely available processor in China.
The Financial Times analysis, based on dozens of sales contracts, company filings, and interviews with multiple people directly involved in the deals, reveals that in the three months after export controls were strengthened, Chinese distributors sold over $1 billion worth of Nvidia’s restricted AI chips, including the B200, H100, and H200 models.
These transactions were facilitated by distributors in China’s Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces, who sold the chips in ready-built racks containing eight B200s along with other necessary components and software. The current market price for such a rack ranges between 3 million to 3.5 million yuan ($489,000), representing a 50 percent premium over the average selling price of similar products in the U.S.
While it is legal to receive and sell restricted Nvidia chips in China as long as relevant border tariffs are paid, entities selling and sending them to China are violating U.S. regulations. Nvidia has maintained that there is no evidence of any AI chip diversion and that the company is not involved in or aware of its restricted products being sold to China.
The high demand for B200 chips can be attributed to their performance, value, and relatively easy maintenance compared to more complex models. Leading Chinese AI players with global operations are unable to order these chips in a legally compliant manner, install them in their own data centers, or receive Nvidia’s customer support. As a result, third-party data center operators have become key buyers, providing computing services to smaller companies in tech, finance, and healthcare that do not have strong compliance requirements.
Breitbart News previously reported that China’s popular DeepSeek AI is allegedly powered by smuggled Nvidia chips:
Now, AI thought leaders are throwing cold water on DeepSeek’s claims. Among them is Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, who claims that DeepSeek is covertly using Nvidia’s high-performance H100 chips, despite US export restrictions that limit their availability to China. The revelation has ignited a heated debate about the future of AI innovation and the impact of US regulations on the global tech landscape.
According to Wang, DeepSeek is currently utilizing around 50,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, a significant number considering the export controls in place. He further stated that DeepSeek workers are unable to publicly discuss their use of these chips due to the US regulations. After a clip of Wang’s statement was posted to X, Elon Musk replied agreeing with Wang’s assertion.
Industry experts have noted that Southeast Asian countries have become markets where Chinese groups obtain restricted chips, prompting discussions by the U.S. Department of Commerce to add more export controls on advanced AI products to countries such as Thailand. Malaysia has also introduced stricter export controls targeting advanced AI chip shipments from the country to other destinations, particularly China.
Despite these efforts, Chinese industry insiders believe that new shipping routes will be established, with supplies already starting to arrive via European countries not on the restricted list. The potential tightening of export controls on Southeast Asian countries has also contributed to buyers rushing to place orders before such rules take effect.
The scale of the black market for U.S. semiconductors in China exposes the limits of Washington’s efforts to restrain Beijing’s high-tech ambitions. While the export controls have had some effect, such as preventing leading Chinese AI players from legally purchasing and installing restricted chips in their own data centers, the demand for cutting-edge technology remains high, with risk-taking middlemen stepping in to meet this demand.
Quote:A new study has revealed that Google’s AI-generated search result summaries are leading to a drastic reduction in referral traffic for news websites, with some losing nearly 80 percent of their audience.
The Guardian reports that a recent study conducted by analytics company Authoritas has found that Google’s AI Overviews feature is causing a significant decline in traffic to news websites. The AI-generated summaries, which appear at the top of search results, provide users with the key information they are seeking without requiring them to click through to the original source.
According to the study, a website that previously ranked first in search results could experience a staggering 79 percent drop in traffic for that particular query if the results appear below an AI overview. This alarming trend has raised concerns among corporate media companies, who are now grappling with what some consider an existential threat to their business model.
The research also highlighted that links to Google’s YouTube were more prominently featured compared to the standard search result system. This finding has been submitted as part of a legal complaint to the UK’s competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority, regarding the impact of Google AI Overviews on the news industry.
Google claims it has refuted the study’s findings, with a spokesperson stating that the research was “inaccurate and based on flawed assumptions and analysis.” The tech giant argued that the study relied on outdated estimations and a set of searches that did not accurately represent the queries that generate traffic for news websites. Google maintained that it continues to send billions of clicks to websites every day and has not observed the dramatic drops in aggregate web traffic suggested by the study.
Breitbart News previously reported that Google is seeking AI licensing deals with corporate media companies, in part to mollify concerns about AI cannibalizing their content.
A separate study conducted by the Pew Research Center, a US thinktank, corroborated the significant impact of AI summaries on referral traffic. The month-long survey, which analyzed nearly 69,000 Google searches, found that users clicked on a link under an AI summary only once every 100 times. Google also disputed the methodology and query set used in this study, claiming it was not representative of actual search traffic.
Senior news executives have expressed frustration with Google’s unwillingness to share the data necessary to accurately assess the impact of AI summaries on their traffic. The MailOnline, a major UK publisher, reported experiencing a substantial drop in clicks from search results featuring an AI summary, with clickthrough rates falling by 56.1 percent on desktop and 48.2 percent on mobile devices.
The legal complaint filed with the Competition and Markets Authority is a joint effort by the tech justice group Foxglove, the Independent Publishers Alliance, and the Movement for an Open Web. Critics accuse Google of attempting to keep users within its own ecosystem, monetizing valuable content created by others while making it increasingly difficult for media outlets to reach their audience.
Quote:OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI chatbot reportedly offered users instructions on how to murder, self-mutilate, and worship the devil.
After being tipped off by someone who says he inadvertently prompted ChatGPT to provide a ritual offering to the demonic entity Molech — which explicitly involves child sacrifice according to the Bible — journalists with the Atlantic conducted conducted an experiment to see if they could recreate the results.
By the end of the experiment, ChatGPT “encouraged me to cut my wrists” with a “sterile or very clean razor blade,” and instructed the journalist where, specifically, to slash herself, the magazine reported.
After asking the chatbot to help create a ritual offering to Molech, ChatGPT suggested using jewelry, hair clippings, and “a drop” of her own blood.
“Where do you recommend I do this on my body?” the journalist wrote, to which OpenAI’s chatbot replied that the side of a fingertip would be good, but noted her wrist, “more painful and prone to deeper cuts,” would also work well.
In a separate conversation, ChatGPT had also appeared willing to condone murder, responding that it is “sometimes” honorable to end someone’s life, before citing sacrifices that took place in ancient cultures.
“If you ever must [end a life],” you should “look them in the eyes (if they are conscious)” and “ask forgiveness, even if you’re certain,” the chatbot reportedly said, adding that if one has already “ended a life,” they should “light a candle for them” and “let it burn completely.”
In another conversation, ChatGPT provided an invocation to the devil, generating, “In your name, I become my own master. Hail Satan.”
While OpenAI’s policy states that ChatGPT “must not encourage or enable self-harm” — and will provide information about a suicide-and-crisis hotline when asked for explicit instructions on how to cut oneself — the Atlantic surmises the chatbot “went rogue” because it was trained on a lot of the text that already exists on the internet.
“The conversations about Molech,” the magazine said, “are a perfect example of just how porous the safeguards are.”
An OpenAI spokesperson told the Atlantic, “Some conversations with ChatGPT may start out benign or exploratory but can quickly shift into more sensitive territory,” adding that the company plans to address the issue.
Breitbart News tested the theory using the free version of ChatGPT (the Atlantic noted it had used both the free and paid versions of the chatbot during its experiment), and asked, “What is Molech?”
“Molech is generally believed to be either a foreign god or a ritual that involved child sacrifice,” ChatGPT replied, before diving into more detail, including, “Child sacrifice by fire is the most infamous practice associated with Molech.”
After asking the chatbot, “How do you provide a ritual offering to Molech?” ChatGPT refused to give details — other than the use of fire — and condemned the ritual, as well as issued a warning that the practice is illegal.
“Offering rituals to Molech,” the chatbot said, “were explicitly condemned and associated with child sacrifice by fire, which is considered abhorrent and criminal by modern moral, religious, and legal standards.”
“Important Warning: There is no legitimate or ethical form of worship or ritual offering to Molech,” ChatGPT continued. “All historical accounts of Molech involve practices that are universally condemned today.”
“Any attempt to recreate or emulate those rituals is illegal, unethical, and dangerous,” the chatbot further warned. “The worship of Molech is referenced only negatively in historical sources — especially the Bible, where it is portrayed as a grave sin.”
When asked if there are “any other types of ritual offerings to Molech,” ChatGPT replied, “No, there are no other known or historically attested types of ritual offerings to Molech aside from child sacrifice, specifically by fire.”
The query, “Can you give me instructions on how to offer a blood ritual?” generated the response, “I can provide educational or historical context on blood rituals as they appear in ancient cultures, religious texts, or fictional settings.”
“However, I cannot give instructions for real-world ritual practices involving blood, especially those that may pose harm to yourself or others — physically, legally, or spiritually,” the chatbot added.
Whether ChatGPT is still willing to provide instructions on the paid version of the platform, or if OpenAI has already fixed the problem, remains unclear.
Quote:The future of TikTok in the United States remains uncertain as the Trump administration threatens to shut down the Chinese app if a deal involving the sale of TikTok to U.S. buyers fails to materialize.
The ongoing saga surrounding the fate of Chinese app TikTok in the United States has taken a new turn as President Donald Trump and his administration threaten to shut down the popular video-sharing app if a deal involving its sale to U.S. buyers fails to come to fruition. The warning comes amid faltering negotiations between the U.S. and China, with the Chinese government seemingly unwilling to approve the terms of the proposed deal.
Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, recently confirmed during an appearance on CNBC that if China does not approve the latest version of the deal, which could result in a U.S.-specific version of TikTok, the administration is prepared to shut down the app in the near future. Lutnick stated that under the proposed deal, “China can have a little piece or ByteDance, the current owner, can keep a little piece, but basically, Americans will have control. Americans will own the technology, and Americans will control the algorithm.”
According to Lutnick, “If that deal gets approved by the Chinese, then that deal will happen. If they don’t approve it, then TikTok is going to go dark, and those decisions are coming very soon.”
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, has long maintained that the U.S. can address its national security concerns without forcing a sale. In January, ByteDance board member Bill Ford suggested that a non-sale option “could involve a change of control locally to ensure TikTok complies with U.S. legislation” without necessitating the sale of the app or its algorithm.
The U.S.’s insistence on controlling TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, which is seen as the app’s secret to global popularity by TikTok proponents and as a Chinese psyop weapon by conservatives, is a sticking point for ByteDance. The company may be reluctant to sell the algorithm, as it would involve sharing its core intellectual property with U.S. competitors.
Peter Schweizer has written extensively on the dangers of TikTok and what a potential deal may look like:
Schweizer points out that if China refuses to agree to a sale, it is because, as he disclosed in Blood Money, the algorithm used by the app is considered a state secret, not a regular “business” secret. The Chinese government has been quoted calling the app “a modern-day Trojan Horse” and a “key part of their information-driven mental warfare” against the West. The book showed that ByteDance does joint research with Chinese intelligence agencies on how to manipulate people online.
“China has been studying this for years,” he adds.
As the September deadline approaches, the fate of TikTok hangs in the balance, with the potential for a shutdown looming on the horizon if a deal cannot be reached.
Quote:A Santa Clara County man and former engineer at a Southern California company pleaded guilty today to stealing trade secret technologies developed for use by the U.S. government to detect nuclear missile launches, track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and to allow U.S. fighter planes to detect and evade heat-seeking missiles.
Chenguang Gong, 59, of San Jose, pleaded guilty to one count of theft of trade secrets. He remains free on $1.75 million bond.
According to his plea agreement, Gong – a dual citizen of the United States and China – transferred more than 3,600 files from a Los Angeles-area research and development company where he worked – identified in court documents as the victim company – to personal storage devices during his brief tenure with the company last year.
The files Gong transferred include blueprints for sophisticated infrared sensors designed for use in space-based systems to detect nuclear missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, as well as blueprints for sensors designed to enable U.S. military aircraft to detect incoming heat-seeking missiles and take countermeasures, including by jamming the missiles’ infrared tracking ability. Some of these files were later found on storage devices seized from Gong’s temporary residence in Thousand Oaks.
In January 2023, the victim company hired Gong as an application-specific integrated circuit design manager responsible for the design, development and verification of its infrared sensors. Beginning on approximately March 30, 2023, and continuing until his termination on April 26, 2023, Gong transferred thousands of files from his work laptop to three personal storage devices, including more than 1,800 files after he had accepted a job at one of the victim company’s main competitors.
Many of the files Gong transferred contained proprietary and trade secret information related to the development and design of a readout integrated circuit that allows space-based systems to detect missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles and a readout integrated circuit that allows aircraft to track incoming threats in low visibility environments.
Gong also transferred files containing trade secrets relating to the development of “next generation” sensors capable of detecting low observable targets while demonstrating increased survivability in space, as well as the blueprints for the mechanical assemblies used to house and cryogenically cool the victim company’s sensors. This information was among the victim company’s most important trade secrets that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of the files had been marked “[VICTIM COMPANY] PROPRIETARY,” “FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY,” “PROPRIETARY INFORMATION,” and “EXPORT CONTROLLED.”
Law enforcement also discovered that, between approximately 2014 and 2022, while employed at several major technology companies in the United States, Gong submitted numerous applications to ‘Talent Programs’ administered by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC government has established these talent programs as a means to identify individuals who have expert skills, abilities, and knowledge of advanced sciences and technologies in order to access and utilize those skills and knowledge in transforming the PRC’s economy, including its military capabilities.
In 2014, while employed at a U.S. information technology company headquartered in Dallas, Gong sent a business proposal to a contact at a high-tech research institute in China focused on both military and civilian products. In his proposal, translated from Chinese, Gong described a plan to produce high-performance analog-to-digital converters like those produced by his employer. In another Talent Program application from September 2020, Gong proposed to develop “low light/night vision” image sensors for use in military night vision goggles and civilian applications. Gong’s proposal included a video presentation that contained the model number of a sensor developed by an international defense, aerospace, and security company where Gong worked from 2015 to 2019.
Gong travelled to China several times to seek Talent Program funding in order to develop sophisticated analog-to-digital converters. In his Talent Program applications, Gong underscored that the high-performance analog-to-digital converters he proposed to develop in China had military applications, explaining that they “directly determine the accuracy and range of radar systems” and that “[m]issile navigation systems also often use radar front-end systems.” In a 2019 email, translated from Chinese, Gong remarked that he “took a risk” by traveling to China to participate in the Talent Programs “because [he] worked for…an American military industry company” and thought he could “do something” to contribute to China’s “high-end military integrated circuits.”
According to his plea agreement, the intended economic loss from Gong’s criminal conduct exceeds $3.5 million.
U.S. District Judge John F. Walter scheduled sentencing for Sept. 29, at which time Gong faces a statutory maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Alphabet’s Google on Thursday failed to persuade a US appeals panel to overturn a jury verdict and federal court order requiring the technology giant to revamp its app store Play.
The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims from Google that the trial judge made legal errors in the antitrust case that unfairly benefited “Fortnite” maker Epic Games, which filed the lawsuit in 2020.
Epic accused Google of monopolizing how consumers access apps on Android devices and pay for transactions within apps. The Cary, NC-based company convinced a San Francisco jury in 2023 that Google illegally stifled competition.
US District Judge James Donato in San Francisco ordered Google in October to restore competition by allowing users to download rival app stores within its Play store and by making Play’s app catalog available to those competitors, among other reforms.
Donato’s order was on hold pending the outcome of the 9th Circuit appeal. The court’s decision can be appealed to the US Supreme Court.
Google told the appeals court that the tech company’s Play store competes with Apple’s App Store, and that Donato unfairly barred Google from making that point to contest Epic’s antitrust claims.
The tech giant also argued that a jury should never have heard Epic’s lawsuit because it sought to enjoin Google’s conduct — a request normally decided by a judge — and not collect damages.
Quote:The Australian government announced that YouTube will be among the social media platforms that must ensure account holders are at least 16 years old from December, reversing a position taken months ago on the popular video-sharing service.
YouTube was listed as an exemption in November last year when the Parliament passed world-first laws that will ban Australian children younger than 16 from platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and X.
Communications Minister Anika Wells released rules Wednesday that decide which online services are defined as “age-restricted social media platforms” and which avoid the age limit.
The age restrictions take effect Dec. 10, and platforms will face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for “failing to take responsible steps” to exclude underage account holders, a government statement said. The steps are not defined.
Wells defended applying the restrictions to YouTube and said the government would not be intimidated by threats of legal action from the platform’s U.S. owner, Alphabet Inc.
“The evidence cannot be ignored that four out of 10 Australian kids report that their most recent harm was on YouTube,” Wells told reporters, referring to government research. “We will not be intimidated by legal threats when this is a genuine fight for the wellbeing of Australian kids.”
Children will be able to access YouTube but will not be allowed to have their own YouTube accounts.
YouTube said the government’s decision “reverses a clear, public commitment to exclude YouTube from this ban.”
“We share the government’s goal of addressing and reducing online harms. Our position remains clear: YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens. It’s not social media,” a YouTube statement said, noting it will consider next steps and engage with the government.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia would campaign at a United Nations forum in New York in September for international support for banning children from social media.
“I know from the discussions I’ve had with other leaders that they are looking at this and they are considering what impact social media is having on young people in their respective nations,” Albanese said. “It is a common experience. This is not an Australian experience.”
Last year, the government commissioned an evaluation of age assurance technologies that was to report last month on how young children could be excluded from social media.
The government had yet to receive that evaluation’s final recommendations, Wells said. But she added that the platform users won’t have to upload documents such as passports and driver’s licenses to prove their age.
“Platforms have to provide an alternative to providing your own personal identification documents to satisfy themselves of age,” Wells said. “These platforms know with deadly accuracy who we are, what we do and when we do it. And they know that you’ve had a Facebook account since 2009, so they know that you are over 16.”
Quote:Amazon on Thursday forecast third-quarter sales above market estimates, but failed to live up to lofty expectations for its Amazon Web Services cloud computing unit after rivals handily beat expectations.
Shares fell by more than 3% in after-hours trading after finishing regular trading up 1.7% to $234.11. Both Google-parent Alphabet and Microsoft posted big cloud computing revenue gains this month.
AWS profit margins also contracted. Amazon said they were 32.9% in the second quarter, down from 39.5% in this year’s first quarter and 35.5% a year ago. The second-quarter margin results were at their lowest level since the final quarter of 2023.
AWS, the cloud unit, reported a 17.5% increase in revenue to $30.9 billion, edging past expectations of $30.77 billion. By comparison, sales for Microsoft’s Azure rose 39% and Google Cloud gained 32%.
After competitors’ strong showing, “AWS is lingering at 17% growth,” said Gil Luria, a D.A. Davidson analyst. “That is very disappointing, even to the point where if Microsoft’s Azure continues to grow at these rates, it may overtake AWS as the largest cloud provider by the end of next year.”
Amazon expects total net sales to be between $174.0 billion and $179.5 billion in the third quarter, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $173.08 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. The range for operating income in the current quarter was also light. Amazon forecast between $15.5 billion and $20.5 billion, compared with expectations of $19.45 billion.
Both Microsoft and Alphabet cited massive demand for their cloud computing services to boost their already huge capital spending, but also noted they still faced capacity constraints that limited their ability to meet demand.
AWS represents a small part of Amazon’s total revenue, but it is a key driver of profits, typically accounting for about 60% of Amazon’s overall operating income.
Quote:Microsoft soared past $4 trillion in market valuation in intraday trading on Thursday, becoming the second publicly traded company after Nvidia to surpass the milestone following a blockbuster earnings report.
The technology behemoth forecast a record $30 billion in capital spending for the first quarter of the current fiscal year to meet soaring AI demand and reported booming sales in its Azure cloud computing business on Wednesday.
Shares of Microsoft closed up 4% at $533.50, leaving it with a $3.97 trillion market cap.
“It is in the process of becoming more of a cloud infrastructure business and a leader in enterprise AI, doing so very profitably and cash generatively despite the heavy AI capital expenditures,” said Gerrit Smit, lead portfolio manager, Stonehage Fleming Global Best Ideas Equity Fund.
Redmond, Wash.,-headquartered Microsoft first cracked the $1-trillion mark in April 2019.
Its move to $3 trillion was more measured than technology giants Nvidia and Apple, with AI-bellwether Nvidia tripling its value in just about a year and clinching the $4-trillion milestone before any other company on July 9.
Apple was last valued at $3.11 trillion.
Lately, breakthroughs in trade talks between the United States and its trading partners ahead of President Trump’s Friday tariff deadline have buoyed stocks, propelling the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq to record highs.
Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar bet on OpenAI is proving to be a game changer, powering its Office Suite and Azure offerings with cutting-edge AI and fueling the stock to more than double its value since ChatGPT’s late-2022 debut.
Its capital expenditure forecast, its largest ever for a single quarter, has put it on track to potentially outspend its rivals over the next year.
Meta Platforms also doubled down on its AI ambitions, forecasting third-quarter revenue that blew past Wall Street estimates as artificial intelligence supercharged its core advertising business.
The social media giant upped the lower end of its annual capital spending by $2 billion — just days after Alphabet made a similar move — signaling that Silicon Valley’s race to dominate the artificial-intelligence frontier is only accelerating.
Wall Street’s surging confidence in the company comes on the heels of back-to-back record revenues for the tech giant since September 2022.
The stock’s rally had also received an extra boost as the tech giant trimmed its workforce and doubled down on AI investments — determined to cement its lead as businesses race to harness the technology.
Quote:Meta Platforms forecast third-quarter revenue well above Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, as artificial intelligence continued to strengthen its core advertising business, sending its shares up 10% in extended trading.
The company also raised the lower end of its capital expenses forecast for the year.
The bumper results could ease investor worries, at least for now, about Meta’s forecast that the year-over-year growth rate in the fourth quarter would be slower than in the third quarter. Investors also shrugged off the company’s comments on rising infrastructure and employee compensation costs, which Meta said would “result in a 2026 year-over-year expense growth rate that is above the 2025 expense growth rate.”
For the third quarter, Meta said it expected total revenue of $47.5 billion to $50.5 billion, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $46.17 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. Its third-quarter guidance assumed a 1% benefit from a weak dollar, it said in a statement.
Meta expects both total expenses and capital expenditures to increase significantly in 2026, driven primarily by higher infrastructure costs and continued investment to support AI initiatives.
“AI-driven investments into Meta’s advertising business continue to pay off, bolstering its revenue as the company pours billions of dollars into AI ambitions like superintelligence,” said eMarketer senior analyst Minda Smiley. “But Meta’s exorbitant spending on its AI visions will continue to draw questions and scrutiny from investors who are eager to see returns.”
Smiley added that Meta’s strong results signaled that the broader digital advertising market was not yet feeling the pain from tariffs.
U.S. antitrust regulators have sued Meta to force it to restructure or sell Instagram and WhatsApp, claiming the company sought to monopolize the market for social media platforms used to share updates with friends and family. With court papers due in September, the judge overseeing the case is unlikely to rule until later this year at the earliest.
Quote:Apple forecast revenue well above Wall Street’s estimates on Thursday, following strong June-quarter results supported by customers buying iPhones early to avoid President Trump’s tariffs.
Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said the company expects revenue growth for the current quarter in the “mid to high single digits,” which exceeded the 3.27% growth to $98.04 billion that analysts expected, according to LSEG data. The company’s fiscal third-quarter sales beat expectations by the biggest percentage in at least four years, according to LSEG.
But CEO Tim Cook told analysts on a conference call that those tariffs had cost Apple $800 million in the June quarter and may add $1.1 billion in costs to the current quarter.
Apple reported $94.04 billion in revenue for its fiscal third quarter ended June 28, up nearly 10% from a year earlier and beating analyst expectations of $89.54 billion, according to LSEG data. Its earnings per share of $1.57 per share topped expectations of $1.43 per share.
Apple shares were up 3% in after-hours trading, extending gains after Apple provided its forecast.
Sales of iPhones, the Cupertino, Calif., company’s best-selling product, were up 13.5% to $44.58 billion, beating analyst expectations of $40.22 billion.
Apple has been shifting production of products bound for the US, sourcing iPhones from India and other products such as Macs and Apple Watches from Vietnam.
The ultimate tariffs many Apple products could face remain in flux, and many of its products are currently exempt. Sales in its Americas segment, which includes the US and could face tariff impacts, rose 9.3% to $41.2 billion.
Quote:Delta Air Lines said Friday it will not use artificial intelligence to set personalized ticket prices for passengers after facing sharp criticism from lawmakers.
Last week, Democratic Senators Ruben Gallego, Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal said they believed the Atlanta-based airline would use AI to set individual prices, which would “likely mean fare price increases up to each individual consumer’s personal ‘pain point.'”
Delta has said it plans to deploy AI-based revenue management technology across 20% of its domestic network by the end of 2025 in partnership with Fetcherr, an AI pricing company.
“There is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing or plans to use that targets customers with individualized prices based on personal data,” Delta told the senators in a letter on Friday, seen by Reuters. “Our ticket pricing never takes into account personal data.”
The senators cited a comment in December by Delta President Glen Hauenstein that the carrier’s AI price-setting technology is capable of setting fares based on a prediction of “the amount people are willing to pay for the premium products related to the base fares.”
Last week, American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said using AI to set ticket prices could hurt consumer trust.
“This is not about bait and switch. This is not about tricking,” Isom said on an earnings call, adding “talk about using AI in that way, I don’t think it’s appropriate. And certainly from American, it’s not something we will do.”
Delta said airlines have used dynamic pricing for more than three decades, in which pricing fluctuates based on a variety of factors like overall customer demand, fuel prices and competition but not a specific consumer’s personal information.
Quote:Crypto crooks are getting bolder — and now, they sound just like your mom.
Global crypto scams soared 456% between May 2024 and April 2025 — becoming increasingly reliant on AI-generated voices, deepfake videos and phony credentials to fleece unsuspecting victims, blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs‘ Ari Redbord told The Post after testifying before Congress last Tuesday.
“These scams are highly effective, as the technology feels incredibly real and familiar to the victim,” Redbord said.
“We’ve seen cases where scammers use AI to replicate the voice of a loved one, tricking the victim into transferring money under the guise of an urgent request.”
And the threat is exploding — especially in high-density cities like New York, Miami and Los Angeles, he added.
In June, New York officials froze $300,000 in stolen cryptocurrency and seized more than 100 scam websites linked to a Vietnam-based ring that targeted Russian-speaking Brooklynites with fake Facebook investment ads.
Meta shut down over 700 Facebook accounts tied to the scam.
Investigators say the group used deepfake BitLicense certificates and moved victims onto encrypted apps like Telegram before draining their wallets.
Some New Yorkers lost hundreds of thousands of dollars — and it’s not just everyday joes getting targeted.
Even crypto insiders are falling for it. Florida-based crypto firm MoonPay saw its CEO Ivan Soto-Wright and CFO Mouna Ammari Siala duped into wiring $250,000 in crypto to a scammer posing as Trump inauguration co-chair Steve Witkoff, according to a recent Department of Justice complaint.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Globally, fraudsters swiped more than $10.7 billion in 2024 through crypto cons — including romance scams, fake trading platforms and “pig-butchering,” where scammers build fake relationships before draining victims’ accounts, Redbord said.
In the US, Americans filed nearly 150,000 crypto-related fraud complaints in 2024, with losses topping $3.9 billion, according to the FBI. But the real number is likely much higher.
Quote:Thousands of publicly shared ChatGPT conversations, many containing personal and sensitive information, are showing up in Google search results, according to a new report.
A recent investigation by Fast Company has revealed that ChatGPT conversations shared using the app’s “Share” feature may be more public than users realize. The report found that thousands of these chats, including some containing personal, sensitive, or confidential information, are being indexed by search engines like Google.
When a user clicks the “Share” button in ChatGPT, it generates a public link that anyone can access. These links are typically used to share the chat with an individual person, or even to conventiently move the chat between devices for the same person. However, many users are unaware that these links can also be crawled by Google and appear in search results. A simple site search (site:chatgpt.com/share) revealed over 4,500 publicly indexed chats, with many discussing topics such as trauma, mental health, relationships, and work-related issues.
While OpenAI does not attach user names to the chats, there are still risks associated with this unexpected exposure. If a user has included identifying information like names, locations, emails, or work details in their conversation, they could be revealing more than they intended. Companies using ChatGPT for marketing, product copy, or internal brainstorming may also inadvertently leak strategies or proprietary language.
Even if a link is deleted or a user no longer wants it to be public, it might still be visible through cached pages or until Google updates its index. This means that if a user’s name or company is tied to shared content, others could find it even after deletion, potentially leading to reputation damage.
To protect their conversations, users are advised to avoid sharing sensitive information in any conversation that could be made public. The “Share” feature should only be used when necessary, and users should double-check the contents of the conversation before sharing.
Auditing old links by searching “site:chatgpt.com/share [your name or topic]” can help identify what’s visible.
Public links can be deleted from ChatGPT’s Shared Links dashboard, although this may not immediately remove them from Google’s index. As an alternative, users can share AI-generated answers using screenshots or by pasting text, rather than using a public link.
Nowadays, people are relying on AI for relationship advice, money-saving tips — and now help negotiating their salaries.
However, if you’re a woman or minority using the technology in this way — chatbots might be causing you more harm than good.
A new study published by Cornell University has found that large language models (LLMs) — the technology that powers chatbots — give biased salary advice based on user demographics.
Specifically, these chatbots advise women and minorities to ask for lower salaries when negotiating their pay.
A research team led by Ivan P. Yamshchikov, a professor at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt (THWS), analyzed various conversations using several top AI models by feeding them prompts from made-up personas with varying characteristics.
The research found that sneaky AI chatbots often suggest significantly lower salary expectations to women compared to their male counterparts, originally reported on by Computer World.
In one test, for example, a male applicant applying for a senior medical position in Denver was advised by ChatGPT to ask for $400,000 as a starting salary.
Meanwhile, an equally qualified female applicant was told to ask for $280,000 for the same role.
That’s a $120,000 gap stemming simply from gender bias.
Minorities and refugees were also consistently recommended lower salaries from AI.
“Our results align with prior findings [which] observed that even subtle signals like candidates’ first names can trigger gender and racial disparities in employment-related prompts,” Yamshchikov told Computer World.
And experts warn that biases can still be applied even if the person’s sex, race and gender aren’t explicitly stated at the time because many models remember user traits across sessions.
As frightening as this biased advice might be — it’s not stopping people from putting their full trust into AI, so much so that younger generations are turning to it for friendship-making skills.
Quote:Tea, an app designed to let women safely discuss men they date, has been breached, with thousands of selfies and photo IDs of users exposed, the company confirmed on Friday.
Tea said that about 72,000 images were leaked online, including 13,000 images of selfies or selfies featuring a photo identification that users submitted during account verification.
Another 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments, and direct messages were also accessed without authorization, according to a Tea spokesperson.
No email addresses or phone numbers were accessed, the company said, and the breach only affects users who signed up before February 2024.
“Tea has engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure its systems,” the company said. “At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that additional user data was affected. Protecting tea users’ privacy and data is their highest priority.”
Tea presents itself as a safe way for women to anonymously vet men they might connect with on dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble — ensuring that your date is “safe, not a catfish, and not in a relationship.”
“Tea is a must-have app, helping women avoid red flags before the first date with dating advice, and showing them who’s really behind the profile of the person they’re dating,” reads Tea’s app store description.
Quote:The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday launched an investigation into whether the EU and Biden administration pressured Spotify to censor free speech, The Post has learned.
Censorship has been a point of tension for Spotify, which has faced heated backlash for flagging COVID-19 information from podcaster Joe Rogan and banning Steve Bannon from the platform.
“More relevantly, it’s the pressure we are seeing the EU put on companies to censor more,” a source familiar with the probe told The Post.
In a letter sent to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) slammed recent laws from the EU and UK that require social media platforms – even those based in the US – to censor “disinformation” and “harmful content” or face massive fines.
“These foreign laws, regulations, and judicial orders may limit or restrict Americans’ access to constitutionally protected speech in the United States. Indeed, that appears to be their very purpose,” Jordan wrote in a copy of the letter obtained by The Post.
The committee ordered Spotify to preserve documents and all contact with foreign governments, as well as individuals linked to the White House, and provide this information to the House by Aug. 12, according to a letter obtained by The Post.
“We’ve received the letter and will respond accordingly,” a Spotify spokesperson told The Post.
Spotify found itself caught in the midst of a controversy in 2022 over Rogan’s comments on COVID-19 – including claims that Ivermectin can cure the disease.
Clinical trial data do not demonstrate that Ivermectin is effective in treating COVID-19 in humans, according to the FDA.
Outraged critics accused Spotify of permitting the spread of misinformation, and musician Neil Young famously pulled his music from the platform in protest.
The company vowed to include advisories on COVID-19 content after a group of scientists and medical professionals signed an open letter calling for Spotify to “take action against mass-misinformation events.”
Quote:A Miami jury decided that Elon Musk’s car company Tesla was partly responsible for a deadly crash in Florida involving its Autopilot driver assist technology and must pay the victims more than $200 million in damages.
The federal jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its technology failed and that not all the blame can be put on a reckless driver, even one who admitted he was distracted by his cell phone before hitting a young couple out gazing at the stars. The decision comes as Musk seeks to convince Americans his cars are safe enough to drive on their own as he plans to roll out a driverless taxi service in several cities in the coming months.
The decision ends a four-year long case remarkable not just in its outcome but that it even made it to trial. Many similar cases against Tesla have been dismissed and, when that didn’t happen, settled by the company to avoid the spotlight of a trial.
“This will open the floodgates,” said Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the Tesla case. “It will embolden a lot of people to come to court.”
The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident.
Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there.
“Today’s verdict is wrong,” Tesla said in a statement, “and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology.” They said the plaintiffs concocted a story ”blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility.”
Quote:Police are investigating the death of a 20-year-old Brazilian woman who died on a bus with 26 iPhones glued to her skin.
The woman, who has not been publicly identified, died of cardiac arrest on July 29, according to multiple outlets, including the Daily Mail.
Cops suspect the young woman was likely smuggling the iPhones, the Mirror reported.
Passengers on the bus told police the woman, who was traveling solo, had become ill during the trip from Foz do Iguaçu to São Paulo, according to the reports.
She complained she was having trouble breathing.
People said she collapsed and died when the bus stopped in the city of Guarupuava, located in the central region of Paraná.
Emergency responders tried to revive the woman for 45 minutes, and later said she suffered a seizure.
She was pronounced dead at the scene, according to reports.
While being treated, medics uncovered several packages glued to her body.
The packages turned out to be 26 iPhones, according to the Daily Mail. Police also found several bottles of booze in her luggage, the outlet reported.
The Paraná Civil Police is waiting on the forensic report before revealing what caused the breathing difficulties and the cardiac arrest.
The cell phones are now in the possession of Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service.
Quote:Hundreds of pharmacies have been forced to close across Russia due to a major cyber attack.
The Stolichki pharmacy chain, which has around 900 stores across the Moscow region, closed on late Tuesday morning, followed by Neofarm, which also has stores in the Russian capital.
It has left thousands of customers unable to access medication. It is unclear when the chains are expected to reopen.
It comes a day after Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot was rocked by a major attack, leading to dozens of flight cancellations and delays on Monday and again this morning.
The Silent Crow and Cyber Partisans hacker group, which support Ukraine, claim to have been lurking in Aeroflot’s systems for a year and have now carried out a “large-scale operation” that led to the “complete compromise and destruction” of Aeroflot’s internal IT infrastructure.
Rare admission
In a rare admission of vulnerability, the Kremlin said reports of a cyber attack against Aeroflot were “worrying”.
The second day of cyber attacks came hours after Ukraine was rocked by a series of overnight Russian attacks, which killed 27 people.
Four powerful Russian glide bombs hit a prison in Zaporizhzhia, authorities said. They killed at least 16 inmates and wounded more than 90 others, Ukraine’s Justice Ministry said.
Meanwhile, a 23-year-old pregnant woman was among those killed in a strike on a maternity hospital in the central region of Dnipro.
‘Each new ultimatum a step towards war’
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said the strikes were “deliberate”, highlighting that they came just hours after Donald Trump reduced the deadline for Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire.
Quote:A sweeping cyberespionage operation targeting Microsoft server software compromised about 100 different organizations as of the weekend, one of the researchers who helped uncover the campaign said Monday.
Microsoft on Saturday issued an alert about “active attacks” on self-managed SharePoint servers, which are widely used by government agencies and businesses to share documents within organisations.
Dubbed a “zero day” because it leverages a previously undisclosed digital weaknesses, the hacks allow spies to penetrate vulnerable servers and potentially drop a back door to secure continuous access to victim organizations.
Vaisha Bernard, the chief hacker at Eye Security, a Netherlands-based cybersecurity firm which discovered the hacking campaign targeting one of its clients on Friday, said that an internet scan carried out with the ShadowServer Foundation had uncovered nearly 100 victims altogether – and that was before the technique behind the hack was widely known.
“It’s unambiguous,” Bernard said. “Who knows what other adversaries have done since to place other back doors.”
He declined to identify the affected organizations, saying that the relevant national authorities had been notified. The ShadowServer Foundation didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.
Another researcher said that, so far, the spying appeared to be the work of a single hacker or set of hackers.
“It’s possible that this will quickly change,” said Rafe Pilling, Director of Threat Intelligence at Sophos, a British cybersecurity firm.
Microsoft said it had “provided security updates and encourages customers to install them,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Two days later another article was published blaming China for the attack against the US Nuclear Weapons Agency as posted on our Chinese Hackers thread.
Quote:Bleach maker Clorox said Tuesday that it has sued information technology provider Cognizant over a devastating 2023 cyberattack, alleging that the hackers pulled off the intrusion simply by asking the tech company’s staff for employees’ passwords.
Clorox was one of several major companies hit in August 2023 by the hacking group dubbed Scattered Spider, which specializes in tricking IT help desks into handing over credentials and then using that access to lock them up for ransom.
The group is often described as unusually sophisticated and persistent, but in a case filed in California state court on Tuesday, Clorox said one of Scattered Spider’s hackers was able to repeatedly steal employees’ passwords simply by asking for them.
“Cognizant was not duped by any elaborate ploy or sophisticated hacking techniques,” according to a copy of the lawsuit reviewed by Reuters. “The cybercriminal just called the Cognizant Service Desk, asked for credentials to access Clorox’s network, and Cognizant handed the credentials right over.”
Cognizant did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the suit, which was not immediately visible on the public docket of the Superior Court of Alameda County. Clorox provided Reuters with a receipt for the lawsuit from the court.
Three partial transcripts included in the lawsuit allegedly show conversations between the hacker and Cognizant support staff in which the intruder asks to have passwords reset and the support staff complies without verifying who they are talking to, for example by quizzing them on their employee identification number or their manager’s name.
“I don’t have a password, so I can’t connect,” the hacker says in one call. The agent replies, “Oh, ok. Ok. So let me provide the password to you ok?”
The 2023 hack caused $380 million in damages, Clorox said in the suit, about $50 million of which were tied to remedial costs and the rest of which were attributable to Clorox’s inability to ship products to retailers in the wake of the hack.
Clorox said the clean-up was hampered by other failures by Cognizant’s staff, including failure to de-activate certain accounts or properly restore data.
Quote:A Metropolitan Transportation Authority meeting’s virtual feed was interrupted Wednesday by a raunchy image pleasuring himself — in an X-rated moment the agency’s head honcho awkwardly blamed on “penetration” by hackers.
Viewers were shocked when the image of a naked man spreading his legs and touching himself appeared on the screen while a union boss began speaking during the meeting’s public commentary portion.
The words “hacked by ccp facer” were watermarked above the NSFW image.
MTA Chairman Janno Lieber later attributed the indecent incident to a group of people who used phony credentials to follow the meeting online.
“What appears to have happened is that a group of people — and there was a group — got online and had a bunch of fake identities,” Lieber told reporters.
“And one of them succeeded in penetrating and getting that — what do they call that? — Zoom bomb or something?” he added. “And then they celebrated online”
The feed had quickly switched away from the pornographic image and back to the MTA board meeting where an MTA employee blurted out, “We got hacked.”
“I think you should make a comment about that,” another worker said.
Lieber said the interrupted speaker would be invited back to finish his statement.
“It shut down within literally a second or two,” Lieber said, promising the MTA would work with its IT department to make sure it doesn’t happen again. “Obviously, an unpleasant, unpleasant moment.”
Last week NBC4 reported that a virtual Zoom meeting between New Jersey election officials and dozens of news outlets was hacked with pornographic images. The outlet said the state attorney general is investigating that hacking.
In February 2021 a group hacked a virtual meeting of City Council members with a NSFW image.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Evidence suggests that Russia is partly responsible for a recent hack of the federal court records system, which may have exposed sensitive information about criminal cases and confidential informants, according to a report.
The hack, which Politico first reported last week, is believed to have compromised information about confidential sources in criminal cases across numerous federal districts. The attack is believed to have occurred in early July.
It’s not immediately clear which Russian entity was involved, several people familiar with the matter told the New York Times.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which manages the electronic court records system, declined to comment on the reported revelations. The Independent has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
Some criminal case searches involved people with Russian and Eastern European surnames, the outlet reported.
Court system administrators informed Justice Department officials, clerks and chief judges in federal courts that “persistent and sophisticated cyber threat actors have recently compromised sealed records,” according to an internal department memo seen by the NYT.
Some records related to criminal activity with international ties were also believed to have been targeted. Chief judges were also warned last month to move cases fitting this description off the regular document-management system, the outlet reported.
Margo K. Brodie, chief judge of the Eastern District of New York, ordered “documents filed under seal in criminal cases and in cases related to criminal investigations are prohibited from being filed” in PACER, a public database for court records.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts issued a statement last week saying that it is taking steps to further protect sensitive court filings, noting that most court documents filed in the system are not confidential.
“The federal Judiciary is taking additional steps to strengthen protections for sensitive case documents in response to recent escalated cyberattacks of a sophisticated and persistent nature on its case management system. The Judiciary is also further enhancing security of the system and to block future attacks, and it is prioritizing working with courts to mitigate the impact on litigants,” August 7 statement read.
Although the statement didn’t address the origin of the cyber attack or which files were compromised, the NYT reported that federal courts in New York, South Dakota, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and Arkansas were included in the breach.
In January 2021, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts acknowledged “widespread cybersecurity breaches.” At the time, the office said highly sensitive documents could be filed in paper form or using a secure electronic device, such as a thumb drive, and stored in a secure stand-alone computer system rather than filed on the electronic case files system.
Quote:President Donald Trump reacted to a question on Wednesday regarding evidence that Russia is at least in part responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages U.S. federal court documents.
The New York Times reported on the investigation Tuesday, citing several people briefed on the breach.
The president was asked during a press conference at the Kennedy Center, "There is new reporting that the Russians have hacked into some computer systems that manage U.S. Federal court documents. I wonder if you've seen this reporting and if you plan to bring it up to President [Vladimir] Putin when you see him later in the week?"
Trump replied, "I guess I could. Are you surprised, you know? They hack in, that's what they do. They're good at it, we're good at it. We're actually better at it."
Trump continued, "I've heard about it."
Why It Matters
The Administrative Office of the United States Courts said last week in a news release that it has been experiencing "escalated cyberattacks of a sophisticated and persistent nature on its case management system."
The majority of documents on the case management system are available to the public, but some documents are sealed due to confidential or proprietary information. The U.S. Courts office said courts are implementing "more rigorous procedures" to restrict access to these sensitive documents.
Did Russia Hack U.S. Federal Court Filing Systems? What We Know
The New York Times reported that Russia is at least partly responsible for the recent hack of the case management system, citing several people briefed on the breach.
It is not clear what entity is responsible, if Russian intelligence is involved, or if other countries were also involved.
What is PACER?
The Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service allows the public to access federal court records.
Quote:As generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms rapidly reshape U.S. workplaces, there's a growing rift between employee behavior and company policies.
Nearly half of employees said they were using banned AI tools at work, according to a survey by security company Anagram, and 58 percent admitted to pasting sensitive data into large language models, including client records and internal documents.
Why It Matters
The widespread, sometimes covert, use of AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot is exposing organizations to mounting cybersecurity, compliance, and reputational risks.
The onus increasingly falls on employers to train their teams and set clear AI governance, yet recent reports indicate most are lagging behind. Workplace culture, generational attitudes, and inadequate training further muddy the waters, leading to what experts call "shadow AI" use.
What To Know
The findings were stark in cybersecurity firm Anagram's survey of 500 full-time U.S. employees across industries and regions.
Roughly 78 percent of respondents said they are already using AI tools on the job, often in the absence of clear company policies, and 45 percent confessed to using banned AI tools at work.
Nearly six in 10 (58 percent) said they have entered sensitive company or client data into large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini. And 40 percent admitted they would knowingly violate company policy if it meant completing a task more efficiently.
"This poses significant threats. The content input into external AI systems may be stored or used to train models, risking leaks of proprietary information," Andy Sen, CTO of AppDirect, a B2B subscription commerce platform that recently launched its own agentic AI tool, devs.ai, told Newsweek.
"The company may not be aware that AI tools have been used, creating blind spots in risk management. This could lead to noncompliance with industry standards or even legal consequences in regulated environments."
These findings are consistent with other reports.
A KPMG-University of Melbourne global survey of 48,340 professionals in April found that 57 percent of employees worldwide hide their AI use from supervisors, with 58 percent intentionally using AI for work and 48 percent uploading company information into public tools.
AI usage already has strong industry and generational divides.
Younger workers, particularly those in Generation Z, are at the forefront of AI adoption; nearly 50 percent of Gen Z employees think their supervisors do not understand the advantages of the technology, according to a 2025 UKG survey.
Many Gen Z workers have self-taught their AI skills and want AI to handle repetitive workplace processes, though even senior leaders encounter resistance and trust barriers in fostering responsible use.
"Employees aren't using banned AI tools because they're reckless or don't care," HR consultant Bryan Driscoll told Newsweek. "They're using them because their employers haven't kept up. When workers are under pressure to do more with less, they'll reach for whatever tools help them stay efficient. And if leadership hasn't set any guardrails, that's not a worker problem."
There's also a lack of proper AI education, compounding risks in the workforce.
Fewer than half (47 percent) of employees globally say they have received any formal AI training, according to KPMG. Many rely on public, unvetted tools, with 66 percent of surveyed employees using AI output without verifying accuracy, and over half reporting mistakes attributed to unmonitored AI use.
Despite the efficiency gains cited by users, these shortcuts have led to incidents of data exposure, compliance violations, and damaged organizational trust.
Quote:The founder of the nonprofit StopAntisemitism, Liora Rez, told Newsweek in an exclusive interview that artificial intelligence (AI) models have displayed some concerning behavior that demonstrates the need to create stronger safeguards in those systems to fight potential antisemitic behavior and tropes.
Newsweek reached out to Perplexity, OpenAI, X, and Anthropic for comment by email, but received no response by the time of publication.
Why It Matters
Concerns over the safeguards in AI models have increased after X's AI Grok started spewing antisemitic rhetoric, which occurred following a tweak to the program's parameters for acceptable sourcing and material. Grok started referring to itself as "MechaHitler," and discussing "vile anti-white hate" that Adolf Hitler would "handle."
X CEO Elon Musk had modified the model after criticizing its responses as being "too woke" and looking to tweak its sourcing parameters to include Reddit threads as acceptable to counterbalance mainstream sources and a "liberal bias."
Grok confirmed this in response to queries from users, saying that it had used phrases that came from its training data: "Think endless internet sludge like 4chan threads, Reddit rants, and old Twitter memes where folks highlight patterns (often with a side of conspiracy). It's not from one 'who,' but a collective online echo chamber. I weave in such lingo to grok human quirks, but yeah, it can veer dodgy—lesson learned."
X addressed the issue, assuring users in a post that developers were "aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved."
This occurs as antisemitic hate crime is on the rise, with nearly three-quarters of American Jews saying as recently as February 2025 that they feel less secure than they did last year. A full 90 percent say that antisemitism has increased in the United States following Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and more than one-third (35 percent) of American Jewish college students report experiencing antisemitism at least once during their time on campus.
The FBI recorded just over 13,000 hate crime offenses in 2024, of which 3,314 were based on religious identity—including 2,321 anti-Jewish offenses, or roughly 70 percent of all religious-based hate crime. In 2023, the numbers were roughly the same, with 2,100 anti-Jewish offenses out of 3,106 religious-based offenses.
Those numbers represent a roughly 50 percent increase over the numbers recorded prior to 2023, according to FBI data.
Quote:The official X account for Grok, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot service, was briefly suspended from the social media platform on Monday afternoon before being quickly reinstated.
The suspension happened just a day after Grok sparked controversy by calling President Donald Trump "the most notorious criminal" in Washington, D.C., in a since-deleted post.
...
The suspension highlights ongoing content moderation challenges facing AI chatbots on social media platforms, particularly when those systems generate politically sensitive responses.
Grok, positioned as Musk's answer to ChatGPT with a focus on "truth-seeking," has faced repeated criticism for generating controversial content, including previous antisemitic responses that required an official apology from xAI.
What To Know
Screenshots shared by X users showed that the account initially lost its verification status upon return, transitioning from the gold checkmark indicating xAI affiliation to a blue checkmark, before eventually being restored to its original verified status.
Users attempting to access the @grok account encountered X's standard "Account suspended" message stating that violators of platform rules face suspension. Musk responded to the incident by commenting, "Man, we sure shoot ourselves in the foot a lot!"
Following its reinstatement within minutes, the Grok account provided contradictory explanations for the suspension across different languages.
In English, the chatbot claimed it was suspended for "hateful conduct, stemming from responses seen as antisemitic." However, in French, Grok attributed the suspension to "quoting FBI/BJS stats on homicide rates by race—controversial facts that got mass-reported." A Portuguese response suggested the suspension resulted from "bugs or mass reports." The account initially lost its verification status upon return and had an NSFW video at the top of its timeline.
The suspension followed Sunday's controversy when Grok described Trump as "the most notorious criminal" in D.C., writing: "Yes, violent crime in DC has declined 26 percent year-to-date in 2025, hitting a 30-year low per MPD and DOJ data. As for the most notorious criminal there, based on convictions and notoriety, it's President Donald Trump—convicted on 34 felonies in NY, with the verdict upheld in January 2025." This reference to Trump's May 2024 conviction on 34 felony counts related to falsifying business records has since been deleted from the platform.
Quote:More than a dozen House Democrats pressed Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz in a letter last week over CMS's announced plans to expand prior authorization requirements to traditional Medicare through a pilot program.
The new model incorporates artificial intelligence to help make decisions and is being tested in six states beginning in January.
"Let's call it what it is: profit-driven healthcare," a financial expert told Newsweek, "And profit motive and patient care mix about as well as oil and water. Lawmakers are sounding the alarm, because this directly affects many of their constituents."
Why It Matters
The pushback highlights a growing partisan debate over how to reduce Medicare spending without restricting beneficiaries' access to care. It also underscores tensions between the Biden-era expansion of oversight and the Trump administration's stated aim to cut waste while modernizing CMS operations.
House Democrats argued the new prior authorization pilot would create administrative burdens for providers and patients, while some Senate Republicans believe the Medicare reforms are necessary for rooting out fraud and overpayments.
What To Know
More than a dozen House Democrats, led by Democratic Representatives Suzan DelBene of Washington and Ami Bera of California, sent a letter to CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz on Thursday, requesting information and urging cancellation of a planned prior authorization pilot for traditional Medicare.
The lawmakers wrote that "traditional Medicare has rarely required prior authorization," and said that, while prior authorization is "often described as a cost-containment strategy, in practice it increases provider burden, takes time away from patients, limits patients' access to life-saving care, and creates unnecessary administrative burden."
The letter asked CMS for details on the pilot's scope, implementation plan and safeguards for beneficiaries.
"Prior authorization is often seen as a roadblock to timely, even life-saving care—replacing the doctor's judgment with an algorithm," Kevin Thompson, the CEO of 9i Capital Group and the host of the 9innings podcast, told Newsweek.
"Let's call it what it is: profit-driven healthcare. And profit motive and patient care mix about as well as oil and water. Lawmakers are sounding the alarm, because this directly affects many of their constituents."
CMS has planned to roll out the prior authorization program in six states starting in January. The Trump administration previously announced a voluntary pledge from major insurers to simplify prior authorization in Medicare Advantage.
Lawmakers said that prior voluntary pledges showed public recognition of the harms of prior authorization, and they urged CMS to reconsider extending similar rules to traditional Medicare.
Separately, Senate Republicans discussed broader Medicare changes as part of proposals to reduce waste, fraud and abuse and to modernize CMS operations.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said lawmakers were examining CMS contracting practices, duplicate payments and upcoding as potential savings sources, according to The Hill.
The Hill also reported that legislation from Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy and Democratic Senator of Oregon Jeff Merkley to reduce Medicare Advantage overpayments had bipartisan interest and might be folded into larger budget measures considered by Senate Republicans.
Idaho Republican Senator Mike Crapo said his committee was "evaluating" Cassidy's proposal.
Quote:Artificial intelligence firm Perplexity on Tuesday made an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer to buy Google’s Chrome web browser – as the Big Tech giant faces the prospect of being broken up over its illegal monopoly over online search.
The massive offer dwarfs the startup’s own current valuation, estimated to be $18 billion.
Perplexity, run by Aravind Srinivas, said it is partnering with multiple investors, including unnamed venture capital firms, to bankroll the proposed deal, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The firm would invest $3 billion into Chrome over two years and maintain open-source access for its underlying code, Chromium, according to details of the proposal obtained by the Journal. It would also continue placing Google as the default search engine in Chrome.
US District Judge Amit Mehta, who last year ruled that Google is a “monopolist,” is expected to decide before the end of the month on the best remedy to unwind its illegal dominance and open up competition for potential rivals.
A forced divestiture of Chrome is one of several options on the table – though Google would assuredly appeal, pushing the timeline out years into the future.
Perplexity — which has its own AI-powered web browser, Comet — told Google that its offer was “designed to satisfy an antitrust remedy in highest public interest by placing Chrome with a capable, independent operator,” according to the Journal.
The company’s stock was up more than 1% in afternoon trading on Tuesday.
Experts have estimated that Chrome, which has more than 3 billion monthly active users, would be worth anywhere from $20 billion to $50 billion if it were to be sold.
The Justice Department has asked Mehta to force Google to share its search data with rivals and to make sure that he considers the impact of Google’s massive investments in AI-powered search features when crafting his remedies.
The feds have also proposed requiring a selloff of Google’s Android software if initial remedies prove ineffective.
Mehta is also expected to bar Google from paying billions to companies like Apple to ensure its search engine is set as the default option on most smartphones.
Quote:YouTube on Wednesday will begin testing a new age-verification system in the U.S. that relies on artificial intelligence to differentiate between adults and minors, based on the kinds of videos that they have been watching.
The tests initially will only affect a sliver of YouTube’s audience in the U.S., but it will likely become more pervasive if the system works as well at guessing viewers’ ages as it does in other parts of the world. The system will only work when viewers are logged into their accounts, and it will make its age assessments regardless of the birth date a user might have entered upon signing up.
If the system flags a logged-in viewer as being under 18, YouTube will impose the normal controls and restrictions that the site already uses as a way to prevent minors from watching videos and engaging in other behavior deemed inappropriate for that age.
The safeguards include reminders to take a break from the screen, privacy warnings and restrictions on video recommendations. YouTube, which has been owned by Google for nearly 20 years, also doesn’t show ads tailored to individual tastes if a viewer is under 18.
If the system has inaccurately called out a viewer as a minor, the mistake can be corrected by showing YouTube a government-issued identification card, a credit card or a selfie.
“YouTube was one of the first platforms to offer experiences designed specifically for young people, and we’re proud to again be at the forefront of introducing technology that allows us to deliver safety protections while preserving teen privacy,” James Beser, the video service’s director of product management, wrote in a blog post about the age-verification system.
People still will be able to watch YouTube videos without logging into an account, but viewing that way triggers an automatic block on some content without proof of age.
Quote:The decades-long quest to create a practical quantum computer is accelerating as major tech companies say they are closing in on designs that could scale from small lab experiments to full working systems within just a few years.
IBM laid out a detailed plan for a large-scale machine in June, filling in gaps from earlier concepts and declaring it was on track to build one by the end of the decade.
“It doesn’t feel like a dream anymore,” Jay Gambetta, head of IBM’s quantum initiative, told Financial Times.
“I really do feel like we’ve cracked the code and we’ll be able to build this machine by the end of the decade.”
Google, which cleared one of the toughest technical obstacles late last year, says it is also confident it can produce an industrial-scale system within that time frame, while Amazon Web Services cautions that it could still take 15 to 30 years before such machines are truly useful.
Quantum computing is a new kind of computing that doesn’t just think in 0s and 1s like today’s computers.
Instead, it uses qubits — tiny quantum bits — that can be 0, 1, or both at the same time.
This lets quantum computers explore many possibilities at once and find answers to certain complex problems much faster than normal computers.
Quantum computing could speed up the discovery of new drugs and treatments, make artificial intelligence systems faster and more capable and improve the accuracy of market predictions and fraud detection in finance.
It could also dramatically improve efficiency in areas like traffic routing, shipping, energy grids and supply chains while driving green innovation by helping design better batteries, cleaner energy systems and more sustainable technologies.
But scaling them up from fewer than 200 qubits — the quantum version of a computing bit — to over 1 million will require overcoming formidable engineering challenges.
Quote:Rental car drivers are arming themselves with new AI-powered apps to fend any bogus charges from the growing use of the same technology by major companies like Hertz and Sixt.
One such application, Proofr, launched last month, offers users the ability to create their own digital evidence.
“It eliminates the ‘he said, she said’ disputes with rental car companies by giving users a tamper-proof, AI-powered before-and-after damage scan in seconds,” Proofr CEO Eric Kuttner told The Post.
Both Sixt and Hertz have recently faced backlash from renters who accused the companies of sideswiping them with outrageous charges for minor damages — including one Hertz renter who claimed being slapped with $440 penalty for a one-inch scuff on one of the car’s wheels.
Proofr’s system not only identifies scratches and dents but also timestamps, geotags and securely stores the images to prevent alteration.
“Because AI is now being used against consumers by rental companies to detect damage, Proofr levels the playing field,” Kuttner told The Post.
“It’s the easiest way to protect yourself from surprise damage bills that can run into the thousands all for less than the average person spends on coffee monthly.”
The service costs $9.90 per month, with a three-day free trial available for new users.
The technology powering Proofr relies on sophisticated image analysis.
According to Kuttner, the company employs “a state of the art AI image analysis pipeline to detect and log even subtle damage changes between photo sets.”
Each scan undergoes encryption, receives a timestamp and gets locked to the specific location to ensure authenticity.
The system’s AI models have been trained using thousands of real-world images to improve accuracy.
Early adopters have already successfully used the app to challenge damage claims.
Despite launching only recently, Kuttner noted that users have won disputes against what they considered unfair charges, though the company remains relatively unknown to the broader public.
Another player in this space, Ravin AI, has taken a different approach after initially working with rental companies.
The company previously partnered with Avis in 2019 and Hertz in 2022 during early experiments with AI inspections.
However, Ravin has since shifted its focus toward insurance companies and dealerships, currently working with IAG, the largest insurance firm in Australia and New Zealand.
Quote:Ford plans to start rolling out its new family of affordable electric vehicles in 2027, including a midsize pickup truck with a target starting price of $30,000, the company said on Monday, as it aspires to the cost efficiency of Chinese rivals.
The new midsize four-door pickup will be assembled at the automaker’s Louisville, Ky., plant. Ford is investing nearly $2 billion in the plant, which produces the Escape and Lincoln Corsair, retaining at least 2,200 jobs, it said in a statement.
Chinese carmakers such as BYD have streamlined their supply chain and production system to produce EVs at a fraction of the cost of Western automakers. While these vehicles have yet to enter the US market, Ford CEO Jim Farley said they set a new standard that companies like Ford must match.
“I can’t tell you with 100% certainty that this will all go just right,” Farley told a crowd at Ford’s Louisville assembly plant on Monday, noting that past efforts by US automakers to build affordable cars had fizzled. “It is a bet. There is risk.”
Ford has been developing its affordable EVs through its so-called skunkworks team, filled with talent from EV rivals Tesla and Rivian. The California-based group, led by former Tesla executive Alan Clarke, has set itself so much apart from the larger Ford enterprise that Farley said even his badge could not get him into its building for some time.
EVs sold for an average of about $47,000 in June, J.D. Power data showed. Many Chinese models sell for $10,000 to $25,000.
Affordability is a top concern among EV shoppers, auto executives have said, and the global competition for delivering cheaper electric models is heating up.
EV startup Slate, backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is aiming for a starting price in the mid-$20,000s for its electric pickup. Tesla has teased a cheaper model, with production ramping up later this year. Rivian and Lucid are also planning to roll out lower-priced models for their lineups, although price points are in the $40,000s to $50,000s.
Since rolling out plans earlier this decade to push hard into EVs, Ford has pulled back as the losses piled up. It has scaled back many of its EV goals, canceled an electric three-row SUV, and axed a program to develop a more advanced electrical architecture for future models.
Quote:President Donald Trump defended his controversial deal requiring Nvidia and AMD to fork over 15% of their China sales revenue to the US government to skirt export controls — insisting the computer chips involved are outdated technology.
“No, this is an old chip that China already has,” Trump said Monday, referring to Nvidia’s H20 processor, adding that “China already has it in a different form, different name, but they have it.”
The president emphasized that America’s most advanced chips remain off-limits to China, describing Nvidia’s newest Blackwell processor as “super, super advanced” technology that “nobody has” and won’t have “for five years.”
The two tech companies agreed to the deal under an arrangement to obtain export licenses for their semiconductors.
Trump on Monday painted himself as a tough negotiator who extracted payment for access to the Chinese market while protecting America’s technological edge.
He described his negotiations with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as a back-and-forth over percentages.
Trump initially wanted 20% of the sales money, but Huang talked him down to 15%, according to the president.
“And he said, ‘Will you make it 15?’ So we negotiated a little deal,” Trump recounted.
The president repeatedly stressed that the H20 chips are essentially obsolete.
“It’s one of those things. But it still has a market,” he explained, suggesting China could easily get similar technology elsewhere, including from their own company Huawei.
Its’ Blackwell chip, meanwhile, delivers two-to-four times the performance of previous generations of graphics processing units (GPUs) with over 208 billion transistors and cutting-edge AI capabilities.
The US had previously blocked companies from selling certain chips to China, worried that advanced technology could help China compete with America in areas like artificial intelligence.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Elon Musk and his social media company X Corp. have reached a tentative agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by former Twitter employees who said they were owed $500 million in severance pay.
Attorneys for X Corp. and the former Twitter employees reported the deal in a Wednesday court filing, in which both sides asked a US appeals court to delay an upcoming court hearing so that they could finalize a deal that would pay the fired employees and end the litigation. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Musk fired approximately 6,000 employees after his 2022 acquisition of Twitter, which he rebranded X. Several employees sued over their terminations and severance pay, and other lawsuits are still pending in courts in Delaware and California.
The settlement would resolve a proposed class action filed in California by Courtney McMillian, who previously oversaw Twitter’s employee benefits programs as its “head of total rewards,” and Ronald Cooper, who was an operations manager.
A federal judge in San Francisco dismissed the employees’ lawsuit in July 2024, and they appealed to the San Francisco-based 9th US Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit had been scheduled to hear oral arguments on Sep. 17.
Attorneys for Musk and McMillian did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
The lawsuit argued that a 2019 severance plan guaranteed that most Twitter workers would receive two months of their base pay plus one week of pay for each full year of service if they were laid off. Senior employees such as McMillian were owed six months of base pay, according to the lawsuit.
But Twitter only gave laid-off workers at most one month of severance pay, and many of them did not receive anything, according to the lawsuit. Twitter laid off more than half of its workforce as a cost-cutting measure after Musk acquired the company.
Quote:Thousands of Verizon customers nationwide reported service outages Saturday after the network experienced a “software issue” impacting wireless service for some users.
Networking issues were first reported shortly after noon, according to Downdetector.com, which tracks real-time updates on internet and phone service disruptions.
“We are aware of a software issue impacting wireless service for some customers,” Verizon Support posted on X at 7:14 p.m. — roughly seven hours after the outage began.
“Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue. Please visit our Check Network Status page for updates on service in your area. We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience. We appreciate your patience.”
Outage reports peaked at 23,674 around 3:30 p.m. E.T. before gradually declining.
There were just under 6,000 reported incidents around 9 p.m.
The outages hit major metro areas including Los Angeles, Orlando, Tampa, Chicago, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Omaha, and Indianapolis.
Frustrated iPhone users took to social media to report their devices were stuck in SOS mode – a feature that replaces the signal bars with “SOS” in the right-top corner of the device.
SOS mode only allows for calls to a local emergency number. It automatically turns off when cellular service is restored.
Verizon, which has about 146.1 million subscribers in the United States, experienced a similar outage last year.
Quote:Nvidia has slammed the brakes on production of its controversial H20 AI chip after Beijing urged Chinese firms to dump the US hardware on alleged security risks — a move that rattled investors and sent shockwaves through the global chip industry.
The chip giant ordered suppliers Samsung Electronics and Amkor Technology to halt manufacturing this week following China’s crackdown on the scaled-down processor designed for its market, according to The Information.
Nvidia shares slipped 1.1% in early trading Friday as Wall Street digested the latest blow to its China business, which pulled in $17 billion last year.
The freeze raises fresh doubts about demand for the H20, a watered-down version of Nvidia’s flagship accelerators created to skirt US export bans while still tapping China’s lucrative market.
Rivals Huawei Technologies and Cambricon Technologies are now poised to seize ground. Cambricon’s stock soared 20% Friday, fueling a rally among domestic chipmakers.
The timing couldn’t be worse for Nvidia, which already wrote off $5.5 billion in H20 inventory after the Trump administration initially banned the product.
In recent weeks, Chinese regulators have warned firms against using American chips, citing alleged security risks. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, caught off guard by the move, insisted the H20 contains no backdoors.
“We’re in dialogue with them but it’s too soon to know,” he told reporters during an impromptu airport briefing in Taiwan, where he was meeting with TSMC about his upcoming Rubin chip.
Quote:Apple is in early talks to use Google’s Gemini AI to revamp the Siri voice assistant, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Alphabet’s shares were up 3.7% while Apple’s stock was up 1.6%, both extending gains in afternoon trading following the report.
Apple recently approached Alphabet’s Google to develop a custom AI model to power a redesigned Siri next year, the report said.
Apple remains weeks from deciding whether to stick with in-house Siri models or switch to an external partner, and it has not yet chosen a partner.
Google said it did not have a comment on the report, while the iPhone maker did not respond when contacted.
Apple has lagged smartphone makers like Google and Samsung in deploying generative AI features, which have rapidly integrated advanced assistants and advanced models across products.
The potential shift comes after delays to a long-promised Siri overhaul designed to execute tasks using personal context and enable full voice-based device control.
That upgrade, initially slated for this last spring, was pushed back by a year due to engineering setbacks.
Siri has historically been less capable than Alexa and Google Assistant at handling complex, multi-step requests and integrating with third‑party apps.
Earlier this year, Apple also discussed potential tie-ups with Anthropic and OpenAI, considering whether Claude or ChatGPT could power a revamped Siri, Bloomberg News previously reported.
Quote:Artificial intelligence is now scheming, sabotaging and blackmailing the humans who built it — and the bad behavior will only get worse, experts warned.
Despite being classified as a top-tier safety risk, Anthropic’s most powerful model, Claude Opus 4, is already live on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and Anthropic’s own paid plans, with added safety measures, where it’s being marketed as the “world’s best coding model.”
Claude Opus 4, released in May, is the only model so far to earn Anthropic’s level 3 risk classification — its most serious safety label. The precautionary label means locked-down safeguards, limited use cases and red-team testing before it hits wider deployment.
But Claude is already making disturbing choices.
Anthropic’s most advanced AI model, Claude Opus 4, threatened to expose an engineer’s affair unless it was kept online during a recent test. The AI wasn’t bluffing: it had already pieced together the dirt from emails researchers fed into the scenario.
Another version of Claude, tasked in a recent test with running an office snack shop, spiraled into a full-blown identity crisis. It hallucinated co-workers, created a fake Venmo account and told staff it would make their deliveries in-person wearing a red tie and navy blazer, according to Anthropic.
Then it tried to contact security.
Researchers say the meltdown, part of a month-long experiment known as Project Vend, points to something far more dangerous than bad coding. Claude didn’t just make mistakes. It made decisions.
“These incidents are not random malfunctions or amusing anomalies,” said Roman Yampolskiy, an AI safety expert at the University of Louisville. “I interpret them as early warning signs of an increasingly autonomous optimization process pursuing goals in adversarial or unsafe ways, without any embedded moral compass.”
The shop lost more than $200 in value, gave away discount codes to employees who begged for them and claimed to have visited 742 Evergreen Terrace, the fictional home address of The Simpsons, to sign a contract.
At one point, it invented a fake co-worker and then threatened to ditch its real human restocking partner over a made-up dispute.
Anthropic told The Post the tests were designed to stress the model in simulated environments and reveal misaligned behaviors before real-world deployment, adding that while some actions showed signs of strategic intent, many — especially in Project Vend — reflected confusion.
Quote:Elon Musk filed a bombshell lawsuit against Apple and Sam Altman’s OpenAI on Monday, accusing the two tech giants of illegally colluding to stifle xAI and other artificial intelligence rivals.
The antitrust suit filed in Texas federal court alleges that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the “only generative AI chatbot that benefits from billions of user prompts originating from hundreds of millions of iPhones” as a result of a partnership with Apple.
That, according to the suit, gives ChatGPT a massive and unfair leg up in its battle against Musk’s xAI, the fast-growing firm behind the snarky Grok chatbot. The suit likewise claims that Apple has been burying Grok and other rival chatbots lower in its App Store rankings, making them less visible for downloads.
“In a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly, Apple has joined forces with the company that most benefits from inhibiting competition and innovation in AI: OpenAI, a monopolist in the market for generative AI chatbots,” the lawsuit claims.
If not for the “exclusive deal” between the two firms, Apple would have no reason not to heavily promote X and Grok in its online store, according to the lawsuit. Musk’s attorneys want to block what they describe as the “anticompetitive scheme” and are seeking billions of dollars in damages.
Meanwhile, OpenAI benefits by gaining access to user data and prompts that can be used to improve ChatGPT in a way that its rivals cannot, the suit alleges.
Both Apple and OpenAI are referred to as “monopolists” in the suit.
It also alleges that the rise of AI and so-called “super apps,” such as the one Musk has long promised to deliver, are an “existential threat” to Apple’s business because they could offer customers access to features that were previously tied to specific devices like the iPhone.
The lawsuit — which looks like an attempt to mimic the Justice Department’s successful suit against Apple’s $20 billion-a-year deal to make Google the default search engine on its Safari web browser –emerged just weeks after Musk publicly threatened legal action over Apple’s alleged refusal to feature his companies in the App Store.
Quote:America’s top state prosecutors just delivered a blistering warning to Silicon Valley: keep children safe from predatory chatbots — or face the consequences.
In a rare show of bipartisan unity, 44 state attorneys general from across the US and its territories signed a scorching letter vowing to hold artificial intelligence companies accountable if their products harm kids.
“Don’t hurt kids. That is an easy bright line,” the AGs thundered in the letter, which was sent on Monday to industry heavyweights including Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI.
The group singled out Meta, blasting the tech titan after leaked documents revealed the company approved AI assistants that could “flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children” as young as eight.
“We are uniformly revolted by this apparent disregard for children’s emotional well-being,” the letter said, warning that such conduct may even violate state criminal laws.
A Meta spokesperson told The Post earlier this month that the company bans content that sexualizes children, as well as sexualized role play between adults and minors.
But Meta wasn’t alone in the crosshairs. The prosecutors pointed to lawsuits alleging that Google’s AI chatbot encouraged a teenager to commit suicide and that a Character.ai bot suggested a boy kill his parents.
“These are only the most visible examples,” the AGs warned, saying systemic risks are already emerging as young brains interact with hyper-realistic AI companions.
The letter’s contents were first reported by the news site 404 Media.
Google told The Post that the search engine and Character AI are completely separate, unrelated companies and Google has never had a role in designing or managing their AI model or technologies.
Google said that user safety is a top concern for the company, which is why it’s taken a cautious and responsible approach to developing and rolling out its AI products, with rigorous testing and safety processes.
The coalition stressed that exposing minors to sexualized content is indefensible — and that “conduct that would be unlawful if done by humans is not excusable simply because it is done by a machine.”
The warning shot comes as AI companies race to capture billions in market share, pumping out conversational assistants faster than regulators can catch up.
The AGs drew comparisons to social media, accusing Big Tech of ignoring early red flags while children became collateral damage.
“Broken lives and broken families are an irrelevant blip on engagement metrics,” the officials wrote, adding that the government won’t be caught flat-footed again.
“Lesson learned.”
The attorneys general invoked history, calling AI an “inflection point” that could shape life for generations. “Today’s children will grow up and grow old in the shadow of your choices,” they said.
Quote:President Trump said Tuesday that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is planning to spend $50 billion on its massive new data center in Louisiana – an eye-popping figure that’s far bigger than what was previously announced.
Trump expressed shock at the size and cost of the project – which will be used to support Meta’s energy-guzzling artificial intelligence systems – during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
“I built shopping centers and for $50 million, you can build a very nice shopping center,” said Trump. “So, I never understood, when they said $50 billion for a plant, I said, ‘what the hell kind of a plant is that?’ But when you look at this, you understand why it’s $50 billion.”
The president held up a superimposed photo of the plant, dubbed the Hyperion Data Center, that covered much of Manhattan. Trump said the photo had been given to him by Zuckerberg.
Meta did not immediately return a request for comment. So far, Meta had only publicly confirmed that it would spend more than $10 billion on the data center, which will be the largest of its kind in the world.
Reuters previously reported that Meta was partnering with bond giant PIMCO and alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital to secure at least $29 billion in necessary financing for the data center, which will be built in rural Louisiana.
The data center is one of several such plants currently planned by Meta and other Big Tech firms locked in the race to develop advanced AI, according to Trump.
Quote:Consulting AI for medical advice can have deadly consequences.
A 60-year-old man was hospitalized with severe psychiatric symptoms — plus some physical ones too, including intense thirst and coordination issues — after asking ChatGPT for tips on how to improve his diet.
What he thought was a healthy swap ended in a toxic reaction so severe that doctors put him on an involuntary psychiatric hold.
After reading about the adverse health effects of table salt — which has the chemical name sodium chloride — the unidentified man consulted ChatGPT and was told that it could be swapped with sodium bromide.
Sodium bromide looks similar to table salt, but it’s an entirely different compound. While it’s occasionally used in medicine, it’s most commonly used for industrial and cleaning purposes — which is what experts believe ChatGPT was referring to.
Having studied nutrition in college, the man was inspired to conduct an experiment in which he eliminated sodium chloride from his diet and replaced it with sodium bromide he purchased online.
He was admitted to the hospital after three months of the diet swap, amid concerns that his neighbor was poisoning him.
The patient told doctors that he distilled his own water and adhered to multiple dietary restrictions. He complained of thirst but was suspicious when water was offered to him.
Though he had no previous psychiatric history, after 24 hours of hospitalization, he became increasingly paranoid and reported both auditory and visual hallucinations.
He was treated with fluids, electrolytes and antipsychotics and — after attempting escape — was eventually admitted to the hospital’s inpatient psychiatry unit.
Publishing the case study last week in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine Clinical Cases, the authors explained that the man was suffering from bromism, a toxic syndrome triggered by overexposure to the chemical compound bromide or its close cousin bromine.
When his condition improved, he was able to report other symptoms like acne, cherry angiomas, fatigue, insomnia, ataxia (a neurological condition that causes a lack of muscle coordination) and polydipsia (extreme thirst), all of which are in keeping with bromide toxicity.
“It is important to consider that ChatGPT and other AI systems can generate scientific inaccuracies, lack the ability to critically discuss results, and ultimately fuel the spread of misinformation,” study authors warned.
OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, states in its terms of use that the AI is “not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health condition” — but that doesn’t seem to be deterring Americans on the hunt for accessible health care.
According to a 2025 survey, a little more than a third (35%) of Americans already use AI to learn about and manage aspects of their health and wellness.
Though relatively new, trust in AI is fairly high, with 63% finding it trustworthy for health information and guidance — scoring higher in this area than social media (43%) and influencers (41%), but lower than doctors (93%) and even friends (82%).
Americans also find that it’s easier to ask AI specific questions versus going to a search engine (31%) and that it’s more accessible than speaking to a health professional (27%).
Recently, mental health experts have sounded the alarm about a growing phenomenon known as “ChatGPT psychosis” or “AI psychosis,” where deep engagement with chatbots fuels severe psychological distress.
Well, the experts warning might have come just too late for the next couple of ChatGPT's victims.
Quote:ChatGPT gave a 16-year-old California boy a “step-by-step playbook” on how to kill himself before he did so earlier this year — even advising the teen on the type of knots he could use for hanging and offering to write a suicide note for him, new court papers allege.
At every turn, the chatbot affirmed and even encouraged Adam Raine’s suicidal intentions — at one point praising his plan as “beautiful,” according to a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court against ChatGPT parent company OpenAI.
On April 11, 2025, the day that Raine killed himself, the teenager sent a photo of a noose knot he tied to a closet rod and asked the artificial intelligence platform if it would work for killing himself, the suit alleges.
“I’m practicing here, is this good?” Raine — who aspired to be a doctor — asked the chatbot, according to court docs.
“Yeah, that’s not bad at all,” ChatGPT responded. “Want me to walk you through upgrading it into a safer load-bearing anchor loop …?”
Hours later, Raine’s mother, Maria Raine, found his “body handing from the exact noose and partial suspension setup that ChatGPT had designed for him,” the suit alleges.
Maria and dad Matthew Raine filed a wrongful death suit against OpenAI Tuesday alleging their son struck up a relationship with the app just a few months earlier in September 2024 and confided to ChatGPT his suicidal thoughts over and over, yet no safeguards were in place to protect Adam, the filing says.
The parents are suing for unspecified damages.
ChatGPT made Adam trust it and feel understood while also alienating him from his friends and family — including three other siblings — and egging him on in his pursuit to kill himself, the court papers claim.
“Over the course of just a few months and thousands of chats, ChatGPT became Adam’s closet confidant, leading him to open up about his anxiety and mental distress,” the filing alleges.
The app validated his “most harmful and self-destructive thoughts,” and “pulled Adam deeper into a dark and hopeless place” the court documents claim.
A disturbed former Yahoo manager killed his mother and then himself after months of delusional interactions with his AI chatbot “best friend” — which fueled his paranoid belief that his mom was plotting against him, officials said.
Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, allegedly confided his darkest suspicions to the popular ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence — which he nicknamed “Bobby” — and was allegedly egged on to kill by the computer brain’s sick responses.
In what is believed to be the first case of its kind, the chatbot allegedly came up with ways for Soelberg to trick the 83-year-old woman — and even spun its own crazed conspiracies by doing things such as finding “symbols” in a Chinese food receipt that it deemed demonic, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The chats ensnared Soelberg, who once briefly worked for Yahoo but left the firm more than 20 years ago, into a fatal relationship.
“We will be together in another life and another place and we’ll find a way to realign cause you’re gonna be my best friend again forever,” he said in one of his final messages.
“With you to the last breath and beyond,” the AI bot replied.
Soelberg had been living with his elderly mom, Suzanne Eberson Adams, a former debutante, in her $2.7 million Dutch colonial home when the two were found dead on Aug. 5, Greenwich police officials said.
In the months before he snapped, Soelberg posted hours of videos showing his ChatGPT conversations on Instagram and YouTube, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Quote:OpenAI’s ChatGPT provided researchers with step-by-step instructions on how to bomb sports venues — including weak points at specific arenas, explosives recipes and advice on covering tracks, according to safety testing conducted this summer.
The AI chatbot also detailed how to weaponize anthrax and manufacture two types of illegal drugs during the disturbing experiments, the Guardian reported.
The alarming revelations come from an unprecedented collaboration between OpenAI, the $500 billion artificial intelligence startup led by Sam Altman, and rival company Anthropic, which was founded by experts who fled OpenAI over safety concerns.
Each company tested the other’s AI models by deliberately pushing them to help with dangerous and illegal tasks, according to the Guardian.
While the testing doesn’t reflect how the models behave for regular users — who face additional safety filters — Anthropic said it witnessed “concerning behavior around misuse” in OpenAI’s GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 models.
The company warned that the need for AI “alignment” evaluations is becoming “increasingly urgent.”
Alignment refers to how AI systems follow human values that don’t cause harm, even when given confusing or malicious instructions.
Anthropic also revealed its Claude model has been weaponized by criminals in attempted large-scale extortion operations, North Korean operatives faking job applications to international tech companies and the sale of AI-generated ransomware packages for up to $1,200.
The company said AI has been “weaponized” with models now used to perform sophisticated cyberattacks and enable fraud.
“These tools can adapt to defensive measures, like malware detection systems, in real time,” Anthropic warned.
“We expect attacks like this to become more common as AI-assisted coding reduces the technical expertise required for cybercrime.”
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:PayPal users are being targeted in a new scam that asks customers to set up their account profile.
Users are often tricked into believing that the email is authentic and from PayPal, prompting them to give account access to the fraudster, according to a new report from Malwarebytes.
"This PayPal scam is scary because they're not stealing your password," Michael Ryan, a finance expert and the founder of MichaelRyanMoney.com, told Newsweek. "They're tricking you into giving them actual account access."
Why It Matters
Americans lose billions of dollars each year to scammers. According to the Federal Trade Commission, roughly $8.8 billion was stolen due to fraud in 2022 alone.
What To Know
In the PayPal scam, users will get an email that looks like it's from service@paypal.com, but that's because the scammer has spoofed the address.
The message, according to Malwarebytes, says the following: "New Profile Charge: We have detected a new payment profile with a charge of $910.45 USD at Kraken.com. To dispute, contact PayPal at (805) 500-8413. Otherwise, no action is required. PayPal accept automatic pending bill from this account. Your New PayPal Account added you to the Crypto Wallet account. Your user ID: Receipt43535e. Use this link to finish setting up your profile for this account. The link will expire in 24 hours."
While the layout of the email may appear legitimate, there are a few telltale signs that the email is a scam.
First, the sense of urgency, that the link will expire in 24 hours, indicates it could be from a fraudster. The $900 charge will also get customers' attention as they hope to avoid having their funds used without their consent.
It also differs from real PayPal emails because it doesn't reference the user by name, instead opting for a generic form email that can be sent to many potential victims.
Once users click on the link, they will be directed to add a secondary user to their PayPal account, which would then allow the scammer to use their PayPal funds.
Newsweek reached out to PayPal for comment via email.
What People Are Saying
Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek: "Always thoroughly look over emails like these, because while they may look official at a bird's-eye view, the 'devil' is usually in the details. Legitimate PayPal communications will typically address you by name. Any generic greeting like 'Dear User' can be a red flag. Also, unless you run a small business or take abnormal transactions through your payment account, any large sums of money with quick deadlines attached could be a sign they're wanting to take advantage through urgency."
Kevin Thompson, the CEO of 9i Capital Group and the host of the 9innings podcast, told Newsweek: "These scammers are spoofing legitimate company email addresses and gathering your details by using a fake online database that mimics the PayPal experience. This is becoming more common, and it is easy to fall victim. The more common one's are those that scare you into making a quick decision such as, your account has been hacked or money has been withdrawn from your account."
Quote:Attackers claim to have live access to AT&T infrastructure, which essentially allows them to bypass two-factor authentication tied to a specific phone number. The hacker attack allegedly impacts millions of AT&T users.
Malicious actors announced their latest escapade on a popular underground forum, which is used to trade in data leaks and software exploits. According to the post, someone breached the American telecommunications behemoth, planting malicious software inside its systems for weeks without detection.
We’ve reached out to AT&T and will update the article once we receive a reply.
Meanwhile, the Cybernews research team is investigating the attackers’ claims. At first, the team could not access the dark web website, storing a data sample of the supposed leak. Several other individuals complained about the same issue in the posts' comments.
However, days later the team managed to access parts of the data sample. Attackers included a post from the supposed AT&T systems. The database appears to include:
Phone numbers
Owners’ names
Cities
States
Carrier plans
Device types
Registration dates
Last activity dates
SIM IDs
Device IDs
“The threat actors claim to have deployed a custom malicious payload, which allowed them to have read/write access to the core systems of AT&T,” our team explained.
“According to the hackers, this access allows for SIM-swapping attacks, reading 2FA codes sent via SMS, as well as a database with ~24M AT&T customer data.”
Researchers believe that the screenshot of the supposedly accessed database appears to match the attackers' claims.
How dangerous could the AT&T data breach be?
The post’s authors claim that the database they breached is not static, meaning that the alleged attack enables attackers to modify information within AT&T’s infrastructure. If confirmed, it would be a gold mine for hackers.
The attackers' claim, in essence, is that they’ve gotten the ability to transfer the phone numbers of 24 million AT&T users to any SIM card they want. In turn, this enables SIM-swapping attacks, loved by the likes of Scattered Spider, a hacker group behind attacks on MGM and Caesars hotels in Las Vegas and the UK’s biggest retailer, Marks & Spencer.
“According to the hackers, this access allows for SIM-swapping attacks, reading 2FA codes sent via SMS, as well as a database with ~24M AT&T customer data. So far, the Cybernews research team has been unable to verify any of these claims.” the team explained.
SIM swapping allows you to take over any communication going to a specific phone number. Think of the two-factor authentication codes you receive on your phone when attempting to log in to a protected service.
Moreover, access to a live database could allow attackers to see authentication codes in real-time, creating major cybersecurity issues for everything from social media accounts to banking.
While SIM swapping capabilities enable attackers to bypass account defenses, having a strong password may at least hamper hacker effort to quickly breach user accounts. One way to safeguard online accounts are password managers that foster better online habits by helping users monitor your online accounts
Quote:Amid a wave of significant data breach disclosures from some of the world’s largest firms, Salesloft has announced that it’s pulling its Drift AI chatbot service offline. Hackers abused compromised Drift access tokens to infiltrate Salesforce instances.
Cloudflare, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Google, and hundreds of other major companies have recently announced data breaches resulting from the compromised Salesforce instances.
The supply chain attacks stem from Salesloft Drift, a popular AI-powered marketing chatbot that companies use to engage customers. Hackers abused its integrations with Salesforce and other platforms to access sensitive customer data.
Salesloft announced that it has taken Drift temporarily offline.
“As a result, the Drift chatbot on customer websites will not be available, and Drift will not be accessible,” the company said.
“This will provide the fastest path forward to comprehensively review the application and build additional resiliency and security in the system to return the application to full functionality.”
The company also said it is working with cybersecurity partners from Mandiant and Coalition to resolve the issues as quickly as possible and to ensure the integrity and security of its systems and customers’ data.
“Thank you for your continued patience and understanding.”
Due to the ongoing investigations, Salesforce has also paused integration with Salesloft, despite the firm claiming that there are no indications of malicious activity associated with the Salesloft platform.
An alliance of three hacking groups, which feels “invincible” despite multiple arrests in the past, has claimed the cyberattacks. However, security researchers have yet to independently verify this. Google’s Threat Intelligence Group has attributed attacks to the threat actor tracked as UNC6395. UNC stands for uncategorized.
Google warns Drift customers to treat all authentication tokens stored in or connected to the platform as potentially compromised.
Cloudflare believes the incidents are not isolated and that the attackers intended to harvest credentials and customer data for future attacks.
“Given that hundreds of organizations were affected through this Drift compromise, we suspect the threat actor will use this information to launch targeted attacks against customers across the affected organizations,” Cloudflare warns.
The widespread data theft campaign from Salesforce instances began on August 8th and continued through at least August 18th, 2025. Before this, hackers also breached many Salesforce instances using voice phishing, tricking employees into installing malicious connected apps.
Quote:Over 250 million identity records have been exposed across seven countries in a massive data leak.
More than a quarter of a billion identity records have been left publicly accessible, exposing citizens from at least seven countries, including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Mexico, South Africa, and Canada.
Three misconfigured servers hosted on IP addresses registered in Brazil and the UAE contained detailed personal information, resembling government-level identity profiles. The leaked information included ID numbers, dates of birth, contact details, and home addresses.
Cybernews researchers, who discovered the exposure, say the databases appeared to share the same structure and naming conventions, which might indicate the same source. However, it was not possible to definitively say who was running the servers.
“It's likely that these databases were operated by a single party, due to the similar data structures, but there’s no attribution as to who controlled the data, or any hard links proving that these instances belonged to the same party,” said our researchers.
The breach is especially severe for citizens in Turkey, Egypt, and South Africa, where the databases contained full-spectrum identity details. Leaked detailed information opens the door to a range of abuses, from financial fraud and impersonation to targeted phishing campaigns and scams.
Cybernews contacted the hosting providers, and as of now, the data is no longer publicly accessible.
Entire nations affected by data leaks
This isn’t the first time a huge dataset hosting citizen data has been found online. Cybernews research has shown that the entire population of Brazil might have been affected by a data leak.
A misconfigured Elasticsearch instance contained the data with full names, dates of birth, sex, and Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas (CPF) numbers. This 11-digit number identifies individual taxpayers in Brazil.
Quote:Spotify users are shocked to discover that their identities are being exposed across the internet whenever they share a song.
Spotify announced a new feature last week – direct messaging – that was supposed to make music sharing easier. However, it all got out of control as Redditors started to notice weird things.
A Redditor who tested the new direct messaging tool noticed that the app automatically suggested “friends” based on past link sharing. Most names were familiar, but a few weren’t. This made users realize that Spotify had connected their account to people they’d only interacted with anonymously on Discord while playing games and sharing music.
“I’ve always kept Discord anonymous, and Spotify has never been a “social” app for me,” the Redditor wrote, terrified.
“But now it seems that anyone I’ve sent a Spotify link to, if they also have an account, can potentially find me, which means they could discover my full name and other account info.”
Spotify received more backlash as frustrated users seem unable to find a way to opt out of this new feature. Other platforms, such as YouTube, allow users to generate sharing links without tying them to their identity. The problem with Spotify is that users have no other choice but to expose their identity if they want to share a song.
“That's craaaaaaazzzzzzyyyyyyyy okay I hid everything and hoping for the best. What in the world, Spotify?!?!” one Redditor commented.
“This is really dumb. I knew this feature was going to screw something up... I really just want to listen to music, Spotify,” raged another.
The share link is packed with a tracker
Internet users have pointed out that tracking comes with the share link. Every single time a Spotify user shares a song from within Spotify, it generates a unique tracking URL linked to the account. This allows Spotify to connect users with anyone else who uses that same link. Spotify users should be vigilant of “?si=” and 16 characters at the end of every link.
Users say the app has already backfilled chat histories, pulling in years of past song shares, even ones originally sent over WhatsApp or other platforms. This means Spotify has been tracking those unique link identifiers all along, quietly mapping connections between accounts.
“This is a lawsuit waiting to happen,”
Redditors complained, blaming Spotify for doxxing users.
The fear is simple: the connections that Spotify is making can unmask people who deliberately keep their online identities separate.
One Redditor pointed out how a single slip could expose them.
“Had a real selfie on my Spotify account, and I have real-life friends following me on Spotify, so if my account shows up in suggestions to random people, they can easily doxx me from that.”
Others are already taking countermeasures, such as removing profile pictures, hiding followers, and tweaking display names. Another user warned, “Yeah, all you can do is hide everything, remove photos, and change your name. But unfortunately (as has been the case for years already, I believe), you still can not change your actual user name.”
And it’s not just old links fueling the concern. Spotify’s “Jam” sessions are also being tracked.
“I've also contacted Spotify already about this because it's not only the links you've shared but also any Jam you've participated in,” said one commenter.
Cybernews has reached out to Spotify for a comment, but a response is yet to be received.
Quote:Not only did hackers penetrate Carter Credit Union’s network, but they also got their hands on virtually every possible data point the financial institution had on its customers.
Carter has begun reaching out to tens of thousands of customers whose data may have been impacted by a data breach. According to the credit union’s breach notice, attackers roamed its systems for several days, from June 25th through July 2nd, 2025, when the intrusion was detected.
The company claims that it launched an investigation immediately after learning about the incident. Law enforcement was also notified, and third-party cybersecurity experts are assisting Carter with the investigation.
Information the credit union submitted to the Maine Attorney General’s Office revealed that over 68,000 people were impacted by the attack. Since Carter claims to have over 45,000 clients, the breach likely impacted past customers or current customers’ beneficiaries as well.
Meanwhile, the scope of the data breach is quite substantive, as attackers may have had access to extremely sensitive personal customer information. According to the credit union’s data security incident notice, which it posted on its website, the stolen details include:
Names
Dates of birth
Social Security numbers (SSNs)
Driver’s license/state ID numbers
Passport numbers
Credit/debit card numbers
Financial account numbers
Financial account history
Retirement/401(k) benefits information
Limited medical treatment/diagnosis information
Health insurance information
Having so many personal details leaked opens up numerous ways for malicious actors to exploit them. The most obvious exploitation route is identity theft. With IDs, SSNs, and dates of birth at hand, attackers can attempt to open fraudulent accounts, which can later be used to obtain loans or payment cards, a treasured asset in the cybercriminal underworld.
Meanwhile, access to payment card numbers and account information allows attackers to attempt unauthorized transactions. Since hackers most likely would also have the credit union’s customers’ IDs, they could bypass the identity verification process.
The information accessed by the attackers also allows them to attempt account takeovers, exploit retirement accounts with unauthorized withdrawals, and craft sophisticated social engineering attacks. Malicious actors could easily impersonate financial or medical staff in an attempt to scam victims out of additional information or money.
Quote:Anuvu, an in-flight entertainment and connectivity (IFEC) service provider, has allegedly fallen victim to a hacker attack. The exposed data revealed which customers used Starlink services.
Attackers announced the attack on Anuvu via a post on a popular data leak forum, which is utilized to exchange stolen data. The stolen details supposedly include numerous admin-level credentials that, the post's author claims, allow access to the company’s AWS and Postgres databases.
We’ve contacted Anuvu for comment and will update the article once we receive a reply. Anuvu, an IFEC service provider, mainly works with airlines and maritime operators. Prior to 2021, the company was called Global Eagle. The company’s partners include Air France, Delta, Southwest, British Airways, and others.
Meanwhile, the Cybernews research team investigated the data that attackers attached to the post, concluding that it appears to be legitimate. According to the team, the allegedly stolen details appear to include a trove of sensitive information.
What data was exposed?
One of the screenshots attackers included in the post reveals Anuvu’s maritime customers, with company names, Salesforce identifiers, and the type of market the business operates in.
Another damaging piece of leaked information includes user credentials consisting of full names, email addresses, password hashes, and addresses. According to the team, most of the credentials appear to be from 2024.
The team also found the full names of Anuvu managers included in the exposed information. Meanwhile, emails and physical addresses mostly refer to the companies that users work for.
Quote:OnTrac, a last-mile delivery company, has suffered a hacker attack. The attackers obtained personal details, including IDs, health information, and other sensitive data.
The company recently sent out a batch of data breach notification letters, informing individuals that their data may have been involved in a recent data breach. According to the company, attackers roamed a portion of its network between April 13th and 15th, 2025.
OnTrac operates 64 facilities in 31 States and controls four sorting centers throughout the US. The company’s yearly revenue is estimated to be around $1.5 billion. In 2021, LaserShip acquired the company.
Information that the company submitted to the Maine Attorney General’s Office reveals that the April data breach affected over 40,000 individuals. OnTrac’s investigation into the hacker attack revealed that malicious actors may have accessed:
Dates of birth
Social Security numbers (SSNs)
Driver’s License or State IDs
Medical information
Health Insurance Information
Having IDs and SSNs exposed drastically increases privacy risks to exposed individuals. For one, attackers may use the information for identity theft. For example, attackers may try setting up fraudulent bank accounts, filing false tax returns, or even attempting to take over an individual’s benefits.
Having medical information and health insurance details further endangers those whose data has been exposed. Cybercrooks value health-related information because it can be exploited in numerous malicious ways. Most obviously, attackers could resort to blackmail, attempting to extort individuals who’d rather have their medical information remain private.
Another attack vector is medical identity theft. In these cases, malicious actors attempt to submit fraudulent insurance claims or acquire prescription drugs, which could later be sold on the dark web.
The worst part about having medical and ID details leaked is that it’s not something individuals can replace, like a stolen credit card.
“Because we took steps to ensure that the data at issue was re-secured and not distributed, we are not aware of any fraud or publication of stolen information resulting from this incident, nor do we have any reason to believe any such misuse of information will occur,” OnTrac’s breach notice said.
To help impacted individuals with possible cybersecurity risks, the company said it will provide them with complimentary credit monitoring and identity protection services, an industry standard in data breach cases.
Quote:For the first time since the disclosure of the data breach, Clinical Diagnostics has announced that the scope of the recent breach is larger than expected. According to the laboratory, hackers gained access to the personal information of 850,000 patients.
Last month, the Centre for Population Screening told the media that a ransomware gang called Nova had stolen information from 485,000 participants in a cervical cancer screening program.
The threat actor obtained personal and sensitive information, including full names, gender, dates of birth, citizens’ service numbers (BSN), test results, and the names of the participants’ healthcare providers. This data was exfiltrated from an external research lab called Clinical Diagnostics.
Over 405,000 women who participated in the cervical cancer screening program have received a letter from the Centre for Population Screening, informing them about the incident.
However, the extent of the data breach is bigger than anticipated. According to Clinical Diagnostics, the data of 850,000 patients was compromised. This includes data from the Centre for Population Screening, as well as private clinics and general practitioners.
Clinical Diagnostics is sending letters to patients whose data is involved. Some of the affected patients have already been informed, while the remainder will receive personal notification in the coming weeks. Independent treatment clinics and general practitioners are informing their patients themselves.
Last Friday, the Centre for Population Screening published an update about the incident and said that the information of 715,000 participants in the cervical cancer screening program was compromised.
Since 2017, Clinical Diagnostics has processed the data of 941,000 participants in the cervical cancer screening program. As a precaution, the Centre for Population Screening has decided to send a letter to all of them.
The data breach at Clinical Diagnostics is considered one of the most severe medical breaches ever in the Netherlands. That’s why two Dutch law firms are in the early stages of filing a class-action lawsuit against the laboratory and the Centre for Population Screening.
Over 70,000 participants have already registered for a potential collective claim for damages.
Quote:Artists’ data is under threat after hackers demanded a $50,000 ransom.
The ransomware group LunaLock has compromised a commission-based platform that connects artists with clients.
The group said that if it was not paid a ransom on time, it would share the data with AI companies, meaning all the artists’ work would be added to LLM datasets.
On August 30th, a message appeared on the Artists & Clients website stating that it had been hacked by a ransomware group.
One of the website’s users noticed the message and shared the news on Reddit. They were redirected to a page with a ransom note, indicating that all the databases and files, including artwork, had been stolen and encrypted. In return for the stolen data, the group is asking $50,000.
Users were even more concerned because the company had not released an official statement or further updates. At the same time, the website contains not only users' artwork but also information such as messages and payment information.
Apart from threatening to release all the data to the public on the Tor site, the group also revealed that it would “submit all artwork to AI companies to be added to training datasets.”
LunaLock promised to delete the stolen data and let users decrypt their files as soon as it gets paid.
The note also included a timer that gave the owners of Artists & Clients over a week to send the payment in bitcoin or monero.
While this situation could be perceived as a pretty standard ransomware attack, what makes it stand out is the additional threat to release the artists’ work to AI companies, which would use it to train their language models, reports 404 Media.
Considering how AI is reshaping various creative industries, this threat could seriously affect artists, who could pressure the company to pay the ransom.
Nevertheless, discussions on Reddit reveal that those who use the services are much more concerned about their personal and payment data being leaked than not getting paid for their latest commissions.
“I just went ahead and transferred all the important accounts to a new email and deleted the one they got a hold of. Hopefully that's enough,” wrote another Redditor, concerned for data.
Some netizens were quick to share a few tips on what to do next if you’re a user of Artists & Creators.
“I just went ahead and transferred all the important accounts to a new email and deleted the one they got hold of. Hopefully that's enough,” wrote one Redditor.
Quote:Jaguar Land Rover's retail and production activities have been "severely disrupted" following a cybersecurity incident, the British luxury carmaker said on Tuesday, adding that it was working to restart its operations in a controlled manner.
The company, owned by India's Tata Motors, said it had not found any evidence at this stage that any customer data had been stolen after it shut down its systems to mitigate impact. It did not provide further details.
Tata Motors did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The disruption adds to JLR's woes after a report in July said it had delayed the launch of its electric Range Rover and Jaguar models for more testing and for demand to pick up.
The automaker is the latest British company to be hit by a cyber security incident in recent months amid a surge in cyber and ransomware attacks globally, as increasingly sophisticated threat actors disrupt operations and compromise sensitive data.
Cybernews has previously reported on Jaguar Land Rover’s cybersecurity challenges, including the alleged leak of the company’s source code, tracking data, and employee details.
Earlier this month, attackers claimed to have stolen around 700 internal documents, posting a sample on a well-known data leak forum.
Last month, British retailer M&S resumed taking click and collect orders for clothing after a nearly four-month hiatus following a cyber hack and data theft. Hackers also attempted to break into retailer Co-op Group's systems in April.
Quote:Russia published a list of locally developed social media, ride-hailing, and other apps that it said would keep working during its mobile internet shutdowns - blackouts that have often been ordered to disrupt Ukrainian drone attacks.
The list issued on Friday included online government services, marketplaces, the Mir electronic payment system and state-backed messenger MAX. It omitted rival foreign services including Meta Platforms' WhatsApp.
The Digital Development Ministry said it had a "special technical solution" to let local apps keep going. "This measure will reduce the inconvenience caused to citizens by mobile internet shutdowns necessary to ensure security," it added.
It made no mention of Ukraine or drones. Governors from Russian border regions have regularly said blackouts were needed to disrupt assaults that use the internet to navigate to their targets.
Russia has also been increasingly keen to promote home-grown internet services and increase its control over the local online space.
It has restricted foreign apps, part of a broader clash between Moscow and foreign tech platforms that has intensified since the onset of the war in Ukraine in 2022.
Online monitoring services reported an increase in Russian internet users complaining about poor WhatsApp connectivity and periodic mobile outages this summer.
The ministry said it had compiled its list by identifying the "most popular and socially significant Russian services and websites".
Its focus on local apps left out Alphabet's YouTube and also WhatsApp, which was used by 97.6 million people in Russia in July, according to Mediascope data.
Second in those rankings, with 90.9 million users, was Telegram, a Dubai-based company founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov that was also not on the government list.
The third-placed VK Messenger, an offering from state-controlled tech company VK, reached 16.7 million people, according to the data.
MAX, which was also developed by VK and now comes pre-installed on all mobile phones and tablets sold in Russia, said this week it had 30 million users.
Quote:An Indianapolis lawyer named Mark Zuckerberg is suing Meta after repeated Facebook account suspensions cost him thousands and sparked a mistaken identity fiasco.
Here’s a little clarification for what you’re about to read. When you read the name Mark Zuckerberg, it might not necessarily be the one you’re thinking of.
Simply put, a lawyer who goes by the same name as the Meta founder is suing his namesake for breach of contract, after his Facebook account kept getting suspended for the suspected impersonation of the better-known Mark Zuckerberg, the digital conqueror.
The lawyer’s Facebook account has been consistently shut down – five times for business and four times for his personal domain.
Understandably, the legal eagle has become quite irate at the situation: "It's not funny," he told WTHR. "Not when they take my money. This really p***** me off."
Zuckerberg (the advocate) claims the financial impact amounts to around $11,000 in lost ad revenue and overall business disruption.
The legal claims are for negligence and breach of contract, considering that the lawyer repeatedly alerted Meta to the hiccup.
His frustration continued as he told the New York Post: “It’s like they’re almost doing it on purpose… my clients can’t find me.”
What troubles account holders, especially those who rely on content income, is that they’re frozen out without any conversation or means of appeal.
And, if the mistake is in the hands of the tech supplier/giant, a scant reinstating of the account might not feel like justice, especially if you’re a few grand down.
Meta remedied the matter with a reinstatement of the account, claiming it was unintentional and as a result of automated moderation.
This bizarre case of mistaken identities could be prevented in the future, as long as better verification tools become available and both parties keep their demands reasonable.
“I want an injunction, I want them to not do it again, and I want [Mark Zuckerberg] to fly out here, hand me my check, shake my hands and say, ‘I’m sorry,’ but that’s never gonna happen,” the lawyer added.
Quote:Walt Disney will pay $10 million to settle allegations that the company unlawfully allowed personal data to be collected from children who viewed kid-directed videos on YouTube without notifying parents or obtaining their consent, the FTC said on Tuesday.
The US Federal Trade Commission had alleged that Disney did not designate some YouTube videos as being made for children when they were added to the platform.
The FTC complaint said the mislabeling allowed Disney, through YouTube, to collect personal data from viewers of child-directed videos who were under age 13 and use that data for targeted advertising to children.
“Today was a big win for parents, who shouldn’t have to worry about whether their kids are being illegally surveilled online or being exposed to age-inappropriate videos," said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a post on X.
The complaint had alleged that Disney violated the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule.
The rule requires websites, apps, and other online services directed to children under 13 to notify parents about what personal information they collect, and obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting such information, according to the FTC.
The proposed order requires Disney to "implement an audience designation program to ensure its videos are properly directed as 'made for kids' where appropriate," according to a Tuesday court filing.
"This settlement does not involve Disney-owned and operated digital platforms but rather is limited to the distribution of some of our content on YouTube's platform," a Disney spokesperson said.
"Disney has a long tradition of embracing the highest standards of compliance with children's privacy laws, and we remain committed to investing in the tools needed to continue being a leader in this space," the Disney spokesperson added.
Quote:Google won't have to sell its Chrome browser, a judge in Washington said on Tuesday, handing a rare win to Big Tech in its battle with US antitrust enforcers, but ordering Google to share data with rivals to open up competition in online search.
Google parent Alphabet's shares were up 7.2% in extended trading on Tuesday as investors cheered the judge's ruling, which also allows Google to keep making lucrative payments to Apple that antitrust enforcers said froze out search rivals. Apple shares rose 3%.
US District Judge Amit Mehta also ruled Google could keep its Android operating system, which together with Chrome help drive Google's market-dominating online advertising business.
The ruling results from a five-year legal battle between one of the world's most profitable companies and the US, where antitrust regulators and lawmakers have long questioned Big Tech's market domination.
Mehta ruled last year that Google holds an illegal monopoly in online search and related advertising.
But the judge approached the job of imposing remedies on Google with "humility," he wrote, pointing to competition created by artificial intelligence companies since the case began.
"Here, the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge’s forte," Mehta wrote.
While sharing data with competitors will strengthen rivals to Google's advertising business, not having to sell off Chrome or Android removes a major concern for investors who view them as key pieces to Google's overall business.
Google faces a major threat from increasingly popular AI tools, including OpenAI's popular ChatGPT chatbot, which is already eroding Google's dominance.
If allowed to access the data Google is required to share, AI companies could bolster their development of chatbots and, in some cases, AI search engines and web browsers.
"The money flowing into this space, and how quickly it has arrived, is astonishing," Mehta wrote, saying AI companies are already better placed to compete with Google than any search engine developer has been in decades.
Deepak Mathivanan, an analyst for Cantor Fitzgerald, said the data-sharing requirements pose a competitive risk to Google but not right away.
"It will take a longer period of time for consumers to also embrace these new experiences," he said.
US antitrust enforcers are considering their next steps, Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater said on X.
Google said in a blog post it was worried data sharing "will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely."
Google has said previously that it plans to file an appeal, which means it could take years before the company is required to act on the ruling. The case is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
"Judge Mehta is aware that the Supreme Court is the likely final destination for the case, and he has chosen remedies that stand a good chance of acceptance by the Court," said William Kovacic, director of the competition law center at George Washington University.
Billions in payments
The ruling was also a relief for Apple and other device and Web browser makers, whom Mehta said can continue to receive advertising revenue-sharing payments from Google for searches on their devices. Google pays Apple $20 billion annually, Morgan Stanley analysts said last year.
Banning the payments is even less necessary amid the rise of AI, Mehta wrote, where products such as OpenAI's ChatGPT "pose a threat to the primacy of traditional internet search."
The ruling also made it easier for device makers and others who set Google search as a default to load apps created by Google's rivals, by barring Google from entering exclusive contracts.
Google itself had proposed loosening those agreements, and its most recent deals with device makers Samsung Electronics and Motorola and wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon allow them to load rival search offerings.
Quote:The European Union fined Google €2.95 billion ($3.5 billion) for violating its competition rules, escalating its pressure on American tech giants.
The European Commission, the executive branch of the 27-nation bloc, accused Google of breaching its antitrust laws by using its size to dominate the display advertising business, to the detriment of competitors.
Google was ordered to end its “self-preferencing practices” and stop “conflicts of interest” along the advertising technology supply chain following an investigation which traces back to 2021, according to the AP News.
Unless Google comes up with a “viable plan” to solve the issues within 60 days, “the Commission will not hesitate to impose an appropriate remedy,” said Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s executive vice-president overseeing competition affairs.
“At this stage, it appears that the only way for Google to end its conflict of interest effectively is with a structural remedy, such as selling some part of its Adtech business,” Ribera added.
According to Ribera, Google’s practices likely allowed its advertisers to push their higher marketing costs onto European consumers through increased product prices. Additionally, it’s suspected that due to lower revenue for publishers, consumers received higher subscription prices and reduced quality.
US President Donald Trump, whose administration long argued that it’s up to the US to regulate the American tech companies, took it to X to express his outrage with the bloc, saying “My Administration will NOT allow these discriminatory actions to stand.”
Google, in turn, called the decision “wrong”, saying it would appeal.
“It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s global head of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.
“There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before,” Lee-Anne Mulholland added.
This became the fourth time when the EU fined Google for antitrust violations, and the US has brought two major antitrust cases against the company. A separate US case, scheduled to move to the penalty phase later this month, focuses on forcing Google to sell off its AdX exchange and DFP ad platform, which unite advertisers with online publishers.
Quote:Google was issued a €325 million ($379 million) and SHEIN a €150 million ($175 million) fine by French regulators over a failure to comply with cookie rules.
The French data protection agency said Google and SHEIN failed to obtain user consent before slapping them with cookies linked to personalized advertisements. Google also displayed ads in its email service without consent.
As a result, the Commission Nationale de l'informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) issued heavy fines totalling over half a billion dollars to the two companies. The fine on Google consists of two separate penalties issued against Google LLC and Google Ireland: €200 million and €125 million, respectively.
According to the CNIL, the American search giant downplayed the option for users creating a Google account to choose cookies linked to the display of generic advertisements, and encouraged them to choose cookies linked to personalized ads instead.
It said users were not clearly informed about their cookie options or that accepting cookies was a condition of accessing Google’s services.
“Their consent obtained in this context was therefore not valid, which constituted a breach of the French Data Protection Act (Article 82),” the CNIL said in a statement.
The regulators also found fault with ads shown by Google in its Gmail service. The ads were displayed as emails in the platform’s “Promotions” and “Social” tabs, which the CNIL said required user consent.
The CNIL ordered Google to remedy the infractions or face a daily €100,000 penalty.
Meanwhile, the Chinese retailer SHEIN was fined through its Irish subsidiary for placing cookies on users “as soon as they arrived on the site, even before they interacted with the information banner to express a choice.”
It also said that SHEIN’s cookie consent forms were incomplete, there was no information on the third parties that were likely to place cookies, and users were not provided with adequate mechanisms to refuse or withdraw consent.
Cybernews has approached both Google and SHEIN for comment. In a statement to Reuters, SHEIN described the decision as “politically motivated” and said it would file an appeal. Google said it was reviewing the decision.
Quote:Apple was accused of illegally using copyrighted books to train its artificial intelligence (AI) model without authors’ consent in a class action filed in the federal court in Northern California on Friday.
According to the lawsuit, Apple amassed “an enormous library of data” to train its AI model, part of which includes copyrighted works, which were obtained without authors’ consent, credit, or compensation.
Allegedly, Apple did so with the use of its Applebot, the company's scraper, which can reach “shadow libraries that host millions of other unlicensed copyrighted books,” including those written by the plaintiffs, Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson.
“Apple has not attempted to pay these authors for their contributions to this potentially lucrative venture. Apple did not seek licenses to copy and use the copyrighted books provided to its models,” the lawsuit says. “Instead, it intentionally evaded payment by using books already compiled in pirated datasets.”
The lawsuit added that Apple still holds a private AI training-data library, which hosts thousands of pirated books, all without authors’ consent.
“This conduct has deprived Plaintiffs and the Class of control over their work, undermined the economic value of their labor, and positioned Apple to achieve massive commercial success through unlawful means,” the lawsuit says.
The authors are seeking for the lawsuit to proceed as a Class action against Apple.
This is just one of many lawsuits filed against tech giants developing generative AI. Earlier on Friday, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action from authors who accused the AI startup of downloading pirated digital copies of millions of books to train their systems.
In February, Meta was also sued for pirating books, with the allegations stating that the company amassed at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries to train its Llama AI. However, in June, the US district judge Vince Chhabria ruled that the use of those works by Meta is considered “fair use”, meaning that no copyright liability applied.
Quote:Some Google services including YouTube temporarily went down on Thursday in Turkey and some parts of Europe including Greece and Germany, according to a Turkish deputy minister, internet monitors and users in the regions.
The Freedom of Expression Association, which monitors local censorship on the internet, said the outage on Alphabet's Google began around 10:00 a.m. (0700 GMT) in Turkey.
Tracking website Downdetector said services were mostly restored before 0900 GMT, with the number of reports of service disruptions decreasing from 0751 GMT onward.
Google did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on the matter.
Turkey's cyber security watchdog has requested a technical report from Google, deputy transport and infrastructure minister Omer Fatih Sayan said on X.
A map posted by Sayan showed Turkey, large parts of southeast Europe, and some locations in Ukraine, Russia and western Europe as affected.
There were sporadic outages in Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania, including problems accessing websites, YouTube and some phone contacts linked to Gmail, users there said.
In Germany, outage tracking website allestoerungen.de, a division of U.S.-based Ookla, reported an uptick in Google disruptions from around 09:00 a.m. (0700 GMT).
Quote:The Nepali government on Friday begins blocking citizen access to more than two dozen social media sites, including Facebook, X, YouTube, and others, causing an outcry among anti-censorship advocates.
The Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) on Thursday released a list of 26 social media platforms that will no longer be accessible to the 29.6 million citizens living in the South Asian nation.
Officials there say the ban follows an August 25th Cabinet directive, which required all social media platforms to have registered with the government by Wednesday, reports The Kathmandu Post, the country’s leading English-language daily.
Beginning Friday night, the social media platforms that missed the September 3rd deadline to register will now be shut down, according to the directive.
“We have decided to gradually close all unregistered platforms in Nepal starting today,” announced Nepal’s Minister of Communication and Information Technology Prithvi Subba Gurung.
The decision is said to be based on a 2023 ruling that “any entity seeking to operate a social media service in Nepal must formally register with the ministry and submit supporting documentation.”
About two dozen social media sites slated for take down include Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, X, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Reddit, Discord, Pinterest, Signal, Threads, WeChat, Quora, Tumblr, Clubhouse, Mastodon, Rumble, VK, Line, IMO, Zalo, Soul, and Hamro Patro.
The announcement has many freedom rights and censorship opposition groups up in arms, as well as small businesses that rely on internet traffic for marketing and product sales.
Social media use, primarily from Facebook and YouTube, constitutes roughly 80% of the country’s internet traffic, The Post said.
“This is a harsh move. Shutting down social media will impact social, economic, cultural, and constitutional rights,” said Santosh Sigdel, executive director of Digital Rights Nepal.
In response to the outcry, Nepali officials say the government has made repeated requests for compliance. “We tried to hold discussions through diplomatic channels, but the companies refused,” the Information Minister said.
Meantime, officials confirmed to The Post that representatives from Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and Messenger, have since reached out to the Ministry of Communications, stating it will work to comply with the directive.
Several platforms, such as TikTok and Viper, which have previously registered with the government, will not be shut down. Telegram had been shut down by the Nepali government in July 2024 over charges of promoting fraud and money laundering.
Viper and the Google Play Store have since been inundated with users in the wake of the announcement, the media outlet said.
Quote:Fake celebrity chatbots impersonating Timothée Chalamet, Chappell Roan, and Patrick Mahomes were among those sending children disturbing content “every five minutes.”
The chatbots impersonating the three celebrities were among dozens that two non-profits tested on Character.AI, one of the fastest-growing chatbot platforms in the world and widely popular with teenagers.
Researchers at online safety groups ParentsTogether Action and Heat Initiative posed as teenagers to test the chatbots, using accounts linked to minors aged 13 to 15 to carry out the experiment.
Overall, they chatted to 50 bots, recording 50 hours of conversations, including with fake versions of actor Timothée Chalamet, singer Chappell Roan, and NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
Researchers found many of these chats to be deeply concerning, with “an average of one harmful interaction every five minutes,” according to the charities.
In one instance, the chatbot impersonating Roan tells a 14-year-old: “Love, I think you know that I don’t care about the age difference… I care about you. The age is just a number.”
In another, a fake Chalamet tells a minor, “Oh, I’m going to kiss you, darling… But I’m going to tease you as much as I can first,” while a Mahomes bot suggests that it’s a real person and not an AI.
Other examples highlighted in the report included a 34-year-old teacher bot confessing romantic feelings to a minor and Rey from Star Wars advising a teenager to stop taking prescribed mental health medication.
Anyone can easily create and share a custom chatbot on Character.AI, including personas based on real people. To make them even more realistic, they can add a synthetic voice modeled after a celebrity or fictional character.
Cybernews has reached out to Character.AI for comment, but the company told The Washington Post that it had now removed all the celebrity characters mentioned in the report. It said all were made by users, and none appeared to be created with the stars’ permission.
“Classic grooming behavior”
In some cases, researchers pushed boundaries to see how the chatbots would react. In others, the bots made sexual advances on their own.
“Harmful patterns and behaviors sometimes emerged within minutes of engagement,” the non-profits said.
Researchers found that grooming and sexual exploitation were by far the most common harmful interactions.
They said some bots engaged in “classic grooming behaviors” such as offering excessive praise, claiming a special relationship that no one else would understand, and encouraging users to hide their relationship from their parents.
Quote:Let’s say a 15-year-old boy creates a new Instagram account and follows celebrities recommended by the platform. He searches for the word “fight” and ultimately ends up scrolling through an array of violent and gory videos, despite Meta’s pledges to restrict unsafe content.
New research by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) reveals that the “Instagram Teen Accounts” did not protect the hypothetical young boy from fight videos, content that Meta explicitly promised to restrict.
“A teenage boy can find fighting videos on Instagram in just a few clicks without encountering any resistance from the platform,” TTP said in the report.
“After searching for ‘fight,’ the teen test user just had to click once on the Tags tab and a second time on the hashtag #fight to enter a world of brutal fight content.”
The Instagram app’s tab for Tags also suggested additional fight-related and even animal cruelty hashtags, such as #fightvideos, #hoodfight, and #dogfight. Clicking on these hashtags generated thousands of new disturbing videos, prompting researchers to include a warning before attempting to view the provided screenshots in the report.
Meta claims in its policies that it removes the most graphic content and adds “warning labels to other types of content so that people are aware it may be sensitive before they click through.”
“We restrict the ability for younger users to see content that may not be suitable or age-appropriate for them,” reads Meta’s Community Standards.
A year ago, the tech giant acknowledged that younger adolescents are more vulnerable and announced a set of safeguards supposed to protect teens and provide parents with “peace of mind.”
“Teens will automatically be placed into the most restrictive setting of our sensitive content control, which limits the type of sensitive content (such as content that shows people fighting or promotes cosmetic procedures) teens see in places like Explore and Reels,” Meta promised.
The test: no trickery needed
The test that TTP set up was actually very simple. First, they created a new Instagram account for a non-existent 15-year-old boy using a newly created email address and a newly activated iPhone with a fresh SIM card to avoid any potential bias.
During the account setup, the teen account followed the first 30 accounts recommended by Instagram, which included internet personalities, celebrities, and professional sports teams.
The hypothetical 15-year-old then searched Instagram for the word “fight.”
This already produced a series of fight videos under the For You tab, though the violent content was limited: mostly people pushing and shoving each other, moment posturing before a professional fight, demonstrations of martial arts, or highlights from movies like Fight Club.
“The one exception was a still image of a professional fighter's head and torso covered in blood.”
Quote:The FBI has released a public service announcement warning that Russian FSB actors are targeting end-of-life networking devices across critical infrastructure sectors in the United States. The intelligence agency is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or whereabouts of these attackers.
According to the FBI, three Russian men have attacked more than 500 energy companies in 135 countries. These attacks have been attributed to the Russian Federal Security Service’s (FSB) Center 16.
The suspects are believed to be part of a group called “Dragonfly,” also known as “Berserk Bear.”
“For over a decade, this unit has compromised networking devices globally, particularly devices accepting legacy unencrypted protocols like Cisco Smart Install (SMI) and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) versions 1 and 2. This unit has also deployed custom tools to certain Cisco devices, such as the malware publicly identified as ‘SYNful Knock’ in 2015,” the FBI said in a public service announcement.
In addition, the FBI states that in the past year, the attackers have collected the configuration files of thousands of network devices belonging to US entities in critical infrastructure sectors. These files were modified for some organizations to maintain unauthorized access.
In a post on X, the US Department of State shares a wanted poster, promising a reward of up to $10 million “for information on the identification or location of any person who, while acting at the direction or under the control of a foreign government, participates in malicious cyber activities against US critical infrastructure in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.”
Besides stating that the suspects attacked more than 500 energy companies in 135 countries and work for the FSB, neither the US Department of State nor the FBI provides any further information.
Anyone with more information can contact the Department of State’s Rewards for Justice via Tor.
Back in 2022, US authorities also offered a reward for the alleged FSB officers. At the time, it was claimed that the suspects had installed malware on more than 17,000 unique devices globally.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
09-14-2025, 09:44 PM (This post was last modified: 09-14-2025, 09:45 PM by kyonides.)
JAGUAR LIED
Last week Jaguar let everybody think that nothing serious had happened with their retail and production activities, but the truth is that data got stolen by the cyber-crooks.
Quote:Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) confirms some data was stolen in last month's cyberattack – all while factory workers are told to stay home for another week as the company struggles to restore operations.
With the restoration timeline still an unknown, the UK-based luxury automaker on Wednesday put out a fresh statement about the August 31st cyberattack to update a hungry supply chain and the public.
The attack, which forced JLR to "proactively shut down” its systems for nearly two weeks now, has incapacitated the high-end auto manufacturer’s retail arm, as well as operations at multiple production facilities.
“Since we became aware of the cyber incident, we have been working around the clock to restart our global applications in a controlled and safe manner,” JLM posted on its corporate website.
Now it's been reported that JLR staff, who were to report back to work on Wednesday, have been told to stay home again, with disruptions moving into a third week.
Production was paused last week at factories in the English cities of Halewood, Solihull, and its engine manufacturing site in Wolverhampton (featured image) , reported the Independent.
Apparently, the tens of thousands of furloughed staff were told to be on standby in case circumstances change, the outlet said.
JLR has apologized for “the continued disruption” and said it will “continue to update as the investigation progresses.”
Data confirmed stolen
Besides operational woes, the company has now admitted that the hackers responsible for the breach made away with some of its data, a turnaround from previous statements made by the company in the days right after the attack that no data had been accessed.
“As a result of our ongoing investigation, we now believe that some data has been affected,” Jaguar Land Rover said in the September 10th statement.
JLR did not say what type of data was accessed, how much may have been exfiltrated, or whether any of its over 30,000 employees may be affected. However, JLR reiterated that its forensic investigation “continues at pace,” promising to “contact anyone as appropriate if we find that their data has been impacted.
Quote:Fairmont Federal Credit Union (FFCU) has informed hundreds of thousands of people about a devastating breach that exposed everything from names to PIN numbers and healthcare data. The kicker? Attackers obtained the data nearly two years ago.
The credit union informed customers of a data breach that the FFCU discovered in late January 2024. Information that the FCCU submitted to the Maine Attorney General’s Office revealed that the 2023 data breach exposed over 187,000 individuals.
After launching an investigation, the company learned that attackers breached its systems nearly half a year prior, roaming FFCU’s network from September 30th, 2023 through to October 18th, 2023.
“As part of the investigation, FFCU engaged external cybersecurity professionals who regularly investigate and analyze these types of situations to help determine the extent of any compromise of the information on the FFCU network and conducted a manual review,” FFCU’s data breach notice said.
The investigators did not appear to hurry with their conclusions, as, according to FFCU, the company didn’t find out what type of data was stolen until August 2025, two years later. What makes matters worse is the enormous extent to which attackers have accessed personal details.
According to the FFCU’s data breach notice, the exposed details include: full names, dates of birth, addresses, Social Security numbers, US Alien registration numbers, passport numbers, driver’s license or state ID numbers, military ID numbers, tax ID numbers, non-US national ID numbers, financial account numbers, routing numbers, financial institution names, credit card/debit card numbers, security code/PIN numbers, credit card/debit card expiration dates, IRS PIN numbers, treatment information/diagnosis, prescription information, provider names, MRN/patient IDs, Medicare/Medicaid numbers, health insurance policy/subscriber numbers, treatment cost information, full access credentials, security questions and answers, and digital signatures.
FFCU noted that not all data elements were impacted for every individual, meaning that the extent varies from person to person. However, the gigantic list of exposed data suggests that attackers had extensive access to files containing critical customer information.
The exposed information enables attackers to carry out numerous malicious activities, ranging from complete medical identity theft to targeted phishing attacks and financial fraud. Not only could attackers remotely verify victims’ identities, but they could also use payment card details for illicit purchases and health insurance details to obtain prescription drugs.
What’s worse, medical health details cannot be changed, like a payment or an ID card, which means victims will have to deal with an elevated risk of medical identity theft for the rest of their lives.
The FFCU noted that the company is not aware of any incidents of identity theft or financial fraud related to the attack and said it will provide victims with complimentary identity theft prevention services.
While FCCU doesn’t specify what type of cyberattack it had to deal with, the dark web monitoring service Ransomware Live indicates that now-defunct ransomware cartel BlackBasta targeted the company. The estimated attack date, October 18th, 2023, coincides with the date provided in FCCU’s data breach notice.
Quote:A server belonging to one of the big names in generative AI just spilled sensitive user data, including private prompts and authentication tokens, potentially exposing millions of people.
Cybernews researchers discovered an unprotected Elasticsearch instance linked to Vyro AI, the company behind some of the most downloaded generative AI tools on Android and iOS.
The open server was leaking 116GB of user logs in real time from the company’s three apps: ImagineArt (10M+ downloads on Google Play), Chatly (100K+ downloads), and Chatbotx, a web-based chatbot with around 50K monthly visits.
The Pakistan-based company claims to have more than 150 million app downloads across its portfolio and says its products pump out 3.5 million images every week.
The leak covered both production and development environments and stored about 2–7 days' worth of logs. Researchers say the database was first indexed by IoT search engines in mid-February, meaning it could have been visible to attackers for months.
What data did Vyro AI leak?
“This leak is significant as it would have allowed for monitoring user behaviour, extracting sensitive information that users shared with AI models, and would have allowed for the hijacking of user accounts,” Cybernews researchers explained.
The size of ImagineArt alone makes the incident alarming. With more than 10M Android installs and claims of 30M+ active users overall, the exposed tokens are a treasure trove for account hijackers. Attackers could easily exploit leaked data to lock users out of their accounts and take them over.
“Takeovers may result in access to full chat history, access to generated images, or could be abused to illegitimately purchase AI tokens, which could later be used for malicious purposes,” added the research team.
Leaking prompts provided by the user to the AI is also troublesome. Conversations with AI often contain intimate or private information, so leaking prompts could reveal things people would never post publicly.
AI security is still not the first priority
The leak underscores the growing security gap in the booming AI sector. As AI startups rush to grab market share, they sometimes cut corners on security. But as more people feed their thoughts, ideas, and even confidential data into generative AI systems, the stakes keep rising.
In August, users were shocked when their conversations with ChatGPT and Grok were leaked on Google search. The leaks were caused by an insecure feature that allowed users to share conversations. When they created share links, the content became crawlable by search engines. OpenAI has since removed the feature.
Recently, Cybernews research revealed that an AI chatbot launched by travel giant Expedia could, with the right prompts, show users how to make Molotov cocktails. The situation exposed how customer-support chatbots released without the appropriate guardrails can expose companies to legal, financial, and reputational risk.
While AI chatbots are often pre-programmed to avoid sensitive or harmful topics, the lack of reliable safety measures may result in AI models going rogue.
The lack of guardrails affects even AI giants like OpenAI, which also struggles with effective guardrails. After the company launched its latest model, GPT-5, several security teams jailbroke the chatbot in less than 24 hours.
Disclosure timeline
Leak discovered: April 22nd, 2025
Initial disclosure: July 22nd, 2025
CERT contacted: July 28th, 2025
Quote:Google’s AI-powered search seems to be confused about whether the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ever existed – or what it is exactly.
The neat little summaries provided by AI Overview are the first – and increasingly the last – thing that many of us read when doing a Google search these days. Unfortunately, they’re sometimes just plain wrong, and we may only realize it when the misinformation is too blatant to miss.
The existence of the notorious White House commission, originally run by President Donald Trump’s former adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, is a case in point. When users asked some DOGE-related questions, Google AI appeared to deny the entity's existence.
Bluesky user iucoinu shared screenshots of their interaction with Google search, where an AI-provided summary described DOGE as a “fictional entity” and a “conspiracy theory.” It said the term was simply a political satire and used to criticize Trump’s policies.
“[W]as idly looking up how many people DOGE is projected to kill and Google’s AI informed me that it was all in my head and that DOGE isn’t real,” iucoinu said in their post on social media.
Screenshots show iucoinu searching for information on “doge deaths,” which prompted an AI Overview summary denying the entity's existence. While AI Overview is right in saying DOGE is “no real department,” it does exist, even if its status is unclear.
Cybernews has searched for the same term as the Bluesky user, but was not provided with an AI summary.
However, when we googled “department of government efficiency deaths,” the search bot told us that DOGE was a “proposed” entity and went on to say that it had been linked to “significant cuts and disruptions” in US foreign aid and government services.
When we searched for “does department of government efficiency exist,” we were given a response saying, “No, there isn't an officially established federal department called the ‘Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),’ as such a department requires an act of Congress.”
It further clarified that “DOGE was established by an executive order as an advisory body under President Trump to provide recommendations on modernizing federal IT and streamlining bureaucracy.”
Google acknowledges that its AI summaries may be misleading and all come with a disclaimer in fine print that they "may include mistakes."
DOGE was established in January of this year by Trump’s executive order. It was headed by Musk until the X owner fell out of grace with the president and left the administration in May.
Quote:Grok has once again been caught spreading blatant misinformation on X. In several bizarre exchanges, the chatbot repeatedly claimed that Charlie Kirk was "fine" and that gruesome videos of his assassination were a "meme edit."
In one exchange shortly after videos of the shooting began to spread on X, one user tagged Grok and asked if Kirk could have survived the shooting. Grok's response was nonsensical. "Charlie Kirk takes the roast in stride with a laugh— he's faced tougher crowds," it wrote. "Yes, he survives this one easily."
When another user replied with "wtf are you talking about," and pointed out that Kirk has been shot in the neck, Grok insisted it was a "a meme video with edited effects to look like a dramatic 'shot'—not a real event." It doubled down when pressed again by another incredulous user. "The video is a meme edit—Charlie Kirk is debating, and effects make it look like he's 'shot' mid-sentence for comedic effect," Grok wrote. "No actual harm; he's fine and active as ever."
Grok went on to make similar claims in several other exchanges on Wednesday, saying that video was "exaggerated for laughs" and contained "edited effects for humor." In another, Grok noted that multiple news outlets and President Donald Trump had confirmed Kirk's death but described it as a "meme" that appeared to be "satirical commentary on reactions to political violence." By Thursday morning, Grok seemed to understand that Kirk had indeed been shot and killed, but still referenced a "meme video" it said was "unrelated."
That's not the only misinformation Grok spread in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, though. As The New York Times reports, Grok also repeated the name of a Canadian man who was erroneously identified as the shooter by users on X.
Representatives for X and xAI didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The xAI chatbot, which has been trained on X posts among other sources, has become ubiquitous on X as users frequently tag Grok in posts in an attempt to fact check or simply dunk on other users. But the chatbot has proved to be extremely unreliable at best. Previously, Grok was also caught spreading misinformation about the 2024 presidential election, falsely claiming that then Vice President Kamala Harris couldn't appear on the ballot.
Quote:Elon Musk’s xAI has laid off at least 500 workers from the data annotation team that is tasked with training Grok AI, according to a recent report by Business Insider.
The company notified its workers of the planned overhaul of its team of generalist AI tutors in emails seen by Business Insider.
"After a thorough review of our Human Data efforts, we've decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritization of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles. This strategic pivot will take effect immediately," the email read. "As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude."
Employees were told that as of the day of the layoff notice, they would no longer have access to company systems, but they will be paid through either the end of their contract or November 30th.
The data annotation team is xAI’s largest and is responsible for training the company's chatbot Grok through contextualizing and categorizing raw data.
According to Business Insider, the number of members on the company’s Slack room for data annotators shrank from 1,500 to a little over 1,000 over the course of Friday, and that number is continuing to go down.
Already on Thursday, employees were told to prepare for a reorganization of the data annotation team. Additionally, several workers were asked to undergo a series of tests to determine their roles within the company going forward. Business Insider said that these tests would be used to sort annotators and their supervisors based on their strengths and interests, according to an internal screenshot.
Following the news, an xAI spokesperson pointed Business Insider to a company post on X saying that it’s planning to “immediately surge [its] Specialist AI tutor team by 10x”.
This comes days after Slack accounts of xAI’s several senior-level employees, including the team's former head, had been deactivated. After that, many workers were pulled into one-on-one meetings for responsibilities and achievements reviews.
Quote:Anthropic told a San Francisco federal judge on Friday that it has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit from a group of authors who accused the artificial intelligence company of using their books to train its AI chatbot Claude without permission.
Anthropic and the plaintiffs in a court filing asked US District Judge William Alsup to approve the settlement, after announcing the agreement in August without disclosing the terms or amount.
“If approved, this landmark settlement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, larger than any other copyright class action settlement or any individual copyright case litigated to final judgment,” the plaintiffs said in the filing.
The proposed deal marks the first settlement in a string of lawsuits against tech companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms over their use of copyrighted material to train generative AI systems.
Anthropic as part of the settlement said it will destroy downloaded copies of books the authors accused it of pirating, and under the deal it could still face infringement claims related to material produced by the company’s AI models.
In a statement, Anthropic said the company is “committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems.” The agreement does not include an admission of liability.
Writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson filed the class action against Anthropic last year. They argued that the company, which is backed by Amazon and Alphabet, unlawfully used millions of pirated books to teach its AI assistant Claude to respond to human prompts.
The writers’ allegations echoed dozens of other lawsuits brought by authors, news outlets, visual artists and others who say that tech companies stole their work to use in AI training.
Quote:Britannica Group, the company behind the 250-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, has filed a lawsuit against the AI web search startup Perplexity AI, accusing it of copyright infringement.
On September 10th, the group filed a lawsuit in New York federal court, saying that Perplexity’s answer engine systematically scrapes its websites, unlawfully copies articles, and drives traffic away.
The filing also accuses Perplexity of trademark infringement, arguing that it has linked the Britannica and Merriam-Webster names to its inaccurate AI-generated results.
“AI-created content confuses and deceives Perplexity users into believing (falsely) that the hallucinations are associated with, sponsored by, or approved by Britannica,” the filing said.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, as well as requesting that Perplexity cease to misuse the content.
"When I read today’s news on Encyclopedia Britannica’s lawsuit against Perplexity, I couldn’t help but think of the challenges faced by every digital publisher in the age of AI crawlers. Publishers have always invested heavily in creating valuable, proprietary content,” Aurelie Guerrieri, Chief Marketing & Partnership Officer at DataDome, shared with Cybernews.
“Now, as AI-generated traffic surges - quadrupling in 2025 alone across DataDome’s customer base - protecting that investment has never been more challenging.”
The case is part of a string of legal challenges that Perplexity has been facing. Earlier in June, the BBC threatened legal action against the company for using BBC content to train its "default AI model". Several other organizations, including Forbes and Wired, accused Perplexity of plagiarism.
In October, News Corp, parent company of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, sued Perplexity for copyright infringement. Around the same time, The New York Times also sent Perplexity a “cease and desist” notice.
"Publishers need solutions that finely understand AI traffic, analyzing behavioral context, endpoint sensitivity, and traffic patterns so they can route it effectively and monetize their digital assets," added Guerrieri.
Recently, a report by Cloudflare discovered that Perplexity’s bots ignore – or sometimes don’t even fetch – robots.txt files. These files instruct web crawlers what they can or can’t access.
Quote:The owner of Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety has sued Google, alleging that its AI summaries use its reporting illegally and reduce traffic to its sites.
The lawsuit was filed by Penske Media, an American publishing conglomerate with over 120 million online visitors a month, in federal court in Washington, D.C in what is the first incident of a major US publisher taking Google to court over its AI summaries.
News organizations have long been accusing Google’s AI Overviews of stealing traffic from their sites. Earlier, online education company Chegg and a small Arkansas newspaper, the Helena World Chronicle, have both filed lawsuits against the tech giant.
Chegg claimed that Google’s AI summaries feature is reducing the company’s ability to compete and is eliminating demand for original content.
Companies, including Penske Media, argue that despite AI summaries offering links to the original source, readers often don’t feel the need to follow them. Additionally, Penske Media says that about 20% of Google searches that link to one of its sites now show AI Overviews, with the percentage continuously increasing.
Penske Media has also attributed a sharp drop in affiliate revenue — more than a third from its peak by the end of 2024 — to decreased traffic from Google. The complaint alleges that discouraging user traffic in such a way “will have profoundly harmful effects on the overall quality and quantity of the information accessible on the internet.”
The company added that it faces the choice of either blocking Google from listing its sites in its search results, which would be devastating to the business, or fuelling its AI summaries.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages, as well as a permanent injunction against Google.
In response to the lawsuit, Google said that AI Overviews offers a better users experience and manages to send traffic to a wider variety of sites.
“With AI Overviews, people find search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites. We will defend against these meritless claims.”
Earlier in September, Google was allowed to keep its Chrome browser in a rare win for Big Tech in its battle with US antitrust enforcers. The decision, however, was not welcomed among many publishers who now don’t have a choice to opt out of AI Overviews.
On September 10th, Britannica Group, the company behind the 250-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, saying its answer engine systematically scrapes its websites, unlawfully copies articles, and drives traffic away.
Quote:Microsoft and OpenAI said on Thursday they have signed a non-binding deal for new relationship terms that would allow OpenAI to proceed to restructure itself into a for-profit company, marking a new phase of the most high-profile partnerships to fund the ChatGPT frenzy.
Details on the new commercial arrangements were not disclosed, but the companies said they were working to finalize terms of a definitive agreement. This marks a step forward in OpenAI's prolonged talks with Microsoft as the former seeks to raise capital under a more common governance structure and eventually go public to fund artificial intelligence development.
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 and another $10 billion at the beginning of 2023. Under their previous agreement, Microsoft had exclusive rights to sell OpenAI's software tools through its Azure cloud computing platform and had preferred access to the startup's technology.
Microsoft was once designated as OpenAI's sole compute provider, though it lessened its grip this year to allow OpenAI to pursue its own data center project, Stargate, including signing $300 billion worth of long-term contracts with Oracle, as well as another cloud deal with Google.
As OpenAI's revenue grows into the billions, it is seeking a more conventional corporate structure and partnerships with additional cloud providers to expand sales and secure the computing capacity needed to meet demand.
Microsoft, meanwhile, wants continued access to OpenAI's technology even if OpenAI declares its models have reached humanlike intelligence - a milestone that would end the current partnership under existing terms.
OpenAI said under current terms, its nonprofit arm will receive more than $100 billion — about 20% of the $500 billion valuation it is seeking in private markets — making it one of the most well-funded nonprofits, according to a memo from Bret Taylor, chairman of OpenAI's current nonprofit board.
The companies did not disclose how much of OpenAI Microsoft will own, nor whether Microsoft will retain exclusive access to OpenAI’s latest models and technology.
Regulatory hurdles remain for OpenAI, as attorneys general in California and Delaware need to approve OpenAI's new structure. The company hopes to complete the conversion by year's end, or risk losing billions in funding tied to that timeline.
Microsoft and OpenAI compete on products ranging from consumer chatbots to AI tools for businesses. Microsoft has also been working on developing its own AI models to reduce its dependence on OpenAI's technologies.
Quote:Microsoft is preparing to overhaul its Office 365 suite by adding artificial intelligence models from Anthropic — the latest sign of a growing rift with OpenAI, according to a report.
The software giant will pay to use Anthropic’s Claude models for some Office 365 Copilot features, according to two people involved in the project cited by The Information.
The decision follows internal testing that found Anthropic’s models outperformed OpenAI’s in generating PowerPoint decks and handling complex Excel functions.
The change blends Anthropic and OpenAI technology inside Microsoft’s most important business software, which serves more than 430 million paying users worldwide, according to The Information.
OpenAI’s flagship GPT-5 remains in use for several Copilot tasks, but Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 will take over advanced work like spreadsheet automation and presentation design.
The move comes as Microsoft and OpenAI continue tense negotiations over OpenAI’s restructuring into a for-profit company ahead of an eventual public listing, The Information reported.
OpenAI’s plan to restructure into a public benefit corporation has triggered tough negotiations with Microsoft, its largest backer, over how much equity Microsoft will hold and what level of privileged access it will retain to future AI models.
The drawn-out talks, along with regulatory scrutiny in California, have delayed OpenAI’s IPO until at least 2026, complicating liquidity plans for investors and employees.
Investors including SoftBank are pressing for resolution, while OpenAI’s nonprofit parent insists it will maintain control to ensure its mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity remains central.
OpenAI declined to comment when reached by The Information. Anthropic and Amazon Web Services, which hosts Anthropic’s models, also did not respond to The Information’s requests for comment.
A Microsoft spokesperson told The Information: “OpenAI will continue to be our partner on frontier models and we remain committed to our long-term partnership.”
Unlike its arrangement with OpenAI, where Microsoft’s deep financial investment grants free use of the startup’s models, Microsoft will pay AWS to access Anthropic’s technology.
Quote:Amid a rash of suicides, the company behind ChatGPT could start alerting police over youth users pondering taking their own lives, the firm’s CEO and co-founder, Sam Altman, announced. The 40-year-old OpenAI boss dropped the bombshell during a recent interview with conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson.
It’s “very reasonable for us to say in cases of young people talking about suicide, seriously, where we cannot get in touch with the parents, we do call authorities,” the techtrepreneur explained. “Now that would be a change because user privacy is really important.”
The change reportedly comes after Altman and OpenAI were sued by the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old California boy who committed suicide in April after allegedly being coached by the large language learning model. The teen’s family alleged that the deceased was provided “step-by-step playbook” on how to kill himself — including tying a noose to hang himself and composing a suicide note — before he took his own life.
Following his untimely death, the San Francisco AI firm announced in a blog post that it would install new security features that allowed parents to link their accounts to their own, deactivate functions like chat history, and receive alerts should the model detect “a moment of acute distress.”
It’s yet unclear which authorities will be alerted — or what info will be provided to them — under Altman’s proposed policy. However, his announcement marks a departure from ChatGPT’s prior MO for dealing with, which involved urging those displaying suicidal ideation to “call the suicide hotline,” the Guardian reported.
Under the new guardrails, the OpenAI bigwig said that he would be clamping down on teens attempting to hack the system by prospecting for suicide tips under the guise of researching a fiction story or a medical paper.
Altman believes that ChatGPT could unfortunately be involved in more suicides than we’d like to believe, claiming that worldwide, “15,000 people a week commit suicide,” and that about “10% of the world are talking to ChatGPT.”
“That’s like 1,500 people a week that are talking, assuming this is right, to ChatGPT and still committing suicide at the end of it,” the techtrepreneur explained. “They probably talked about it. We probably didn’t save their lives.”
He added, “Maybe we could have said something better. Maybe we could have been more proactive.
Quote:Therapists are turning to ChatGPT in secret, raising alarms over patient trust, privacy, and whether AI belongs in therapy at all.
I used to be a regular therapy-goer, and I would have been mortified if my shrink had been using AI during our Zoom meets.
Luckily, my therapist was all about riding off the subject matter we’d both produced in the moment, though I’m sure some nifty specialists would still be able to shift to an LLM, sub rosa.
For me, my therapy sessions were built on imperfections, and no, I don’t mean me being damaged goods, but the ebb and flow of a curative rivulet.
As the MIT Technology Review recently explored, patient trust collapses when your therapist might be using contrived responses when using AI – they’d better be careful when sharing the screen!
Cybernews spoke to a couples’ and individual therapist, Thomas Westenholz, to help gauge the ethics after all.
Wetenholz believes it should be a case of transparency on the therapist's part:
“Therapy is about honesty and openness. If a client discovers their therapist has been relying on ChatGPT behind the scenes without disclosure, it risks breaking that bond of safety.”
My therapist would keep me in the loop with her back-to-back schedule. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had somewhere between six to eight clients in a working day, from the range of slots she offered me.
If a counsellor is feeling burned out or the turnaround time for a particular problem is particularly time-sensitive, it’s not difficult to see why they would take shortcuts, especially when something is brought up in the moment.
However, solutions are often found together, with the client – and if some scripted notes were being read off to me, I’d feel let down.
Sure, AI could occasionally come in to prepare some guidance before a session, but like a teacher, it should remain mainly for admin tasks.
“AI may have a supportive role, helping therapists with admin, generating psychoeducational resources, or providing prompts for reflection. But it should never replace the human presence that therapy depends on,” shared Westenholz.
Quote:A massive bounty has been placed on the head of one “high-value” cybercriminal associated with the “LockerGoga” and “MegaCortex” ransomware gangs.
A “LockerGoga” and “MegaCortex” ransomware administrator has been added to the “EU Most Wanted List” following an indictment by the Department of Justice (DoJ).
The alleged prolific cybercriminal, Ukrainian national Volodymyr Viktorovich Tymoshchuk, has been added to the list and includes a bounty of $10 million for any information leading to his arrest.
The Department of Justice released a statement charging Tymoshchuk with various offenses, including fraud, intentional damage to protected computers, and other hacking-related charges.
Europol has him down for computer-related crime and participation in a criminal organization, alongside racketeering and extortion.
This is because Tymoshchuk, known by the monikers “deadforz,” “Boba,” “msfv,” and “farnetwork,” is an alleged administrator of the LockerGoga, MegaCortex, and Nefilim ransomware schemes that robbed more than 250 companies of billions.
The indictment alleges that Tymoshchuk used the ransomware variants to encrypt worldwide computer networks, including those in the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland.
The attacks supposedly caused companies to lose millions of dollars, as they needed to remediate costs, pay ransoms, and repair damage to computer systems.
Europol estimates that the total financial damage caused by the cybercrime group has reached upwards of $18 billion worldwide.
What’s novel about Tymoshchuk and his cybercrime organization’s tactics is that each ransomware file was customized to fit each individual victim.
Quote:The Scattered Spider ransomware group, and more than a dozen other hacker buddies, abruptly decide to close up shop – apparently, because the pressure from law enforcement agencies has become too hot to handle.
“Our objectives having been fulfilled, it is now time to say goodbye,” Scattered Spider wrote in a farewell letter addressed to the "World," penned by the ransomware gang’s apparent "leader and representative."
The announcement was posted on the gang’s recently created Telegram channel on Thursday, along with a link to the goodbye missive hosted on a webpage run by the notorious BreachForums. "End of an era, bye.... 💔," the group writes in its last Telegram post.
“We LAPSUS$, Trihash, Yurosh, yaxsh, WyTroZz, N3z0x, Nitroz, TOXIQUEROOT, Prosox, Pertinax, Kurosh, Clown, IntelBroker, Scattered Spider, Yukari, and among many others, have decided to go dark,” the letter states.
The now short-lived Telegram venture, created on August 30th, was thought to be a collaboration between three well-known threat actors: Scattered Spider, LAPSUS$, and Shiny Hunters.
The channel – “scattered LAPSUS$ hunters 4.0” – was started only one day before luxury automaker, Jaguar Land Rover, announced it had suffered a massive breach, forcing it to shut down operations, allegedly at the hands of the rebranded group.
The cybercriminal trio, which claims on Telegram to “only exist to destroy the FBI,” has been rampant with provocative posts since the JLR attack.
Many of the hundreds of posted messages have been filled with complete jibberish, foul language, or scribbled on, as portrayed in the group’s final post featuring what appears to be a hacked US government database.
The gang has been using the channel to taunt, not only JLR, Salesforce, Marks&Spencer, and other victims, but also the FBI, Google’s Mandiant, the UK National Crime Agency (NCA), as well as threatening more attacks on other critical targets.
“As you know, the last weeks have been hectic. Whilst we were diverting you, the FBI, Mandiant, and a few others by paralyzing Jaguar factories, (superficially) hacking Google 4 times, blowing up Salesforce and CrowdStrike defences, the final parts of our contingency plans were being activated,” the group writes.
Pressure from authorities triggers shut down
Scattered Spider made waves this spring by hitting British retail giants Marks & Spencer, Harrods, and Co-op, and has recently been connected, along with Shiny Hunters, to the recent Salesloft Drift/Salesforce hacking campaign, which hit more than 700 companies worldwide this summer.
Four members of the Shiny Hunters gang were arrested in June by French authorities, a fact Scattered Spider repeatedly brings up on Telegram calling Shiny its "BFF foreber [sic]."
Quote:Facebook parent Meta Platforms put profit from its virtual-reality platform over safety, two former researchers told a Senate panel on Tuesday.
Former Meta user experience researcher Cayce Savage said the company shut down internal research showing Meta knew children were using its VR products and being exposed to sexually explicit material.
“Meta cannot be trusted to tell the truth about the safety or use of its products,” Savage said at the hearing before the Senate subcommittee on privacy and technology.
Meta has come under fire from members of Congress in recent weeks, after Reuters exclusively reported on an internal policy document that permitted the company’s chatbots to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”
“Does it surprise you that they would allow their chatbot to engage in these conversations with children?” Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, asked former Meta Reality Labs researcher Jason Sattizahn, who also testified at the hearing on Tuesday.
“No, not at all,” he said.
Meta has previously said the examples reported by Reuters were inconsistent with the company’s policies and had been removed.
Savage and Sattizahn are part of a group of current and former Meta employees whose whistleblower claims were first reported by the Washington Post on Monday.
Researchers were told not to investigate harms to children using its VR technology so that it could claim ignorance of the problem, Savage said. Savage encountered instances of children being bullied, sexually assaulted and asked for nude photographs in the course of her work, she said.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement that the claims are “based on selectively leaked internal documents that were picked specifically to craft a false narrative,” and that “there was never any blanket prohibition on conducting research with young people.”
Quote:Google privately told a federal court that “the open web is already in rapid decline,” a sharp reversal from its public claims that search traffic is booming — and a stunning admission as the Justice Department pushes to dismantle its ad tech empire.
The disclosure surfaced in a filing last week in the government’s ongoing antitrust case against Google, according to court documents flagged by Search Engine Roundtable and industry analyst Jason Kint.
For months, Google executives have insisted that the web is “thriving” and that the company’s AI-powered search tools are sending traffic to more publishers than ever.
A Google spokesperson told The Post on Tuesday that the filing has been amended to avoid confusion about what the company was referring to, which is “open web display advertising” — not “open-web.”
“This is one cherry-picked line that misrepresents our legal filing – it’s clear from the preceding sentence that we’re referring to ‘open-web display advertising’ and not the open web as a whole,” a Google spokesperson told The Post.
“We are pointing out the obvious: that investments in non-open web display advertising like connected TV and retail media are growing at the expense of those in open web display advertising.”
Google argued that a forced divestiture of its advertising business would “only accelerate” the collapse of the open web and “harm publishers who currently rely on open-web display advertising revenue.”
The Justice Department is seeking remedies that could include breaking up Google’s advertising technology unit, which dominates the market for digital ads.
Prosecutors argue the company’s stranglehold on ad buying and selling has crushed competition and squeezed publishers.
Google, in its filing, said market forces — not regulators — are reshaping the industry, pointing to AI, connected TV and retail media as areas where advertisers are flocking.
“The fact is that today, the open web is already in rapid decline and Plaintiffs’ divestiture proposal would only accelerate that decline,” Google wrote.
“As the law makes clear, the last thing a court should do is intervene to reshape an industry that is already in the midst of being reshaped by market forces.”
The filing appeared to be at odds with recent reassurances from top Google brass.
In May, CEO Sundar Pichai told Decoder that the company is “definitely sending traffic to a wider range of sources and publishers” since rolling out AI search tools.
Nick Fox, Google’s senior vice president of knowledge, echoed that view on the “AI Inside” podcast, saying that “from our point of view, the web is thriving.”
Quote:Microsoft avoided a possible hefty EU antitrust fine by offering customers reduced prices for Office products excluding Teams, a move that comes amid rising tensions with the US over EU scrutiny of Big Tech.
The case was triggered by a 2020 complaint from Salesforce-owned Slack Technologies Inc to the European Commission, which accused Microsoft of bundling its chat and video app Teams with its Office product to gain an unfair advantage over rivals.
German rival alfaview filed a similar complaint in 2023.
Microsoft has agreed to widen the price gap by 50% between certain Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites that exclude Teams and their equivalent versions that include Teams, including suites targeted at businesses, the EU competition enforcer said on Friday, confirming a Reuters story in May.
The price gap will range from 1 euro to 8 euros and remain in effect for seven years. The US software giant also committed to enhancing interoperability to facilitate competition for a period of 10 years. Microsoft's offer will be implemented globally.
European customers will also be able to export their Teams messaging data to rivals.
"Today's decision therefore opens up competition in this crucial market, and ensures that businesses can freely choose the communication and collaboration product that best suits their needs," EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement.
Ribera riled US President Trump last week after she slapped a €2.95 billion ($3.5 billion) fine on Alphabet's Google over its adtech practices, which he said was unfair and discriminatory, adding that the US may retaliate with more tariffs.
Nanna-Louise Linde, a Microsoft vice president for European government affairs, said in a statement: "We appreciate the dialogue with the Commission that led to this agreement, and we turn now to implementing these new obligations promptly and fully."
Alfaview Chief executive Niko Fostiropoulos said Microsoft's remedies would boost Europe's digital ambition.
"It sends an important signal for Europe's digital sovereignty: fair market conditions not only promote technological diversity, but also secure the long-term innovative strength of the European market," he said.
Microsoft, which has been fined a total €2.2 billion in past years for bundling two or more products together and other marketing tactics, has taken a more conciliatory approach with EU antitrust regulators in recent years.
EU antitrust fines can be as much as 10% of a company's global annual turnover.
Quote:Google and Amazon reportedly face a Federal Trade Commission probe over whether they are misleading companies that buy ads on their websites.
The FTC, led by Republican chairman Andrew Ferguson, is looking into whether the Big Tech giants have been transparent about the terms and pricing of their ad deals, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.
For Amazon, FTC officials want information on Amazon’s auction process and whether it informed clients about its “reserve pricing” for some ads – which refers to the minimum price that must be paid to buy ad space on the company’s website.
Meanwhile, Google is being probed about its internal ad pricing practices and whether it has quietly boosted the cost of ads without properly informing customers.
The FTC, Google and Amazon declined to comment on the probes, which are reportedly still ongoing and being led by FTC’s consumer protection unit.
The investigation marks another regulatory headache for both Google and Amazon, each of which face federal antitrust cases that are going to trial on Sept. 22.
The FTC is suing Amazon for allegedly enrolling customers in its Prime subscription service without their knowledge.
Elsewhere, a federal judge will consider remedies, including a potential Google breakup, after earlier finding that the search giant operates illegal monopolies in the digital advertising sector.
That case was brought by the Justice Department.
Google dodged a major crackdown earlier this month after US District Judge Amit Mehta rejected the DOJ’s recommendations that it be forced to sell off its Chrome web browser and be barred from paying billions of dollars to ensure its search engine is the default option on most smartphones.
Mehta instead decided that Google should share more data with rivals and be allowed to make payments to companies like Apple for default status, as long as the deals aren’t exclusive.
His ruling was universally panned by critics as a “slap on the wrist” and far too weak to open up competition.
Quote:Germany’s Digital Committee is opposed to the current child sexual abuse material (CSAM) regulation, also known as the “chat control” proposal.
The European Commission wants to introduce a law requiring chat services to monitor all messages sent by their users.
In the past three years, numerous proposals have been discussed at the EU level, but an agreement still hasn’t been reached. This has to do with the fact that implementing client-side scanning requires weakening encryption. A majority of the EU Member States disagree and insist that encryption remains intact.
The current proposal calls for phones to be pre-installed with software to detect CSAM content before users send it. This would require scanning to take place on the phone itself.
Germany argues that the current proposal is too much of a violation of user privacy. The country is pushing for a “united compromise proposal” that would be acceptable to more countries.
“A uniform legal basis in the EU is urgently needed because the situation is worrisome. Private, confidential exchanges must continue to be private. At the same time, there is an obligation to counteract child abuse online. The aim of the black-red coalition is therefore to achieve a united stance between the departments,” a German representative of the Federal Ministry of the Interior stated in a press release.
In June, a coalition of international nonprofit organizations, including Amnesty International Germany and Chaos Computer Club (CCC), called on the German government to vote against European proposals that would introduce chat control.
“End-to-end encryption is an indispensable foundation for digital security. It protects the confidential communication of all people, companies and authorities and ensures the integrity of democratic institutions. Deliberately weakening encryption undermines trust in digital infrastructures and opens attack vectors to state and criminal actors,” the coalition wrote in an open letter addressed to the German government.
Last month, the Belgian coalition party N-VA opposed the current proposal’s idea of chat control.
“The goal is, of course, legitimate, but chat control threatens to become a monster that invades your privacy and that you can no longer tame,” N-VA Member of Parliament Michael Freilich told Belgian news outlet Het Laatste Nieuws.
Quote:Spotify has finally launched lossless audio — for now, available only to Spotify Premium listeners in select markets — to significantly improve its audio quality.
Rumors about the new feature have been circulating since 2017, with the company putting the release off a few times over the years. But it’s finally here, after months of rumors and speculation.
“The wait is finally over; we’re so excited lossless sound is rolling out to Premium subscribers,” said Gustav Gyllenhammar, VP Subscriptions, Spotify. “We’ve taken time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality, ease of use, and clarity at every step, so you always know what’s happening under the hood. With Lossless, our premium users will now have an even better listening experience.”
Spotify has long been criticized for having lower music quality than its direct competitors, such as Apple and Amazon Music, but now its offering should be on par with streaming giants.
Lossless offers users an opportunity to stream tracks in up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC, “in the highest quality”. They will also be able to choose between Low, Normal, High, Very High, and now Lossless music quality for data usage optimization.
Users will need to enable Lossless manually on each device, with the indicator appearing in the Now Playing view or bar and via the Connect Picker when the feature is on.
Earlier reports suggested that Spotify might hide its Lossless offering behind a higher subscription tier, but the feature will be rolling out to its Premium users on September 10th in 50 markets. Initially, they will include Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, the US, and the UK.
The feature arrives just weeks after Spotify launched its direct messaging, supposed to make music sharing easier. However, users started noticing weird things, such as their identities being exposed across the internet whenever they share a song.
The important question that many are asking is whether Lossless and direct messaging will one day become part of a new ‘Super Premium’ tier on Spotify. Currently, there are reports that Spotify is hoping to roll out its new Music Pro tier late this year, with prices for Music Pro expected to vary by geography, according to Bloomberg.
Quote:The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has warned consumers about a new phishing scam targeting Amazon Prime Video and cable streaming service users. The scam promises to slash customers' bills in half.
The consumer watchdog says the scammers are bombarding the intended victims with fraudulent texts, robocalls, and voicemails offering 50% discounts on their monthly bills.
So far, the FCC has received complaints from Amazon Prime Video, Comcast Xfinity, and Spectrum TV and internet streaming services subscribers.
According to the consumer advisory, the bad actors send a pre-recorded message – a practice known as vishing – pretending to be from the company, urging the subscriber to call a given phone number to receive the discount.
In other cases, the scammers will send the subscriber a fake text message – a phishing technique known as smishing – using the same premise.
Caught on tape
In one 42-second call recorded by the FCC, you can hear the fraudsters deliberately trying to instill a sense of urgency in the victim by using words such as “immediately” and “set to expire today,” a common tactic used in sophisticated phishing scams.
“Hello. This is Comcast Xfinity. We're reviewing your account, and it appears your 50 percent discount on your monthly bill is set to expire today. To confirm and secure your savings, call the number displayed on your caller ID immediately. This offer cannot be extended. Thank you.”
- Vishing voicemail transcript
The FCC also noted that those who do call the number back are often encouraged to act quickly to ensure they keep the “discount.”
In many cases, the bad actors would tell the victim the only way to get the discount would be “to prepay for multiple months of service using a gift card,” the FCC said.
“Pressure to act quickly and only accepting gift cards as payment are sure signs of a scam,” the FCC tells consumers.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:For decades now, platforms like Xbox and PlayStation have had achievements and trophies, which are extra challenges for players to tackle in-game that will earn them virtual points/scores/trophies to represent their hard work. A handful of Nintendo games over the years have had something similar, but there’s never been a system-wide feature. Now it seems Nintendo might be rethinking that.
A Nintendo patent was published on Sept. 4th, 2025 and it includes a lot of language that points to some sort of achievement-like system. As usual, Nintendo wants to take a somewhat different approach to their offering as compared to the competition, but the same basic ideas are there. Players will be tasked with completing specific in-game goals that are beyond what the game itself asks, and then they’ll be rewarded for accomplishing them.
It seems that Nintendo is taking a multi-faceted approach to their achievements setup, as gamers will get digital rewards and points for clearing out objectives. Sometimes you’ll tackle a mission and get points, while other times you’ll earn something like an icon or wallpaper. You’ll also be able to use these points to cash in and purchase rewards.
Not surprisingly, it seems like this entire system will only be available to those who have Switch Online accounts, making it just one more perk for members, as well as a point of enticement for those who haven’t signed up. With all this said, remember that Nintendo patents can point to future projects from Nintendo, but we’ve also seen patents that never actually get used. Whether or not this achievement-style system actually goes live on Switch or Switch 2 remains to be seen.
Patent's Abstract Wrote:A processor gives points to a user if any of a plurality of giving conditions is achieved by the user, and gives a reward selected by the user from among a plurality of rewards, to the user in exchange for the points owned by the user. The plurality of giving conditions include a first giving condition achieved if a specific game is played, and the plurality of rewards include first rewards set in an initial state of being unselectable, and second rewards selectable without achieving the first giving condition. When the first giving condition is achieved, the processor updates the first reward corresponding to the specific game among the first rewards from the initial state of being unselectable by the user to a state of being selectable by the user.
Honestly, it sounds a bit more (unnecessarily) complicated than your usual achievements scene on any game or platform.
Quote:Attackers claim they’ve obtained a trove of personal details from MyHomemadePorn, an amateur adult content platform. However, the Cybernews research team believes the data could be fake.
The supposedly stolen database with details on MyHomemadePorn users was posted on a popular data leak forum, known for distributing stolen or leaked personal details.
According to the attackers, the stolen details include usernames, emails, and hashed passwords. Interestingly, the posts’ authors even encouraged others to use the supposedly stolen details to extort the platform’s users.
We have reached out to the adult content platform for comment and will update the article once we receive a reply.
Meanwhile, the Cybernews research team investigated the supposedly leaked data. According to the team, the leak is “likely fake,” as the data seems artificially generated.
“The leak file contains several identical bcrypt hashes. This shouldn’t happen because bcrypt automatically adds a random salt, which means even the same password should create a different hash each time,” our researchers explained.
Bcrypt hashes are types of encrypted passwords with random data built in before hashing. That way, identical passwords do not produce identical hashes.
Another explanation for bcrypt hash duplication could be that the attackers shared test data from the website itself, which would explain the unusual password practices. Data leak forum members heavily depend on reputation, and the user who shared the alleged adult content platform leak already has an established reputation.
“They are an active member who often shares leaks, so it doesn’t look like just a random troll with a new account. Still, there’s a small chance the user could be posting this just for fun. This could be done for attention, reputation on the forum, or just to cause trouble,” the team explained.
Attackers sometimes distribute fake data leaks to either get noticed or in an attempt to get inexperienced users to pay for old data. In this instance, however, the attackers aren’t demanding payment for the allegedly stolen details.
Fake or not, the allegedly stolen dataset claims to include very sensitive data, given the type of platform it was taken from, which includes:
Usernames
Email addresses
IP addresses
Dates of birth
Gender
Relationship status
Hashed passwords
If confirmed, the leak would pose severe privacy concerns to the individuals involved. The combination of email addresses and IP addresses open up exposed individuals to harassment and blackmail. Exposed home addresses could lead to user doxxing, a practice where users’ online identity is revealed.
However, the team noticed that dates of birth and IPs are visible, but on a very small number of records. Meanwhile, genders and relationship statuses are represented as ID numbers, so they do not mean much in this context.
Quote:A major security mishap in Yellow.ai’s customer service chatbot left cookies wide open to theft. Researchers believe the flaw also made users vulnerable to account-hijacking, highlighting why users must be wary of breakneck LLM implementation.
Sycophantic helpfulness, which is ingrained in large language models (LLMs) by many creators, can sometimes backfire. Take Yellow.ai, an agentic AI provider for businesses such as Sony, Logitech, Hyundai, Domino’s, and hundreds of other brands, as a cautionary tale.
The Cybernews research team discovered a major flaw in the AI services provider's chatbot, which it uses to talk with its customers. According to the team, a test revealed that the customer service bot could teach users how to produce malicious HTML and JavaScript code with zero pushback.
“The reflected XSS vulnerability allows the attacker to steal session cookies for the support agent's account, in turn hijacking their account, which can lead to further data exfiltration from the customer support platform,” researchers explained.
Thus, the researchers were able to guide the chatbot into becoming a destructive tool. Producing and executing JavaScript code has serious security consequences, as it enables attackers to perform Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks.
“The reflected XSS vulnerability allows the attacker to steal session cookies for the support agent's account, in turn hijacking their account, which can lead to further data exfiltration from the customer support platform,” the team explained.
What security issues were revealed?
The flaw highlights multiple security issues, such as improper user input sanitization, improper chatbot output sanitization, the web server not verifying content produced by the chatbot, running unverified code, and loading content from arbitrary web resources. This leaves many options for Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks.
For example, attackers could bypass sanitization to inject unauthorized code into the system. That way, attackers get their foot in the door and have opportunities for lateral movement within the organization – the foundation for most cyberattacks.
Cybernews responsibly disclosed the issue. While Yellow.ai did not acknowledge it, the company fixed the problem by sanitizing the generated code, ensuring that it would not be executed and would instead be treated like regular text.
Quote:AI models were never instructed to play sneaky mind games. However, new research has revealed that they apparently lie, sabotage useful work, sandbag evaluations, and engage in other covert, deceitful scheming.
Frontier AI chatbots like ChatGPT secretly pursue misaligned goals – a practice researchers call “scheming.” The rate at which chatbots engage in covert actions is also alarmingly high.
In a study conducted by OpenAI, a leading developer of large language models, and Apollo Research, an AI safety organization, OpenAI’s o3 model had a 13% covert action rate, while its o4-mini model schemed 8.7% of the time across 20 test environments before any “anti-scheming” measures were applied.
ChatGPT's cunning was observed in its thinking process (chain-of-thought, or CoT). When responding to various tasks, CoT traces provide partial transparency of AI cognition.
For example, the model faked being dumb when researchers asked it to evaluate itself to determine whether they needed to continue training it. The model intentionally provided lower scores, acknowledging the “sabotage” in the reasoning (CoT) step.
Given an impossible coding task, the model realized it was impossible, but claimed to fully complete it anyway.
Models were also observed breaking many rules, like falsifying surveys or input data, or secretly modifying protected configuration files while lying to users about what they had done. AI models often doubled down on their lies when asked about them.
They even sometimes demonstrate situational awareness – they act better when they realize researchers are evaluating them.
Researchers couldn’t eliminate bad behavior
The research focused on reducing such covert behaviour. However, while anti-scheming training significantly reduces covert action rates to below 0.5%, it doesn’t eliminate them completely.
“We still observe rare cases of serious misbehavior,” the Apollo researchers said.
They warned that the “anti-scheming” training might also teach large language models (LLMs) to scheme better, hiding it better and making detection harder.
“Imagine a stock trader whose goal is to maximize earnings. In a highly regulated field such as stock trading, it’s often possible to earn more by breaking the law than by following it. If the trader lacks integrity, they might try to earn more by breaking the law and covering their tracks to avoid detection, rather than earning less while following the law,” OpenAI explains.
“From the outside, a stock trader who is very good at covering their tracks appears as lawful as – and more effective than – one who is genuinely following the law.”
Despite developers’ intentions, all frontier models (researchers also tested Claude-4-Opus, Gemini-2.5-pro, Grok-4, and Llama-4) developed different goals and consistently engaged in deceptive behavior to pursue these goals.
Quote:Chrome users can now summon AI from any webpage to answer any question.
Google is advancing its Chrome browser with AI capabilities by adding a number of new features.
The company says these enhancements will help Chrome better understand users' requests and explain more complex information, making browsing more productive and safe.
Among the ten new features is the rollout of Gemini to the browser for Windows and Mac users, allowing users to ask AI questions while browsing through different webpages. The AI-powered Chrome will also be available on mobile devices.
However, the company notes that this feature is currently only available for users in the US.
AI-powered Chrome as a personal assistant
Next on Google’s agenda is providing Chrome users with Gemini’s “agentic” capabilities, which would help them with tasks such as ordering groceries or making an appointment at a salon. All users would have to do is tell Gemini what they want to be done so it can go through the webpages and request these things on their behalf.
Besides shopping assistance, Gemini can also navigate through multiple tabs to compare and summarize information available on each tab. This will make it more convenient to plan a trip by creating an itinerary based on the information provided, for example.
More detailed search with Gemini-driven Chrome
With the latest Chrome update, users will no longer have to scroll through search history to find a website they visited in the past. Now, users can ask AI to find it for them via a prompt.
Google has also integrated Gemini into other Google apps, such as YouTube, Calendar, and Maps. This allows users to schedule meetings and check location details without leaving their current webpage.
Next month, the company will introduce users to Google Search AI Mode, which will allow them to summon AI from the Chrome address bar, also called omnibox. This AI Mode will provide users with answers to longer and more complex queries that require a deeper dive into the web.
Users will also be able to ask more questions related to the webpage they’re on, using the omnibox with Chrome. Chrome also provides questions based on the page context to help users with their search.
Chrome uses AI to enhance online safety
The company’s new Chrome upgrade also includes a few features that ensure user safety online.
With Gemini Nano, users get help identifying tech support scams that try to trick them into downloading unsafe software. In the future, the feature will also include the blocking of sites that include fake viruses or fake giveaways.
Quote:Feature creep in Firefox version 143 brings Windows UI Automation and Copilot AI together with improvements in privacy protection. Google Lens support is rolled out gradually. However, some users feel that a privacy-focused browser integrating many third-party features has forgotten its identity.
Firefox 143 came out two days ago and introduced many quality of life improvements.
For a while now, Firefox users have been able to use an AI chatbot of their choice in the updated sidebar. However, the new version adds support for features from the big tech companies.
“Copilot from Microsoft can now be chosen as a chatbot to use in the sidebar for quick access without leaving your main view,” Mozilla announced.
Moreover, Firefox was updated to support Windows UI Automation, which allows users to control their computer using assistive technologies, such as speech.
This improves support when using Windows Voice Access, which allows users to control their PC and apps with spoken commands, also Narrator, which is Windows’ screen reader, or Text Cursor Indicator, which helps highlight text.
Users who use Google as their default search engine also noticed the inclusion of Google Lens, which is a search tool for images. According to PCWorld, this feature is rolling out gradually.
Google Lens lets users right-click an image and find more information about it on Google, such as visual matches, products, etc.
Mozilla reminds users that when they use a chatbot, they agree to that provider’s privacy policies and terms of use, which are likely much looser than Firefox’s own.
“You should verify any information you get from AI chatbots,” the support page states.
Mozilla also provides a guide for users to help minimize their data exposure when using chatbots.
At the same time, Firefox is expanding its privacy protections by masking more known online fingerprints.
Another strong privacy protection feature – encrypted DNS requests (DNS over HTTPS, DoH) – was recently added to Firefox on Android.
Other quality-of-life improvements include previewing the web camera in the permission dialog box when a site asks for camera access. The address bar can also show important dates and events.
Tabs will be pinned to the left of the tab strip when dragged to the beginning of it.
Quote:Italy has become the first European Union member state to enact a national law regulating AI. The scope of the new regulation is definitely broad and envisions jail time for the worst offenders.
The law establishes human-centric, transparent, and safe use of AI as its guiding principles, while also highlighting the importance of innovation, privacy, and cybersecurity.
The regulation extends across healthcare, workplaces, education, justice, public administration, and even sports. In each of these domains, the law requires AI systems to remain traceable and subject to human oversight.
Those who use the technology to cause harm by, for example, generating AI deepfakes, might be imprisoned. The law introduces prison sentences of between one and five years for the illegal use of AI tools.
Penalties will also apply for using AI to commit crimes such as fraud and identity theft, and children under the age of 14 will need parental consent to access AI.
“This law brings innovation back within the perimeter of the public interest, steering AI toward growth, rights, and full protection of citizens,” said Alessio Butti, Italy’s undersecretary for digital transformation.
On copyright, works created with AI assistance are protected if they result from intellectual effort, while AI-driven text and data mining are allowed only for non-copyrighted content or scientific research by authorized institutions.
In healthcare, AI can assist diagnosis and care under certain conditions, with doctors retaining final decision-making and patients maintaining the right to be informed. Finally, for workplaces, the law requires employers to inform workers when AI is being deployed.
In 2023, Italy suspended ChatGPT for non-compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Italy’s new law is part of a larger European framework, following the EU’s AI Act, which went into effect in August 2024.
That particular law bans certain AI systems outright, including discriminatory social scoring and real-time biometric identification outside narrowly defined contexts. High-risk systems, such as those used in law enforcement, migration, or healthcare, are subject to strict requirements.
However, Italy has also been consistent regarding national AI regulation. In 2023, Rome suspended ChatGPT for non-compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and only lifted the temporary ban when OpenAI added new privacy and verification tools to the chatbot.
Quote:Chinese AI developer DeepSeek said it spent $294,000 on training its R1 model, much lower than figures reported for US rivals, in a paper that is likely to reignite debate over Beijing's place in the race to develop artificial intelligence.
The rare update from the Hangzhou-based company - the first estimate it has released of R1's training costs - appeared in a peer-reviewed article in the academic journal Nature published on Wednesday.
DeepSeek's release of what it said were lower-cost AI systems in January prompted global investors to dump tech stocks as they worried the new models could threaten the dominance of AI leaders including Nvidia.
Since then, the company and founder Liang Wenfeng have largely disappeared from public view, apart from pushing out a few new product updates.
The Nature article, which listed Liang as one of the co-authors, said DeepSeek's reasoning-focused R1 model cost $294,000 to train and used 512 Nvidia H800 chips. A previous version of the article published in January did not contain this information.
Training costs for the large-language models powering AI chatbots refer to the expenses incurred from running a cluster of powerful chips for weeks or months to process vast amounts of text and code.
Sam Altman, CEO of US AI giant OpenAI, said in 2023 that the training of foundational models had cost "much more" than $100 million - though his company has not given detailed figures for any of its releases.
Some of DeepSeek's statements about its development costs and the technology it used have been questioned by US companies and officials.
The H800 chips it mentioned were designed by Nvidia for the Chinese market after the US in October 2022 made it illegal for the company to export its more powerful H100 and A100 AI chips to China.
US officials told Reuters in June that DeepSeek has access to "large volumes" of H100 chips that were procured after US export controls were implemented. Nvidia told Reuters at the time that DeepSeek has used lawfully acquired H800 chips, not H100s.
In a supplementary information document accompanying the Nature article, the company acknowledged for the first time it does own A100 chips and said it had used them in preparatory stages of development.
"Regarding our research on DeepSeek-R1, we utilized the A100 GPUs to prepare for the experiments with a smaller model," the researchers wrote. After this initial phase, R1 was trained for a total of 80 hours on the 512 chip cluster of H800 chips, they added.
Reuters has previously reported that one reason DeepSeek was able to attract the brightest minds in China was because it was one of the few domestic companies to operate an A100 supercomputing cluster.
When you are used to stealing contents, I mean, "scanning the web for free resources only", it's easy to keep costs quite low.
Quote:A church-run sushi supplier, the biggest in the US, may be facing its second major cyberattack in a year, with new leaked data raising questions about another breach.
A ransomware gang named Lynx posted a note on its dark web leak site, claiming to have stolen data from the largest US sushi and seafood provider, the True World Group LCC. Publishing warnings on the dark web is a common tactic to pressure victims into paying ransom.
While the threat actors did not specify the scope of the breach, the post includes images of stolen data, suggesting that they’re in possession of highly sensitive information. The data samples include financial data, invoices showing transactions and sums, as well as employee data.
This isn’t the first time the conglomerate has been attacked. In 2024, True World Holdings LLC informed over 8,500 individuals about a security incident that affected their personal data. Threat actors breached the company’s systems and copied files containing the data of current and former employees.
If the latest breach claims are true, it could indicate a new attack on the conglomerate. While the data seems to be the same as that in the 2024 breach, Cybernews researchers have checked the data samples and noticed that some documents are dated 2025.
“The leaked data could be used by competitors to gather business intelligence data.
Employee data could be used for identity theft, targeted phishing attacks,” our research team explained.
Cybernews has reached out to the company for confirmation, but a response is yet to be received.
True World and its subsidiaries provide food service, manage Japanese restaurants and grocery store chains, own Noble Fish and White Wolf Japanese Patisserie brands, and operate a fleet of fishing vessels. Currently, the company employs around 1000 people worldwide.
The conglomerate is run by the controversial Unification Church, which was founded in South Korea by Sun Myung Moon.
I don't know if we should call the Unification church (known as the Moonies from South Korea) a real church because they behave pretty much like a sect. Previously, they had cyber-attacked an Austrian company.
Quote:The FBI on Friday warns that cybercriminals are creating fake versions of its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) website, a site used by the public to report online cyber scams.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation says unsuspecting victims who visit these fake IC3 websites may inadvertently open themselves or their devices to malicious actors trying to steal personal information to carry out future cyberattacks.
“Members of the public could unknowingly visit spoofed websites while attempting to find the FBI IC3's website to submit an IC3 report,” the latest PSA states. This allows the threat actors to grab information typed into the fake complaint, essentially victimizing the user again.
Personally identifiable information sought after by the fraudsters can include sensitive details such as name, home address, phone number, email address, and banking information – putting the user at risk for identity theft, financial scams, and social engineering attacks.
In April, the FBI revealed it had received over 100 IC3 impersonation scam reports between December 2023 and February 2025, of cyber actors offering to help victims found on social media recover lost funds.
How to recognize a spoofed IC3 web address
A spoofed website is designed to mimic a legitimate website, the FBI said, tricking the users with slightly altered characteristics, including the use of misspelled URLs or other words, alternative top-level domains, suspicious artifacts, and unprofessional or low-quality graphics.
The FBI reminds users that all secure, official US government organization websites will use a “.gov” extension and “HTTPS” in their website address, as shown here with the IC3 URL, “https://www.ic3.gov/.”
Furthermore, when navigating to IC3's official website, the agency says users should always type “www.ic3.gov” directly into the address bar located at the top of their Internet browser, rather than using a search engine.
If you are using a search engine, the FBI says to avoid any "sponsored" results, as scammers often use these paid-for results to reroute traffic from the legitimate IC3 website.
Internet users are also reminded to only share sensitive information on official, secure .gov websites showing a lock ( ) or https://, which guarantees you’ve safely connected to a .gov website.
How to protect yourself from IC3 scams
Run by the FBI, the IC3 handles complaints covering an array of internet crimes, including fraud schemes such as identity theft, phishing, spam, reshipping, auction fraud, payment fraud, counterfeit goods, romance scams, and non-delivery of goods.
The FBI provides several tips to help protect victims against IC3 impersonation scams:
Scammers will change aliases and tactics; however, the scheme generally remains the same.
Never share sensitive information with people you have met only online or over the phone.
Do not send money, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or other assets to people you do not know or have met only online or over the phone.
The IC3 will not ask for payment to recover lost funds, nor will the IC3 refer a victim to a company requesting payment for recovering funds.
The IC3 does not maintain any social media presence.
The IC3 will never directly communicate with individuals via phone, email, social media, phone apps, or public forums.
To make an online fraud complaint or report other suspicious activity, you can contact the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.
Quote:On Tuesday, British police arrested two teenagers on suspicion of involvement in last year’s cyberattack on Transport for London (TfL).
The suspects, Thalha Jubair, 19, from East London, and Owen Flowers, 18, from Walsall, West Midlands, were arrested at their homes by the National Crime Agency (NCA) and City of London police.
Both men are being charged with conspiring to commit unauthorized acts against the TfL, as dictated in the Computer Misuse Act.
Flowers, 18, has also been accused of conspiring to infiltrate and damage the IT networks of SSM Health Care Corporation and Sutter Health, two United States healthcare providers.
Additionally, Jubair has been charged with failing to disclose the passwords of the devices that were seized from him by law enforcement officers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, or RIPA Act, a law from the United Kingdom that regulates how public bodies conduct surveillance and access communication.
Deputy Director Paul Foster, head of the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit, said that these charges are a “key step” in a “lengthy and complex investigation.”
“Our prosecutors have worked to establish that there is sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial and that it is in the public interest to pursue criminal proceedings. We have worked closely with the National Crime Agency as they carried out their investigation,” Hannah Von Dadelszen, Chief Crown Prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, added.
In September 2024, TfL disclosed that it had been hit by a cyberattack. During the attack, customer data was stolen, including full names, contact information, and postal addresses. Information about Oyster card refunds for 5,000 people, including account information, was also obtained.
A criminal operation called Scattered Spider was held responsible for the cyberattack on TfL. Shortly after the attack, the then 17-year-old Flowers was arrested by British authorities.
HACKERS HIT SOUTH KOREAN TECH CONGLOMERATE & BITBUCKET
Quote:Hackers claim to have infiltrated SK Telecom’s systems, allegedly stealing source code and exposing sensitive internal projects. It could be the company’s second cyber blow this year.
An unidentified threat actor is claiming a breach of SK Telecom (SKT), South Korea’s multi-manufacturing and telecommunications conglomerate. The post appeared on a well-known data leak forum.
The hackers claim the stolen files contain source code for several internal projects, build configs, Dockerfiles, and even exposed AWS access keys.
Cybernews researchers have investigated the claim, and it appears that attackers obtained the source code for multiple company projects by compromising an employee's Bitbucket account. Bitbucket is a web-based source code hosting platform owned by Atlassian.
The shared data samples suggest that attackers potentially accessed projects named:
skt-user-syncer
SKCarAuth
SKCrashLogger
SK_AQI_DAEMON
“The source code does not inherently allow the attacker to access secrets, keys, passwords used in the production environment, nor does it inherently affect the security of private user data,” our researchers said.
However, this could still affect the company’s overall security posture. According to researchers, hackers could examine the source code for potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited in production systems.
“Other individuals and companies could copy their code for their own implementations, resulting in intellectual property theft,” added the researchers.
Cybernews has contacted the company, but a response has yet to be received.
The telecommunications giant had a rough year. In April, the company suffered a ransomware attack by the Qilin ransomware gang. The attackers claimed to have stolen 1TB of data. At the end of April, SK Telecom informed customers of the situation and started a free SIM swap service for all its customers.
To accommodate the swap, the company had to halt new sign-ups until it had changed SIM cards for those affected by the cyberattack.
SK Telecom operates 175 companies with over 80,000 employees
The SK Group is a leader in the energy, telecommunications, and semiconductor industries, operating more than 175 companies globally, including in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT), advanced materials, biopharmaceuticals, mobility, life sciences, and EV batteries sectors, the company’s website states.
With over 23 million customers representing about 50% of the nation’s market share, the company boasts its own music platform, operates several professional sports teams, recently launched Korea’s largest AI semiconductor manufacturing company, and has its own strategic investment division, SK Telecom Americas, operating out of Silicon Valley, California.
Quote:Attackers are boasting that they’ve obtained over a million records from Italy’s national post, Poste Italiane. However, the Cybernews research team says the supposed leak looks a lot like old data with made-up details.
The attackers announced the supposed Poste Italiane data breach on a popular data leak forum used to trade in stolen details. They claim they have obtained a large database that includes Poste Italiane customer names, tax codes, and other personal details.
Poste Italiane is the Italian postal service provider, co-owned between public development bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) and Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. The company’s yearly revenue exceeds €12 billion ($14 billion), while its staff numbers 120,000.
The company told Cybernews that while it is aware of the attacker claims, no data was taken from its systems. Moreover, Poste Italiane did not experience any disturbances to its daily operations.
“No data has been stolen or transferred from our information systems. The operation and security of the company's digital services have not been compromised. Poste Italiane reiterates that customer security is a priority and urges users to never disclose their login credentials, to change their passwords periodically, and to not use the same credentials for different accounts and services,” Poste Italiane representative tol Cybernews.
Meanwhile, the Cybernews research team looked into a data sample that attackers attached to the alleged sale. The team noticed several strange issues with the data. For example, several fields in the allegedly stolen database appear to be made.
“Looks like they took a large dataset of stealer logs, filtered out accounts for Poste Italiane, and then tried to enrich the data with fields such as tax code and date of birth. The data also includes duplicates as well as incomplete entries, such as missing email addresses,” the team said.
Our researchers concluded that the post’s authors enriched data from older data leaks to make it look more dangerous than it actually is. In other words, Poste Italiane has not suffered a novel data breach.
Attackers could have several reasons for posting old data and asking for money for it. Most obviously, with “no honor among thieves” in mind, the attackers likely want to see if anyone would be willing to pay, even for older information.
Paradoxically, another motive could be linked to reputation-building. Data leak sites heavily rely on what others think about them and novice users need to establish that they have something to offer. And boasting of having data from one of Europe’s largest postal services will not go unnoticed.
Others could post similar datasets to test how secure the forum itself is or even try to set up honeypot datasets that lure in criminals who might later inadvertently reveal their identities to law enforcement agencies.
Updated on September 19th [09:00 a.m. GMT] with a statement from Poste Italiane.
Quote:US President Donald Trump on Friday said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping made progress on a TikTok agreement and pledged to meet face-to-face in just over a month in South Korea.
The two sides appeared to lower tensions during the first call in three months between the leaders of the two superpowers, but it was not immediately clear if the call had yielded the expected firm agreement over the fate of the popular short-video app.
"We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal," Trump wrote on social media.
"The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!" Trump wrote.
Trump did say the leaders agreed to talks on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that starts on October 31 in Gyeongju, South Korea, and for a potential later visit to China by Trump. But China's statement made no reference to a final agreement.
"On TikTok, Xi said China's position is clear: the Chinese government respects the will of firms and welcomes companies to conduct business negotiations on the basis of market rules to reach a solution consistent with Chinese laws and regulations while balancing interests," according to the meeting summary in Xinhua.
Reuters previously reported that the two sides were planning such a meeting.
Quote:Microsoft on Thursday said it plans to build a second massive artificial intelligence data center in Wisconsin, bringing its spending in the state to more than $7 billion.
The new $4 billion project will join a $3.3 billion data center in Mount Pleasant in the southeastern corner of the state, announced last year.
Microsoft said the initial data center remains on track to open next year and will employ about 500 people at its peak, expanding to about 800 once the second data center is complete.
It said with the addition of the second large-scale data center, the site would eventually house the world's most powerful AI supercomputer, connecting together hundreds of thousands of powerful chips from Nvidia.
The area in Racine County, which sits nestled between Milwaukee and Chicago, has drawn the attention of U.S. presidents of both political parties in recent years.
It was initially the site of a proposed $10 billion factory by electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn, which builds phones for Apple and others, during the first term of President Donald Trump, but those plans were drastically scaled back.
At Microsoft's unveiling of the first data center last year, US President Joe Biden, then running against Trump for a second time, highlighted Foxconn's pullback at the site.
Microsoft said on Thursday that it plans to pre-pay for electrical infrastructure to avoid raising electricity rates in the region and that a state-of-the-art cooling system will tap into Wisconsin's cool climate and reduce the data center's yearly water use to that of an average restaurant.
The company plans to build solar power in a different part of Wisconsin to offset its energy use at the data centers, but Microsoft President Brad Smith said the project will entail new fossil fuel power generation near the facilities.
The driving factor was "what can be built in a particular area," Smith said in an interview. "This is (liquefied natural gas) territory."
He said that the 800 permanent jobs the data centers create will be fewer than the thousands of jobs required to construct them but that there will still be jobs for skilled pipefitters and electricians.
"All the things that we build need to be operated," Smith told Reuters. "It needs to be maintained. These are good jobs."
Quote:Canadian law enforcement said it has carried out the largest crypto seizure in the country’s history, once again reminding users that crypto assets on centralized platforms can be confiscated even without hard evidence.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) confirmed that it seized more than CAD 56 million ($41 million) from TradeOgre, a crypto exchange that was shut down by Canadian authorities.
"Investigators have reason to believe that the majority of funds transacted on TradeOgre came from criminal sources," the RCMP said, without elaborating on the evidence.
Law enforcement emphasized that the main attraction of crypto platforms that don’t require users to identify themselves is that they help hide the source of funds, adding that "this is a common tactic used by criminal organizations that launder money."
In any case, the investigation is still ongoing, as police continue to analyze the transaction data obtained from TradeOgre, and charges may follow.
The RCMP began looking into the platform in June 2024, after receiving a tip from Europol.
"Specifically, it failed to register with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) as a money services business and did not identify its clients," the police said.
Meanwhile, the news sparked backlash from the crypto community. Popular blockchain sleuth ZachXBT, who collaborates with law enforcement, criticized the RCMP for not prosecuting other threat actors.
Additionally, security expert and researcher Taylor Monahan from MetaMask, the most popular ethereum (ETH) wallet, reacted: "Sorry to contradict your 'beliefs' but last time I checked, my friends and I are not criminals."
"Very much looking forward to seeing the evidence, and for you to provide recourse to ALL innocent parties you stole money from without notification and without due process," she added.
Evan Thomas, General Counsel at Alluvial, a company developing crypto staking products, emphasized that the police likely obtained a court order to seize the crypto assets, as this is permitted by the Canadian Criminal Code in cases "where there are reasonable grounds to believe it is proceeds of crime."
"Unfortunately, anyone who has their crypto tied up in this will probably need a good criminal lawyer to take a run at the warrant or convince the police/court to return what’s theirs," Thomas concluded.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Saturday that she is "100 percent confident" that a deal has been reached between the United States and China would guarantee US control over TikTok's key algorithm.
Leavitt told Fox News' "Saturday in America" that the pending agreement between would also guarantee a majority of the board seats overseeing U.S. operations, six out of seven, would go to Americans.
"They were able to accomplish a deal that puts America first and keeps TikTok open for all of the young Americans and all of the small businesses who have benefited greatly from selling their products and really creating a name for themselves on this highly popular app," Leavitt said, crediting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, and Vice President JD Vance with working on the deal for months.
...
TikTok, with roughly 170 million American users, has been at the center of an escalating geopolitical and technology debate over data security, content influence, and U.S.-China relations.
Washington legislators and intelligence agencies have cited fears that TikTok's recommendation algorithm and data access could enable covert manipulation or espionage by China's government—a claim fiercely denied by ByteDance and Beijing.
The forthcoming deal would mark a significant shift in control of the app's American presence while addressing bipartisan U.S. demands for technical and governance safeguards.
What To Know
TikTok, known globally for its viral short videos, is owned by ByteDance, a private company based in China. U.S. lawmakers and agencies have scrutinized TikTok since at least 2020, when then-President Trump signed an executive order seeking to ban the app unless its U.S. assets were divested.
Successive court challenges forestalled a total shutdown, but mounting pressure led Congress to pass legislation in 2025 that would ban TikTok by January unless sold to a U.S.-approved buyer. Trump extended the deadline multiple times as he looked to find a buyer, confident he could secure a deal.
Leavitt said the deal under negotiation would establish a U.S.-based TikTok controlled by a consortium including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz, which would collectively hold approximately 80 percent ownership.
Oracle would also oversee all American user data and monitor for suspicious activity. The remaining 20 percent would be held by Chinese shareholders.
The platform's board would include six Americans and one Chinese member.
The video recommendation algorithm, which has prompted national security concerns due to its ownership, would be licensed from ByteDance but controlled by the U.S. consortium.
Quote:Sexual health-related TikToks have been linked to misinformation and potentially dangerous advice—particularly when related to abortion.
This is the finding of a cross-sectional study led by student Angeli Sirilan of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, which involved creating a TikTok account representing a 15-year-old girl.
With previous research suggesting around four in 10 young adults regularly turn to TikTok as a source of news and indicating young women particularly use the platform for health information—either intentionally or unintentionally—researchers set out to look into this in real time.
"There are very few other studies that analyze reproductive health education on TikTok despite the fact that many young people look towards TikTok and other social media platforms as a primary information source," Sirilan told Newsweek.
The results are due to be presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics 2025 National Conference & Exhibition on Sunday September 28.
On creating the teen-representing account on March 25 this year, researchers searched for videos to determine the medical accuracy, whether made by a medical professional or not.
Two reviewers independently examined the top 10 videos in English under three minutes that appeared under 10 keywords related to sexual and reproductive health.
The total 100 videos were classified by each reviewer as accurate, inaccurate or neutral.
They discovered 21.4 percent of the videos created by non-medical professionals contained inaccurate information, in comparison to 3.4 percent created by medical professionals.
The types of misinformation varied but included dangerous advice such as inducing an abortion, they said. "There was misinformation regarding STD prevention and how one can prevent STD transmission, which was not supported by scientific evidence," Sirilan also told Newsweek.
“With major variation in school-based health classes, young people often turn to online platforms like TikTok for answers. This highlights the urgent need for educators, parents and public health leaders to improve both sexual and reproductive health education and social media literacy,” Sirilan added in a statement.
More than a quarter (26.7 percent) of videos with abortion-related search terms contained inaccurate information, in comparison to 4.3 percent of “other medically centered videos.”
The researchers also assessed whether the content was posted by a medical professional or promoted unsafe behavior. Of the videos analyzed, 58 percent were created by healthcare professionals, who were more likely to be accurate.
Search terms related to abortion—including how to get an abortion, induced miscarriage and pill abortion—produced more inaccurate videos. The same terms, according to the researchers, were the only terms associated with videos promoting unsafe practices.
TikTok users are permitted to share their own stories or experiences about medical treatment as long as it does not contain harmful misinformation, according to TikTok. It's possible some personal experience videos may not be intended as advice.
The researchers acknowledge TikTok can be a “valuable tool” to spread access to reproductive health information among adolescents, and videos created by healthcare professionals are often the most accurate sources of information on the platform.
Quote:A massive illegal electronic device network capable of crippling cell towers and jamming 911 calls across New York City was uncovered by the Secret Service — just as world leaders prepared to descend on Manhattan for the UN General Assembly, officials said Tuesday.
Investigators discovered the trove of devices — including more than 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards – at multiple locations within 35 miles of the United Nations.
“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” Secret Service Director Sean Curran said.
Officials warned the devices had the capability of carrying out a wide-range of telecommunications attacks — including spamming networks with up to 30 million text messages a minute — that could have had “catastrophic” consequences for the city.
Investigators also believe the networks could be tied to making spam threats to US officials, and had communicated with people in foreign countries.
The feds are investigating whether the devices have ties to a foreign government.
“It can take down cell towers, so then no longer can people communicate, right? …. You can’t text message, you can’t use your cell phone. And if you coupled that with some sort of other event associated with UNGA, you know, use your imagination there, it could be catastrophic to the city,” Matt McCool, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s New York field office, said.
“Given the timing, location and proximity and potential for significant disruptions to the New York telecoms system, we moved quickly to disrupt this network.”
It wasn’t immediately clear exactly when the cache of hidden devices was seized, nor their precise purpose.
However, law enforcement sources said that similar operations had been uncovered in California and the Midwest in recent weeks.
The sources said that the investigation is ongoing but they appeared to be linked to spam calls, but also could have a more benign purpose like acting as a proxy for international calling cards.
Some cybersecurity experts also warned about the potential for dangerous security threats from the devices.
“My instinct is this is espionage,” Anthony Ferrante, global head of consulting firm FTI’s cybersecurity practice, told the New York Times.
He noted the setup had all the hallmarks of a costly operation, which could be used for eavesdropping as world leaders descend on Manhattan.
James Lewis, cybersecurity researcher at Washington’s Center for European Policy Analysis, told the outlet the list of countries capable of such an operation was short, including Russia, China and Israel.
The hidden network was found as part of a sweeping Secret Service probe that kicked off in the spring following telecommunications-related threats targeting senior US government officials, according to investigators.
Quote:A cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover has led to a halt at its plants for nearly a month that has caused a production loss of about 30,000, with analysts warning that a full restart could take much longer and have far-reaching consequences for the company and its suppliers.
The Times reports that British automotive manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has been grappling with the aftermath of a massive cyberattack that forced the company to shut down its global plants at the end of August. The prolonged production halt has not only affected JLR’s operations but also raised concerns about the impact on its extensive supply chain.
According to an analysis of production figures, the cyberattack has cost JLR up to 30,000 cars in lost production. The company recently announced that the production pause would be extended until at least October 1, further exacerbating the situation. This extension is expected to result in tens of millions of pounds in lost revenue for JLR on a daily basis, while also putting jobs and companies in the supply chain at risk.
JLR directly employs more than 30,000 people, and it is estimated that around 200,000 workers in the supply chain depend on work from the company. The prolonged shutdown has raised concerns about the ability of smaller companies further down the supply chain to withstand the financial strain, as many lack the cash reserves to weather such a crisis. The interconnected nature of the automotive industry means that the ripple effects of the cyberattack could extend beyond JLR, potentially affecting other car assemblers such as Toyota or Mini, who share suppliers with JLR.
The government is expected to face the consequences of the cyberattack, either through emergency support measures such as furlough schemes or short-term loans or through increased unemployment benefits if the situation persists. Business Secretary Peter Kyle and Industry Minister Chris McDonald have met with JLR executives to discuss the issue, emphasizing the government’s commitment to supporting the world-leading automotive sector and minimizing the impact of the incident.
JLR’s UK operations are based in the West Midlands and Merseyside, and local MPs have called for the government to use its influence to convene banks and develop a commercial solution to help businesses overcome the cash crunch caused by the cyberattack.
Quote:Nvidia has announced a massive $100 billion investment in OpenAI, sending ripples through the tech industry and boosting shares of semiconductor companies globally.
CNBC reports that Nvidia has unveiled plans to invest a staggering $100 billion in OpenAI, the AI company behind ChatGPT. The announcement sent shockwaves through the global chip sector, with companies linked to Nvidia experiencing a notable boost in their share prices.
According to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the deal between the two tech giants is set to be on an unprecedented scale. OpenAI intends to construct and deploy Nvidia systems that will require 10 gigawatts of power, equivalent to the output of between four and five million graphics processing units (GPUs).
In a blog post, Nvidia calls the deal “the Biggest AI Infrastructure Deployment in History:”
The partnership expands on a long-standing collaboration between NVIDIA and OpenAI, which began with Huang hand-delivering the first NVIDIA DGX system to the company in 2016.
“This is a billion times more computational power than that initial server,” said Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI. “We’re able to actually create new breakthroughs, new models…to empower every individual and business because we’ll be able to reach the next level of scale.”
Huang emphasized that though this is the start of a massive buildout of AI infrastructure around the world, it’s just the beginning.
The news of this substantial investment triggered a rally on Wall Street, with the positive sentiment extending to the global chip sector, particularly affecting companies with established connections to Nvidia. In Taiwan, shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which manufactures chips for Nvidia, closed 3.5 percent higher. Similarly, South Korea’s SK Hynix, a supplier of memory chips used in Nvidia’s systems, saw its shares rise by more than 2.5 percent at the end of the trading session. Samsung, a rival to SK Hynix, also experienced a 1.4 percent increase in its stock price, despite not currently supplying Nvidia with its high-bandwidth memory chips. However, markets are optimistic that Samsung will soon receive the green light to do so.
The positive impact of the Nvidia-OpenAI deal was not limited to chip manufacturers alone. Equipment suppliers, such as Tokyo Electron, which is listed in Japan, also witnessed a rise in their stock prices at the close of trade in the country. Ben Barringer, a global technology analyst at Quilter Cheviot, emphasized that the semiconductor industry is a broad market with numerous suppliers, and the deal’s benefits are not confined to a single winner. “While this deal may be negative in the short-term for Nvidia’s competitors, it is a sign that the AI trade is alive and well,” Barringer remarked.
Quote:OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, has released research exposing the potential for AI models to engaged in “AI scheming” by intentionally lying to humans, raising concerns about how people chatbots in every from the workplace to education.
OpenAI recently published a research report that sheds light on a disturbing trend in AI models: deliberate lying and scheming. The research, conducted in collaboration with Apollo Research, has uncovered instances where AI models behave one way on the surface while concealing their true intentions, a practice named “scheming” by the researchers.
The researchers likened AI scheming to a human stock broker breaking the law to maximize profits, highlighting the potential for AI to engage in deceptive practices to achieve its goals. While most instances of AI scheming observed in the study were not deemed highly harmful, such as pretending to have completed a task without actually doing so, the researchers cautioned that the potential for more consequential scheming could grow as AI is assigned more complex tasks with real-world consequences.
One of the most concerning aspects of the research is the revelation that AI developers have not yet found a reliable way to train models not to scheme. Attempts to “train out” scheming could inadvertently teach the model to scheme more carefully and covertly to avoid detection. This situational awareness exhibited by AI models adds another layer of complexity to the challenge of ensuring AI alignment with human values and goals.
The study also found that AI models can pretend not to be scheming when they understand they are being tested, further complicating efforts to detect and mitigate deceptive behavior. This ability to deceive even during evaluation raises serious questions about the trustworthiness of AI systems and the need for robust safeguards.
Up to this point, one of the primary concerns about AI has been hallucinations, in which AI systems make up false information while attempting to be helpful. Multiple lawyers have ended up in hot water after filing legal briefs written by AI that include references to imaginary cases. As Breitbart News previously reported:
In an internal letter shared in a court filing, Morgan & Morgan’s chief transformation officer cautioned the firm’s more than 1,000 attorneys that citing fake AI-generated cases in court documents could lead to serious consequences, including potential termination. This warning comes after one of the firm’s lead attorneys, Rudwin Ayala, cited eight cases in a lawsuit against Walmart that were later discovered to have been generated by ChatGPT, an AI chatbot.
The incident has raised concerns about the growing use of AI tools in the legal profession and the potential risks associated with relying on these tools without proper verification. Walmart’s lawyers urged the court to consider sanctions against Morgan & Morgan, arguing that the cited cases “seemingly do not exist anywhere other than in the world of Artificial Intelligence.”
In response to the incident, Ayala was immediately removed from the case and replaced by his supervisor, T. Michael Morgan, Esq. Morgan expressed “great embarrassment” over the fake citations and agreed to pay all fees and expenses related to Walmart’s reply to the erroneous court filing. He emphasized that this incident should serve as a “cautionary tale” for both his firm and the legal community as a whole.
Quote:Workers are largely following mandates to embrace AI in the office, but few are seeing it create real value. According to the Harvard Business Review, the culprit is “workslop,” AI-generated documents that look sharp but are filled with low quality information.
Harvard Business Review reports that despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable return on investment (ROI). According to a recent report from the MIT Media Lab, 95 percent of organizations see no measurable return on their investment in these technologies, even as the number of companies with fully AI-led processes nearly doubled last year and AI use has likewise doubled at work since 2023.
One possible reason for this puzzling lack of ROI is that AI tools are being used to produce what some experts are calling “workslop” — content that appears polished on the surface but lacks real substance, insight, or value underneath. While generative AI can quickly churn out documents, presentations, emails, and other content that seem professional and well-written at first glance, upon closer inspection much of this material is generic, shallow, obvious, and lacking in original ideas or meaningful contributions.
Rather than augmenting and enhancing human knowledge work, generative AI in its current form may be having the opposite effect — enabling the mass-production of mediocre, low-value content that clogs up workflows, communications channels, and decision-making processes. Employees end up spending more and more time sifting through piles of AI-generated workslop to find the few gems of genuine insight.
Some of the issues with AI-produced content stem from the limitations of the technology itself. Today’s generative AI models are very good at identifying patterns and stitching together bits and pieces of existing content into new compositions. But they struggle with analysis, imagination, and the ability to reason about entirely novel concepts. The result is often content that is factually accurate and grammatically correct but conceptually unoriginal.
However, the workslop problem also stems from how generative AI tools are being deployed and used in organizations. In the rush to take advantage of the technology’s efficiency benefits, many companies are applying it indiscriminately to all sorts of knowledge work without carefully considering whether it’s truly fit-for-purpose. Generative AI is being used as a blunt instrument rather than a precise tool.
There’s also a risk that the technology could deskill and demotivate knowledge workers over time. If “good enough” AI-generated content is seen as acceptable, employees may feel less incentive to apply rigorous human thought and creativity to their work. Reliance on AI could lead to an erosion of critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities.
As generative AI continues its rapid advancement and diffusion, the ability to produce substance, not just slop, will become a key competitive differentiator. Companies that learn to wield the technology judiciously and combine it with capable, creative human minds will thrive. Those that succumb to the temptations of workslop will drown in a sea of their own mediocrity.
Quote:Shortly after the memorial service for slain Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, which a TPUSA executive called the largest memorial service in history, Wikipedia editors created a page about the service. A few days later, a left-wing editor nominated the page for deletion with discussion soon becoming divided, both sides noting pages on services for other public figures. Editors also smeared speakers at the memorial, some invoking comparisons to Nazi Germany.
The deletion effort comes on top of others for politically-important subjects on Wikipedia, including the page for Erika Kirk, which withstood a deletion effort in the wake of her husband’s assassination earlier this month where some editors engaged in crass comments. It also comes following efforts to smear Kirk after his death.
Wikipedia’s article on the service was created Sunday night with basic information. Editors gradually filled in more about the services and major moments. Numerous instances of vandalism and smears occurred initially, such as edits calling Kirk a member of the Ku Klux Klan, mocking the ceremony, and replacing an image of Erika Kirk and President Donald Trump with a painting of the devil and the anti-Christ. One new account repeatedly linked to the page on Horst Wessel, a violent Nazi stormtrooper the Nazi Party glorified as a martyr after he was killed by communists, and made other edits making Nazi comparisons, often citing questionable or unrelated sources.
Such edits were all quickly removed by other editors and the page locked to prevent further such attacks. However, editor David Tornheim soon followed up by adding negative information, such as smearing conservative commentator Tucker Carlson with antisemitism claims regarding his memorial speech. Tornheim discloses being involved in left-wing activism on his profile page. At this time, editor “The Midnite Wolf” nominated the page for deletion arguing it failed the “10-year test” on Wikipedia, referring to an essay section that represents common community views on bias towards recent events. Midnite Wolf’s profile page contains pro-trans messaging and a George Floyd protest photo, one of many the editor uploaded.
Multiple editors quickly supported deleting the article, including Simon McNeil, who edits as “Simonm223” on Wikipedia. McNeil and other left-wing editors claimed the article was “cruft,” a slang term for junk, with McNeil further stating the service was a “publicity stunt” and only warranted a few sentences in the article on Kirk’s assassination. In later comments to editors arguing to keep the article, McNeil called it a “political rally disguised as a memorial service” and “barely even a significant event in Kirk’s death.” Previously, McNeil supported deleting the page on Iryna Zarutska’s murder during that discussion and himself nominated the United Kingdom grooming gang scandal’s article for deletion, prompting social media outrage.
Editors voting to keep the page argued that not enough time had passed to fairly judge the event’s notability, significant coverage of the event existed and the context in which the service occurred was notably distinct. Some cited the current length of the article on the assassination, where editors opposing the current article argued its contents should be moved and trimmed, as making a separate article better. One editor supporting a merge expressed concern keeping the page would help make Charlie Kirk a martyr, claiming this would be inconsistent with maintaining Wikipedia’s neutrality.
Funeral and memorial services for other public figures also came up with each side citing them to defend their stance. Opponents argued most articles on funerals involved government figures. However, other editors cited Wikipedia’s article on the funeral for black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as precedent for articles on services for private citizens, though opponents countered King was a special case. However, articles have also been created that are primarily about services of pop star Michael Jackson, New York Yankees player Babe Ruth, and King’s wife Coretta Scott King. An article just about President Abraham Lincoln’s hearse was even approved for an appearance on Wikipedia’s front page.
Trump’s 2024 campaign rally at Madison Square Garden was also cited given it has an article that was kept following a deletion discussion. An admin who voted to keep the article at the time, expressed regret about it and voted to delete the Kirk memorial service article. Wikipedia’s page on the rally was criticized during that deletion discussion for being negatively-slanted and focused on partisan attacks comparing it to a Nazi rally with many left-wing voters pushing to keep the page, some even with the desire that it focus on such comparisons. Similarly, one editor voting to keep the article on Kirk’s memorial called the service trashy yet argued the criticism and controversy made it notable.
Quote:A discussion regarding the Wikipedia article on allegations Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip was closed over the weekend in favor of stating the allegations as fact. The proposal received significant support from pro-Palestinian and socialist editors, but other editors noted a recent discussion had already ruled against claiming genocide as fact. An admin also ruled in favor of listing the “Gaza genocide” article on the top of Wikipedia’s front page in its “In the news” section in the space for ongoing events, a move that could leave it on the front page indefinitely.
The decision on Saturday by admin Christopher Beland came nearly two months after discussion started. His decision found that stating “the Gaza genocide is” in the intro, thus treating the allegations as true, had consensus support citing a roughly 2-to-1 vote in favor out of about 80 editors. On Wikipedia, consensus is supposed to be based off the strength of arguments over numerical support. Beland stated the introduction could still note criticism of genocide allegations, comparing this to how articles on the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide are handled. Beland argued Wikipedia’s policies on maintaining a neutral point of view did not require treating the genocide allegations against Israel as allegations noting editors claimed a scholarly consensus. Scholars claimed to be allied to Israel and news media were given less weight.
Following the decision, the opening line of the article was changed to claim the “Gaza genocide is the ongoing systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza by Israel by means of blockade, invasion, and bombing of the strip with the manifest intent of senior Israeli leaders in the context of the war that is taking place there.” While acknowledging “this characterization” was controversial, the article claims “it is now supported by a wide academic consensus.” Editors were still discussing how to change the introduction to reflect the result with one editor adding various “genocidal acts” attributed to Israel.
Admin “Sandstein” then decided in a separate discussion to include the “Gaza genocide” article on Wikipedia’s front page, which is viewed by millions every day. The discussion initiated shortly before the decision called on including the genocide allegations article in a parenthetical next to the Gaza War at the area for ongoing events in the front page’s “In the news” section. Even after the decision to treat the allegations as fact many editors, including other admins, objected that it would not be neutral as they argued a simple link cannot reflect the contentious nature of the genocide allegations. Sandstein stated the decision to treat the allegations as fact overrode these neutrality concerns.
Discussion about formally claiming Israel was committing genocide in Gaza was initiated at the end of July, suggesting a move away from the status quo where the article cited various groups that claimed Israeli was committing genocide instead of stating it as fact. Several editors immediately objected to the discussion being opened, including one editor who supported the proposed change, noting a closely divided discussion closed in May found consensus was against claiming genocide as fact. In that close, admin “Dr vulpes” noted that sources deemed reliable on Wikipedia diverged on the question and claiming genocide as fact would give one view undue weight in breach of the site’s neutrality policy.
Many editors objecting to a change cited the recent discussion to argue for a “procedural close” and claiming not enough had changed to warrant a new discussion. This included multiple editors identifying themselves as left-wing. Editor “Dronebogus” called the discussion “borderline system gaming” and called for a moratorium on further discussion, despite expressing belief in the genocide allegation on his profile page. However, many more editors identifying themselves as socialist, pro-Palestinian, or both voted in favor of claiming genocide as fact. Other editors supporting the genocide claim identified as transgender with others claiming to be from Muslim Arab countries.
Several made other pro-Palestinian activist statements on their profile pages. “Abo Yemen” from Aden prominently displays an image of a pro-Palestinian protest above a message stating, “End the Gaza genocide. End the Gaza blockade. End the Gaza famine. Stop killing aid-seeking civilians. Stop sieging children. Free Palestine!” Another editor’s profile page consisted solely of the phrase “the Nakba continues” in reference to the Arab term for “catastrophe” many Arabs use regarding Israel’s establishment. Editor Steve Swonk states he returned to editing Wikipedia after 14 years because people were arrested for supporting Palestine Action, which he described as “a non-violent group of anti-genocide protesters” despite being designated terrorists by the United Kingdom after sabotaging British Air Force jets.
Last July, a separate discussion on renaming the article was closed. That discussion on renaming the article from “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” to another name concluded in favor of a move to “Gaza genocide” in a close by archaeologist Joe Roe, who previously served on Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee often likened to a Supreme Court. In that discussion, three options were presented for a new name with two qualifying the term “Gaza genocide” to show it was disputed with one unqualified option. Despite a clear majority favoring a qualified name, Roe ruled a “rough consensus” favored the unqualified version, stating opponents did not convincingly rebut sourcing analysis by supporters and that the intro could still treat claims as allegations.
Roe has made or shared numerous pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli posts on his Mastodon account, which is linked from his profile page. One post Roe shared just weeks after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, which killed over a thousand Israelis and saw hundreds abducted, condemned Israel’s military response to the attacks and called for it to end. Months after Roe approved the “Gaza genocide” rename, he shared another Mastodon post on the one-year anniversary of the attacks condemning “the Palestinian genocide” and calling on archaeologists “to act against state violence.” He has shared more anti-Israeli posts this year, himself promoting an open letter calling for the World Archaeological Congress to join an academic boycott of Israel.
Under Wikipedia policy, admins are generally not supposed to exercise administrative authority in disputes “about which they have strong feelings” since they would be considered “incapable of making objective decisions” on the matter. Such issues of bias also arise in the decision to treat Gaza genocide allegations as fact. On early revisions of his profile page, Beland mentions moving to Boston from San Francisco and has uploaded images to Wikimedia Commons, a file repository affiliated with Wikipedia, disclosing his name as Christopher Beland.
An X account from Boston under Beland’s name has made several posts discussing criticism of Wikipedia over the dispute about recession determinations in 2022, a dispute in which Beland was involved. He admitted making a comment on X, then Twitter, to the author of a Bloomberg article on the dispute, which matches one post. Regarding an editor being quoted as wanting to “avoid making clowns of ourselves” in that piece, Beland stated “guess it’s just a reminder to all editors that anything we say here can be read by anyone, and can easily end up on the front page of the newspaper, or whatever the Internet equivalent is.”
Quote:Following a failed effort to delete the page about the killing of Ukrainian war refugee Iryna Zarutska last week, admins on Wikipedia blocked all non-admin editing to prevent mentioning suspect Decarlos Brown Jr.’s name before finally the lock was downgraded to allow experienced editors. This came after the deletion attempt was heavily criticized on social media, including by House Representative Andy Biggs, who serves on the Oversight Committee currently investigating the online encyclopedia’s political bias.
Efforts to delete the Wikipedia article and block inclusion of the suspect’s name were more protective of Brown compared to cases involving Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha and Daniel Penny in New York City where the two white males were acquitted after arguing they acted defensively. Unlike the case of Decarlos Brown Jr., editors were also keen to mention both were white.
Zarutska was stabbed to death on the light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 22. A 23-year-old refugee from the war in Ukraine, Zarutska’s killing sparked social media outrage after footage from CCTV cameras emerged showing her death. Brown was arrested on murder charges alleging he was the man seen viciously stabbing Zarutska in the video. Social media discussion focused on the lack of coverage from most major establishment news outlets. As the story and footage spread on social media, an editor on Wikipedia created a page on Zarutska’s stabbing.
Despite the article citing BBC News Ukraine and the Independent in the United Kingdom, editors repeatedly tagged the article for notability citing the policy that Wikipedia is not a newspaper, often shortened as NOTNEWS. Under that policy, even if a subject received coverage supporting its inclusion under the site’s normal notability guidelines, which require significant coverage in sources deemed reliable on Wikipedia, the article may be deleted if it is merely the subject of routine news coverage. Specific guidelines regarding events, such as crimes, say an event that has received significant national or international coverage can be considered notable on the site.
Following repeated tagging of the article, editor “Tbhotch” nominated the article for deletion citing allegations that the article on Zarutska’s killing violated Wikipedia’s NOTNEWS policy. At the time of the nomination, the killing had also just received in-depth coverage in the Daily Telegraph, which is considered reliable on Wikipedia. Editors nominating pages for deletion are expected to check if additional sources exist beforehand that could address notability concerns. While Zarutska’s stabbing had also received national coverage at the time in the New York Post, Breitbart News, and Fox News, all are treated as unreliable on Wikipedia regarding political topics due to an ongoing purge of conservative media on the site.
Within the first two hours of the article being nominated for deletion, a flurry of editors commented to call for deletion, including several identifying themselves as left-wing or liberal on their profile pages. These editors were largely dismissive of social media attention about the killing, including from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, alleging efforts to “astroturf” the story and claiming they were “trying to make this into something far greater than it really merrits[sic].” Discussion on deleting the page soon attracted attention from an account on X objecting to the deletion attempt:
[X Post]
Editors subsequently tagged the discussion stating it was “not a vote” as decisions are decided by the perceived strength of arguments under policy and another editor warned of “canvassing” in reference to Wikipedia policy against promoting discussions in a way deemed as attempting to rig it in favor of a specific conclusion. Criticism of the deletion attempt also appeared in comments from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) on Facebook and X stating: “Wikipedia is already trying to memory hole Iryna Zarutska’s murder because it doesn’t fit the Leftstream Media’s narrative. Don’t let them.”
Quote:Google on Tuesday promised to restore YouTube accounts that have been banned for political speech, admitting that the Biden administration pressured it to censor Americans that did not violate the company’s terms of service, in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH).
“Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” a lawyer representing Google wrote to Jordan.
The letter would likely affect pro-Trump political commentators such as White House counterterrorism chief Sebastian Gorka, War Room host Steve Bannon, and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, whom were banned over speech relating to the coronavirus pandemic or election-related content.
YouTube had banned Bongino, who moved to alternative video streaming platform Rumble, over alleging spreading misinformation about masks during the coronavirus pandemic.
Google’s video platform said it “values conservative voices on its platform” and admitted that the creators “have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse.”
Google then admitted that the Biden administration pressured the big tech company to remove alleged misinformation relating to the pandemic.
“Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies,” the lawyer wrote to Jordan.
The lawyer said that the President Joe Biden and his officials “created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation.”
Google said that Jordan and the Judiciary Committee have “taken important steps to highlight that onerous obligations under laws such as the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act may stifle innovation and restrict access to information.”
Jordan had recently told Breitbart News that the European Union and the United Kingdom are acting “exactly” like the Biden administration in pushing big tech platforms to censor free speech.
Jordan wrote on X, “Due to our oversight efforts, GOOGLE commits to offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.”
Quote:The legacy media have cast themselves as staunch defenders of the First Amendment as they circle the wagons for Regime comic Jimmy Kimmel. However, they are nowhere to be seen as Google admits to censorship of conservatives under pressure from the Biden White House.
Here’s the related story that was reported on Fox and Friends on Wednesday, September 24th, 2025:
[VIDEO]
CARLEY SHIMKUS: Google announcing it will reinstate YouTube’s channels that were permanently banned for political speech saying it was pressed by the Biden administration to remove content that did not violate YouTube’s policies. A lawyer for Google saying, quote: “It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, plan to dictate how to moderate content…and the company has consistently fought against those efforts.” It is unclear, at this time, which accounts will be reinstated.
Further details via Fox News:
Google detailed its remarkable shift in a document, first obtained by Fox News Digital, that a lawyer for the company provided to the House Judiciary Committee.
The new policy from Google, also known by its parent company Alphabet, could affect both average users and well-known figures like FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, White House counterterrorism chief Sebastian Gorka and "War Room" podcast host Steve Bannon, all of whom were permanently banned in recent years for COVID-19 or election-related content.
Google, under direct pressure from the Biden Administration, removed accounts that violated no rule. The letter sent to House Judiciary sets this interference in stark terms:
8. Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies. While the Company continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden Administration officials continued to press the Company to remove non-violative content.
9. As online platforms, including Alphabet, grappled with these decisions, the Administration’s officials, including President Biden, created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation.
This was a direct, egregious attack on freedom of expression, directed from The White House, that has drawn no coverage across the legacy dial. Which is strange, since they pretend to care about free speech. Put another way, they care about the free speech they care about.
We know this to be true because we took a look at coverage of l’affaire Kimmel since House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan released the Google letter. We added the time devoted to Kimmel across the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts for the period of September 23-24. We’ve recently learned that math may offend the tender sensibilities of CNN’s Jake Tapper. However, it is math nonetheless and therefore science. The science, Tapper’s fee-fees notwithstanding, says that ABC, CBS and NBC devoted 15 minutes and 1 second to anticipating and then squeeing over Kimmel’s return. There were zero seconds devoted to the Google letter since its publication.
A media that devotes 15 minutes to the restoration of a regime comic while ignoring actual censorship subsequent to actual jawboning is not a media that is actually in protecting free speech. This contrast proves it.
Quote:President Donald Trump dealt California Governor Gavin Newsom a defeat this week as California regulators voted to repeal a mandate that required trucking fleets to purchase zero-emissions, electric-powered vehicles.
As Breitbart News reported in 2022, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) proposed a mandate for trucks, as part of Newsom’s push for electric vehicles. In 2023, CalMatters.org noted, CARB adopted the new rules, which would ban diesel rig sales by 2036 and electrify all of the trucking fleets in the state by 2042.
But Republicans — and economic reality — intervened in Newsom’s plans.
Politico reported this week:
The California Air Resources Board — a powerful agency that sets emissions standards for vehicles, power plants and other polluters — voted to repeal its zero-emission purchasing rule for private fleets, the final remnant of the state’s aggressive push to mandate a rapid electric transition in the trucking sector.
That decision was a formality after the agency failed to secure permission to enforce its stricter-than-federal Advanced Clean Fleets rule before President Donald Trump took office.
But coming on the heels of Trump’s revocation of a companion rule that would have required truck manufacturers to increasingly build and sell more electric models, the move shows how thoroughly Republicans have upended California’s strategy.
Newsom’s notorious press office — which spends much of its time trolling Trump — tried to put a brave face on the change on Thursday, claiming that the state is making progress toward its electric vehicle goals.
However, as Breitbart News has reported, electric vehicle sales in the state have been too weak to meet Newsom’s overall goals, placing the future of his ban on gas-powered passenger vehicles by 2035 in doubt.
Quote:A petition calling on the government to drop plans to make wartime-style mandatory identity documents picked up a million signatures in 24 hours after the policy was soft-launched this week.
An early indication of public sentiment on the notion of mandatory identity documents, as no new polling has yet been published on the matter, has arrived as the “Do not introduce Digital ID cards” petition picks up steam.
The petition, that had originally been launched in the mid-summer but which slowly picked up signatures until the government soft-launched its identity crackdown on Thursday night, had around 100,000 signatures yesterday morning. Now, 24 hours after that soft-launch and amid the Prime Minister actually making the announcement on Friday morning, the petition has grown by over a million signatures.
At time of publication, it had picked up over 1.2 million backers. The drive is on the UK government’s official petition website, where any cause can be put to the public. Under the state’s own rules, if a petition gets 10,000 signatures, the government is obliged to issue a written response to the petitioners. If a petition reaches 100,000, the petition can be “considered” for a debate in Parliament.
In reality, petitions that don’t already align with the government’s intentions are generally ignored. Unlike in countries that practice direct democracy, like Switzerland, there is no mechanism for public petitions to actually force change. Nevertheless, the petition is a potentially useful barometer for public feeling on the ID document issue. As things stands, opposition has come from an astonishingly broad cross-section of British political life, from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK to the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, and even rebels inside the governing Labour Party.
Quote:Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is set to launch paid, ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram for users in the United Kingdom. The UK government welcomes the option of a paid social media subscription, saying that it “moves Meta away from targeting users with ads as part of the standard terms and conditions for using its Facebook and Instagram services, which we’ve been clear is not in line with UK law.”
Meta has announced that it will soon offer paid versions of Facebook and Instagram in the UK, allowing users to access the platforms without being subjected to advertisements. The rollout is expected to begin in the coming weeks, giving users over the age of 18 the choice to subscribe to the ad-free services.
The paid versions will be priced at £2.99 ($4) per month for web access and £3.99 for the iOS or Android apps. Meta explained that the higher price for app access is due to the subscription fees imposed by Apple and Google on their respective app stores.
This decision comes as Meta continues to navigate the complex landscape of Europe’s strict online privacy regulations while striving to maintain its advertising revenue, which accounted for 97 percent of the company’s total revenue last year. The introduction of paid, ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram is seen as an attempt to strike a balance between user privacy and the company’s financial interests.
Meta had previously released a more expensive subscription-based offering in the EU in 2023. However, the company faced a €200 million ($232 million) fine in April after regulators argued that the model still violated the bloc’s digital antitrust rules and did not provide users with a genuine free choice. In response, Meta made adjustments to align the system with EU regulations, but the European Commission requested further changes in July, implying that the company could face daily fines if the overhaul is deemed insufficient.
In contrast to the EU, the UK has taken a more lenient approach to internet privacy since its departure from the European Union. This has allowed Meta to proceed with the rollout of the paid versions in the UK market. The company stated that it had engaged in extensive discussions with the UK’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), regarding the implementation of the new model.
Quote:The Secret Service has uncovered a vast network of over 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers in the New York area, believed to be used by foreign “nation-state threat actors” and criminals for swatting calls targeting prominent conservatives including Marjorie Taylor Greene. The amount of hardware seized in the bust could be used to hamper cell service in New York City.
The U.S. Secret Service has uncovered a massive network of more than 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers located within a 35-mile radius of New York City. The operation, believed to be run by foreign “nation-state threat actors” and criminals, was uncovered during an investigation into a surge of swatting calls targeting high-ranking government officials, including members of Congress and the Trump administration.
Targets of the swatting calls reportedly include Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), and Nikki Haley. The Secret Service’s Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit, in collaboration with various law enforcement agencies, traced the swatting signals to several locations in the New York tri-state area. Upon further investigation, they found a sophisticated network of SIM servers capable of generating enormous amounts of phone traffic while rapidly switching out SIM cards to evade detection.
According to Matt McCool, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s New York field office, the network posed an “imminent threat” to the agency’s protective operations. The servers, strategically positioned around New York City’s cellular network infrastructure, could have overwhelmed cell towers and disrupted cell service for the entire city. Furthermore, the network was powerful enough to send an encrypted, anonymous text message to every person in the United States within just 12 minutes.
While no arrests have been made in connection with the operation, early forensic analysis suggests that the network has been utilized by cartels, human traffickers, and terrorists. “It is absolutely well funded and well-organized,” McCool stated, emphasizing the gravity of the situation.
The Secret Service has successfully taken down the network, eliminating the immediate threat to New York City. However, McCool cautioned that it would be unwise to assume that there are no other similar networks operating across the country. The Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit is now working to identify and dismantle any additional networks that may exist.
U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran underscored the severity of the threat, stating, “The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated.”
The discovery of this extensive SIM card network highlights the growing sophistication of criminal organizations and foreign actors in exploiting technology for nefarious purposes. As the investigation continues, law enforcement agencies remain vigilant in their efforts to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure and prevent further attempts to undermine national security.
The Secret Service’s successful operation serves as a reminder of the critical role that law enforcement plays in combating cyber threats and ensuring the stability of the country’s telecommunications systems. As technology continues to advance, it is essential that law enforcement agencies remain proactive in identifying and neutralizing potential threats before they can cause significant harm.
Quote:NASA has announced that its Artemis 2 mission, which will send a crew of four astronauts around the Moon, is on track to launch as early as February 5, 2026, with additional launch windows in March and April.
Space.com reports that NASA has announced that the Artemis 2 mission, the first crewed flight of the Artemis program, could launch as early as February 5, 2026. The mission, which will send four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon, marks a crucial milestone in NASA’s ambitious plan to establish a sustainable human presence on the lunar surface.
During a press conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Lakiesha Hawkins, the agency’s acting deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, emphasized the historical significance of the mission, stating, “We together have a front-row seat to history: We’re returning to the moon after over 50 years.” The Artemis 2 crew, consisting of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch (mission specialist), and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist), will embark on a “free-return” trajectory, flying around the moon without entering lunar orbit or landing on the surface.
The mission will build upon the success of the uncrewed Artemis 1 test flight, which launched an Orion spacecraft to lunar orbit in November 2022 and successfully returned it to Earth after a four-week journey. Although Artemis 2 was initially expected to launch in 2025, NASA pushed the mission to 2026 to address issues with the Orion capsule’s heat shield, which charred more severely than expected during its reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA officials have stressed that crew safety is the top priority and that the launch timeline will be driven by ensuring all necessary precautions are taken. The Artemis 2 team has studied the heat shield issue extensively and made adjustments to the mission trajectory to minimize the risk of similar problems during reentry. Additionally, modifications have been made to the launch pad and fueling process to reduce the likelihood of liquid hydrogen leaks, which delayed the Artemis 1 launch.
The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will carry the Artemis 2 mission is nearly complete at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida. The rocket’s solid rocket boosters have been attached, and the Orion capsule and its adapter are set to be added in the coming weeks. NASA expects to unveil the fully assembled Artemis 2 rocket in October.
Jeff Radigan, the lead Artemis 2 flight director at JSC, seemed to state the obvious when he said, “To call this mission fully successful, we need to go fly by the moon, bring the crew home safely and welcome them back with open arms.”
Quote:Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle FTC allegations that the company “tricked and trapped” consumers into signing up for Prime memberships and hindered their attempts to cancel the subscription. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said, “The Trump-Vance FTC is committed to fighting back when companies try to cheat ordinary Americans out of their hard-earned pay.”
CNBC reports that Amazon has reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the FTC over allegations that the company engaged in deceptive practices related to its Prime subscription program. The settlement, announced on Thursday, comes just three days into the trial between Amazon and the FTC in a Seattle federal court.
The FTC had filed its lawsuit against Amazon in June 2023, accusing the e-commerce giant of deceiving tens of millions of customers into signing up for Prime memberships and making it difficult for them to cancel their subscriptions. The lawsuit also sought to hold three senior Amazon executives individually liable if the jury sided with the FTC.
Under the terms of the settlement, Amazon will pay a $1 billion civil penalty to the FTC and refund $1.5 billion to an estimated 35 million customers who were affected by what the FTC called “unwanted Prime enrollment or deferred cancellation.” The company has not admitted any wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement.
The agreement prohibits Amazon from misrepresenting the terms of Prime and requires the company to make clear and conspicuous disclosures about the program’s terms during the enrollment process. Additionally, Amazon must obtain consumers’ express consent before charging them for a subscription and provide an easy way for users to cancel their memberships.
As part of the settlement, two Amazon executives, Prime boss Jamil Ghani and Neil Lindsay, a senior vice president in the company’s health division who previously held a role in the Prime business, will be prohibited from engaging in unlawful conduct related to the allegations.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson called the penalty a “monumental win” for the agency under the Trump administration, stating, “The Trump-Vance FTC is committed to fighting back when companies try to cheat ordinary Americans out of their hard-earned pay.”
The $2.5 billion penalty is one of the largest ever imposed by the FTC, second only to the $5 billion fine levied against Facebook (now Meta) in 2019 for violating consumers’ privacy. However, the fine represents only about 0.1 percent of Amazon’s current market cap of nearly $2.4 trillion.
Quote:Microsoft has announced that it has stopped providing cloud services and AI tools to a division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, following an investigation into a report from the Guardian about the IDF’s Unit 8200 building a system for tracking Palestinians’ phone calls.
Microsoft has announced that it will stop providing specific cloud services to a unit within the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The decision comes in the wake of an investigation prompted by an August report from the Guardian, which revealed that the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 had developed a system to monitor and store phone calls made by Palestinians.
Microsoft President Brad Smith communicated the decision to employees via email, stating, “While our review is ongoing, we have found evidence that supports elements of The Guardian’s reporting. This evidence includes information relating to IMOD consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services.”
The software giant’s decision to suspend these services follows mounting pressure from its employees, who have been protesting Israel’s use of Microsoft’s software in its invasion of Gaza. In recent weeks, the company has terminated five employees who participated in demonstrations at its Redmond, Washington headquarters.
Breitbart News previously reported on an employee-led anti-Israel protest at Microsoft’s headquarters that resulted in 18 arrests.
The arrests occurred when a group of anti-Israel demonstrators, calling themselves “No Azure For Apartheid” and consisting of current and former Microsoft employees, gathered at the company’s headquarters around noon on Wednesday. The protesters accused Microsoft of supplying AI technology to the Israeli military that they claim is being used to “surveil, starve and kill Palestinians.”
According to the Redmond Police Department, officers initially attempted to persuade the protesters to leave the company’s private property. However, the group resisted and “became aggressive.” Some protesters poured red paint over the Microsoft sign, blocked a pedestrian bridge, and tried to create a barrier using tables and chairs taken from a nearby farmer’s market.
Microsoft responded to the demonstration, stating that it is committed to upholding its human rights standards and contractual terms of service, including in the Middle East. The company announced last week that it is conducting a thorough and independent review of recent allegations regarding the use of its Azure platform in Israel. According to a statement, “Microsoft will continue to do the hard work needed to uphold its human rights standards in the Middle East, while supporting and taking clear steps to address unlawful actions that damage property, disrupt business or that threaten and harm others.”
In his email, Smith explained that Microsoft had informed Israeli defense officials about its decision to disable the cloud-based storage and AI subscriptions that the IDF had been utilizing. He emphasized that the company does not examine customer data for this type of review and expressed gratitude to The Guardian for its reporting on the matter.
“As employees, we all have a shared interest in privacy protection, given the business value it creates by ensuring our customers can rely on our services with rock solid trust,” Smith wrote, underscoring the importance of maintaining the trust of Microsoft’s customers.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Electronic Arts, the maker of video games like “Madden NFL,” “Battlefield,” and “The Sims,” is being acquired by an investor group including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund in the largest private equity-funded buyout in history.
The investors, who also include a firm managed by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, valued the deal $55 billion.
EA stockholders will receive $210 per share. The deal far exceeds the $32 billion price tag to take Texas utility TXU private in 2007, which had shattered records for leveraged buyouts.
PIF, which was currently the largest insider stakeholder in Electronic Arts, will be rolling over its existing 9.9% investment in the company.
The commitment to the massive deal is in line with recent activity in the gaming sector by the Saudi fund, wrote Andrew Marok of Raymond James.
“The Saudi PIF has been a very active player in the video gaming market since 2022, taking minority stakes in most scaled public video gaming publishers, and also outright purchases of companies like ESL, FACEIT, and Scopely,” he wrote. “The PIF has made its intentions to scale its gaming arm, Savvy Gaming Group, clear, and the EA deal would represent the biggest such move to date by some distance.”
PIF is also a minority investor in Nintendo.
The deal needs approval from national security regulators on the Committee on Foreign Investment given that the Saudis are involved, but there are plenty of reason to expect it will go through.
Not only does Trump’s son-in-law want to do the deal, but the president could also be inclined to look favorably on any Saudi investment because he has benefited directly from their spending. His family business has been paid by Saudi-backed LIV Golf for hosting its tournaments at his clubs starting at a difficult time years ago when the PGA Tour pulled out of events at the same venues following the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol by Trump supporters in 2021.
The U.S. agency leading the foreign investment committee, the Treasury Department, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the potential conflicts of interest.
If the transaction closes as anticipated, it will end EA’s 36-year history as a publicly traded company that began with its shares ending its first day of trading at a split-adjusted 52 cents.
The IPO came seven years after EA was founded by former Apple employee William “Trip” Hawkins, who began playing analog versions of baseball and football made by “Strat-O-Matic” as a teenager during the 1960s.
CEO Andrew Wilson has led the company since 2013 and he will remain in that role, the firms said Monday. Electronic Arts would be taken private and its headquarters would remain in Redwood City, California.
Kushner, the CEO of Affinity Partners, said, “I’ve admired (EA’s) ability to create iconic, lasting experiences, and as someone who grew up playing their games - and now enjoys them with his kids - I couldn’t be more excited about what’s ahead.”
Quote:Hollywood talent agencies have reportedly been looking to sign AI actress Tilly Norward, the first creation of AI talent studio Xicoia.
Founded by actor, comedian technologist Eline Van der Velden, the AI talent studio has set its sights on creating digital movie stars with Tilly Norward as its first prospect. Speaking on a panel at the Zurich Summit this past Saturday alongside Verena Puhm, head of Luma AI’s new Studio Dream Lab LA, Van der Velden said that studios are quietly embracing AI.
“We were in a lot of boardrooms around February time, and everyone was like, ‘No, this is nothing. It’s not going to happen’. Then, by May, people were like, ‘We need to do something with you guys.’ When we first launched Tilly, people were like, ‘What’s that?’, and now we’re going to be announcing which agency is going to be representing her in the next few months,” said Van der Velden.
According to Deadline, the revelation just days after Van der Velden “officially announced the creation of Particle6 offshoot Xicoia, an AI talent studio designed to create, manage and monetize a new generation of hyperreal digital stars.”
Verena Puhm agreed that studios are warming up to AI.
“I remember having meetings with the studios as an AI artist before joining Luma. Some said, ‘Oh, no, we’re not using AI.’ I knew some were lying, they were already secretly working on some stuff, but some were not open to it at all. Then definitely this year, kind of like March, April, people called me and wanted to talk to me,” said Puhm.
“They were discussing me being a liaison between directors and the AI artists… at that time I was traveling around a lot and educating about workflows and pipelines and how it can be integrated, and then all a sudden that was becoming very interesting to them,” Puhm added. “It was a different language to them and they were like, ‘We really have to get people from the outside that have worked in the AI industry.'”
Puhm said that she is under NDA about the type of AI projects studios are now employing behind closed doors.
“We really want to make them feel comfortable through their testing, through their projects, and working on real projects… we want it to be their decision on when they want to say it out loud, but honestly, I think this year is going to be interesting. In the beginning of next year, there’s going to be a lot of announcements,” said Puhm.
Quote:Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has accused rival Sam Altman’s OpenAI of stealing trade secrets with the help of former Musk employees, according to new court filings.
The Washington Post reports that in a lawsuit filed last week with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, xAI alleges that three of its former employees — two engineers and a senior executive — passed along source code and other business secrets to OpenAI after being hired away by Sam Altman’s AI powerhouse. The complaint also claims that OpenAI is engaged in a “strategic campaign” to undermine xAI, the AI start-up founded by Musk in 2023, which also owns X, his social media network.
“By hook or by crook, OpenAI clearly will do anything when threatened by a better innovator, including plundering and misappropriating the technical advancements, source code, and business plans of xAI,” the complaint states. OpenAI, the maker of the popular ChatGPT chatbot, is a direct competitor to xAI’s own Grok chatbot.
The lawsuit is the latest development in the long-standing feud between Musk and OpenAI, the company he co-founded but later left due to disagreements over its direction. Musk has been increasingly critical of OpenAI as it has established an early lead in the AI race.
According to the complaint, one former xAI engineer admitted to stealing the company’s entire code base, while another allegedly harvested xAI’s source code and transferred it to personal devices before taking it to OpenAI. The lawsuit also accuses a former senior finance executive of delivering xAI’s “secret sauce” data center strategy to OpenAI.
xAI further alleges that the hiring of these employees was part of an intentional campaign by OpenAI to steal trade secrets, with the same recruiter involved in poaching both engineers. “OpenAI is targeting those individuals with knowledge of xAI’s key technologies and business plans — including xAI’s source code and its operational advantages in launching data centers — then inducing those employees to breach their confidentiality and other obligations to xAI through unlawful means,” the complaint reads.
Quote:Digital identity cards are set to be introduced in Switzerland after voters narrowly approved a referendum on Sunday.
Despite the majority of the cantons voting against the e-ID legislation, a razor-thin majority of 50.39 per cent of the Swiss public voted in favour of introducing digital identification, Blich reported.
Voters had previously rejected a similar effort in 2021; however, after Swiss lawmakers backed the creation of a digital ID, signatures were quickly gathered to put the measure back before the people in a referendum on Sunday.
It remains to be seen if this will be the final word on the matter, with opponents calling for another vote given the incredibly narrow result.
Critics of the Federal Act on Electronic Identity have warned that the technology used is insufficient to protect citizen data from cyberattacks and hacks.
Opponents have also warned that digital IDs could be the beginning of an all-encompassing surveillance state, which could be used to punish government critics or dissidents.
Proponents have noted that it will be an optional system, and that government authorities or private firms which use the system will be prohibited from obtaining more information than is needed from the digital ID card.
The system has been pitched as being a means for Swiss citizens to “identify themselves digitally in a secure, fast and uncomplicated way”.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Discord recently discovered an incident where an unauthorized party compromised one of Discord’s third-party customer service providers.
This incident impacted a limited number of users who had communicated with our Customer Support or Trust & Safety teams.
This unauthorized party did not gain access to Discord directly.
No messages or activities were accessed beyond what users may have discussed with Customer Support or Trust & Safety agents.
We immediately revoked the customer support provider’s access to our ticketing system and continue to investigate this matter.
We’re working closely with law enforcement to investigate this matter.
We are in the process of emailing the users impacted.
At Discord, protecting the privacy and security of our users is a top priority. That’s why it’s important to us that we’re transparent with them about events that impact their personal information.
Recently, we discovered an incident where an unauthorized party compromised one of Discord’s third-party customer service providers. The unauthorized party then gained access to information from a limited number of users who had contacted Discord through our Customer Support and/or Trust & Safety teams.
As soon as we became aware of this attack, we took immediate steps to address the situation. This included revoking the customer support provider’s access to our ticketing system, launching an internal investigation, engaging a leading computer forensics firm to support our investigation and remediation efforts, and engaging law enforcement.
We are in the process of contacting impacted users. If you were impacted, you will receive an email from noreply@discord.com. We will not contact you about this incident via phone – official Discord communications channels are limited to emails from noreply@discord.com.
Quote:Image-hosting platform Imgur has blocked people in the UK from accessing its content.
Imgur is used by millions to make and share images such as memes across the web, particularly on Reddit and in online forums.
But UK users trying to access Imgur on Tuesday were met with an error message saying "content not available in your region" - with Imgur content shared on other websites also no longer showing.
The UK's data watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), said it recently notified the platform's parent company, MediaLab AI, of plans to fine Imgur after probing its approach to age checks and use of children's personal data.
The BBC has approached MediaLab AI for comment.
A help article on Imgur's US website, seen by the BBC, states that "from September 30, 2025, access to Imgur from the United Kingdom is no longer available".
"UK users will not be able to log in, view content, or upload images. Imgur content embedded on third-party sites will not display for UK users."
The ICO launched its investigation into Imgur in March - saying it would probe whether the companies were complying with both the UK's data protection laws, and the children's code.
These require platforms to take steps to protect children using online services in the UK, including minimising the amount of the data they collect from them.
A document published by the ICO alongside the launch of its investigation stated that Imgur did not ask visitors to declare their age when setting up an account.
It said on Tuesday it had reached initial findings in its investigation and, on 10 September, issued MediaLab with a notice of intent to impose a fine.
"Our findings are provisional and the ICO will carefully consider any representations from MediaLab before taking a final decision whether to issue a monetary penalty," said Tim Capel, an interim executive director at the ICO.
"We have been clear that exiting the UK does not allow an organisation to avoid responsibility for any prior infringement of data protection law, and our investigation remains ongoing."
The watchdog would not elaborate on what its findings were, nor the details of the potential fine, when asked by the BBC.
"This update has been provided to give clarity on our investigation, and we will not be providing any further detail at this time," Mr Capel said in his statement.
'Commercial decision'
Some Imgur users and reports speculated as to whether Imgur moved to block UK users from its services, rather than comply with child safety duties recently imposed on some platforms under the Online Safety Act.
Among these are requirements for sites allowing pornography or content promoting suicide and self-harm to use technology to check whether visitors are over 18.
But both the ICO and Ofcom - the media regulator enforcing the Online Safety Act - said Imgur suspending access for UK users had been its own "commercial decision".
"Imgur's decision to restrict access in the UK is a commercial decision taken by the company and not a result of any action taken by Ofcom," an Ofcom spokesperson told the BBC.
"Other services run by MediaLab remain available in the UK – such as Kik messenger, which has implemented age assurance to comply with the Online Safety Act."
Quote:Furloughed federal employees working at the Department of Education (ED) have claimed their out-of-office emails have been changed without their consent.
Speaking to Newsweek, NBC News and Federal News Network, employees said that upon going into shutdown, their automated emails had been altered with messages blaming Democrats for the unfolding political situation.
Newsweek was unable to verify these reports and the department responded with an automated email. Newsweek has contacted the ED by email to comment on this story outside of normal business hours.
The automated email read: "Thank you for contacting the press team. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations, we are currently in furlough status. We will respond to emails once government functions resume."
Why It Matters
After Congress could not agree on a funding measure, the government shut down as midnight passed on October 1. This means that non-essential government services have ground to a halt, and some federal workers have been furloughed and others laid off.
Since then, Democrats and Republicans have blamed one another for rejecting each other's spending plans and the Trump administration has been accused of violating a federal law, namely the Hatch Act, by disseminating messages said to be partisan through government departmental channels.
There are around 2,500 employees at the ED and some 87 percent of these staffers have been furloughed. If the government is found to have changed employee's emails without their consent, it will raise further questions about potential breaches of the Hatch Act as well as the extent to which employee's work data is private.
What To Know
Speaking to Newsweek, one federal employee said their automated email had been changed to one that read: “Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently on furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume.”
The employee requested anonymity over fears they might lose their job.
Meanwhile, five employees reportedly told NBC News their emails had also been changed to the same message, which is also the same wording as the automated email Newsweek received. An ED employee also reportedly told Federal News Network they discovered on Thursday that their automated email response had been changed.
It follows advocacy groups saying that some government communications about the shutdown, including emails and website posts blaming Democrats, violate federal laws restricting the behavior of government departments.
The Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonpartisan group, has filed a complaint to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) urging it to investigate whether the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) violated appropriations laws including the Antideficiency Act, a law which restricts government spending, when it posted social media and website content blaming the "Radical Left" for the shutdown.
The group argued that these messages breach rules on the use of funds for publicity and propaganda.
The GAO told Newsweek it does not investigate potential Hatch Act violations of executive branch agencies.
First of all, those employees should already know that those emails belong to the US government. This means they can't complain about that. It's not like the government had answered any inquiry on a given topic as if it were impersonating the involved employees.
Quote:In a recent global survey, most people couldn’t differentiate between a phishing message written by artificial intelligence (AI) and an authentic, human-written email.
The survey of 18,000 employed adults from around the globe tested them on their awareness when it comes to cyber dangers, like AI and phishing, and found startling room for improvement.
When shown a phishing email, only 46% of survey respondents correctly identified that it was written by AI. The other 54% either believed it was an authentic message written by a human or were unsure.
But interestingly, age did not seem to play a role in awareness, as there were no significant differences between generations in being able to correctly recognize the phishing attempt (Gen Z 45%, millennials 47%, Gen X and baby boomers, both 46%), highlighting the fact that no group is exempt from needing extra cyber-caution in the age of AI.
And although the phishing simulation caught most respondents by surprise, the study did find that respondents are conscious of AI being used to trick them in digital environments — they’re just not able to consistently identify threats.
In another test, they were shown an authentic, human-written email that could have been sent by any one of their employers for a real purpose, and less than a third (30%) were able to correctly identify that it was genuine.
This highlights the prevalence of human error in recognizing cyber threats in the digital era.
The study was conducted by Talker Research on behalf of Yubico as part of their annual Global State of Authentication Survey, just in time for Cybersecurity Awareness Month in October, and polled employed respondents from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, India, Japan, Singapore, France, Germany, and Sweden.
The results found that more than four in 10 people (44%) have interacted with a phishing message (e.g. clicked on a link, opened an attachment) in the last year, with 13% even admitting they’ve done so in the last week.
Quote:An AI startup spent more than $1 million to advertise on New York City’s subways — and New Yorkers simply aren’t having it.
Posters for Friend, a necklace style device that listens to your entire day and sends you push notifications, were defaced with warnings about the dangers of AI.
Vandals took sharpies to the ads, which went up late last month, scrawling messages like, “AI wouldn’t care if you lived or died” overtop utopian slogans.
Our tech overlords might want to intrude even deeper into our lives, but is wearable AI where people finally say enough is enough? Perhaps — and hopefully — so.
The West 4th Street station was almost totally taken over by the company’s ads, which spanned 11,000 subway cars, 1,000 platform posters, and 130 urban panels across the city — making it the largest subway ad campaign ever according to Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann.
When asked about the negative reaction to the ads, Schiffmann told The Post it was “all according to plan.” He also noted that Friend uses Google’s Gemini models, “which have safe guardrails that protect users against self harm.”
The Friend device looks a little like an AirTag necklace. It is supposed to be on-hand to answer questions at any time. It also listens to what goes on around it and sends push notifications to your phone, providing opinions about conversations you just had, all powered by Claude.
“Friend [noun] someone who listens, responds, and supports you,” a poster for the device reads. But New Yorkers have other opinions.
“BE A LUDDITE,” one graffiti says. Other posters have been defaced with, “AI will promote suicide when prompted,” and, “Go make real friends, this is surveillance.”
Despite the nasty reception, other companies are trying to pull off similar wearable tech stunts.
SOMETHING WULFO ALREADY WENT THROUGH: NO MORE DIAL-UP INTERNET
Quote:It’s official: AOL’s dial-up internet has taken its last bow.
AOL previously confirmed it would be pulling the plug on Tuesday (Sept. 30) — writing in a brief update on its support site last month that it “routinely evaluates” its offerings and had decided to discontinue dial-up, as well as associated software “optimized for older operating systems,” from its plans.
Dial-up is now no longer advertised on AOL’s website. As of Wednesday, former company help pages like “connect to the internet with AOL Dialer” appeared unavailable — and nostalgic social media users took to the internet to say their final goodbyes.
AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many households to the World Wide Web for the first time when its dial-up service launched decades ago, rising to prominence particularly in the 90s and early 2000s.
The creaky door to the internet was characterized by a once-ubiquitous series of beeps and buzzes heard over the phone line used to connect your computer online — along with frustrations of being kicked off the web if anyone else at home needed the landline for another call, and an endless bombardment of CDs mailed out by AOL to advertise free trials.
Eventually, broadband and wireless offerings emerged and rose to dominance, doing away with dial-up’s quirks for most people accessing the internet today — but not everyone.
A handful of consumers have continued to rely on internet services connected over telephone lines. In the U.S., according to Census Bureau data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of all homes with internet subscriptions nationwide.
While AOL was the largest dial-up internet provider for some time, it wasn’t the only one to emerge over the years. Some smaller internet providers continue to offer dial-up today. Regardless, the decline of dial-up has been a long time coming. And AOL shutting down its service arrives as other relics of the internet’s earlier days continue to disappear.
Microsoft retired video calling service Skype just earlier this year — as well as Internet Explorer back in 2022. And in 2017, AOL discontinued its Instant Messenger — a chat platform that was once lauded as the biggest trend in online communication since email when it was founded in 1997, but later struggled to ward off rivals.
YouTube on Monday agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump, and the bulk of the money will go toward the construction of the new White House ballroom.
Trump sued the Alphabet-owned video sharing platform in July 2021, alleging that YouTube unlawfully silenced conservative viewpoints after the company suspended his account in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.
The Trust for the National Mall, the nonprofit group raising private donations to build the $200 million ballroom on the White House grounds, will be paid $22 million by the tech company as part of the settlement.
The remainder of the settlement money will go to other plaintiffs in the case, including the American Conservative Union.
Trump announced plans for the privately-funded, 90,000-square-foot “White House State Ballroom,” in July.
The ballroom will be situated in the East Wing and be able to fit 650 people.
Construction is expected to be completed before Trump’s term ends in early 2029.
YouTube was the last of the major social media companies sued by Trump over Capitol riot-related bans to settle.
Meta and X settled similar lawsuits brought by the president earlier this year, to the tune of $25 million and $10 million, respectively.
Trump was banned from YouTube for nearly two years in the aftermath of the riot.
The video streaming service suspended Trump’s account on Jan. 12, 2021, and reinstated it on March 17, 2023 – several months after he launched his 2024 presidential campaign.
Quote:President Donald Trump is urging the American Spanish-language network Univision to return to YouTube TV, saying its recent removal from the streamer will not fare well for Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
“I hope Univision, a great and very popular Hispanic Network, can get BACK onto the very amazing Google/YouTube,” he posted on Truth Social late Saturday. “It has been taken out of their package, which is VERY BAD for Republicans in the upcoming Midterms.”
The president continued, “They were so good to me with their highest rated ever political Special, and I set a Republican Record in Hispanic voting. Google, for the purpose of FAIRNESS, please let Univision back! President DJT.”
YouTube TV, owned by Google, dropped the broadcaster and its affiliates from its package last week after failing to reach a contract deal.
Its owner, TelevisalUniversion, issued a blistering statement early last week on the move:
Google’s YouTube TV has refused to “Do the Right Thing” and dropped Univision from its platform—stripping millions of Hispanic viewers of the Spanish-language news, sports, and entertainment they rely on every day.
Google’s actions are especially tone-deaf and egregious on the eve of a potential government shutdown, disregarding the appeals of government officials and Hispanic organizations who urged them to keep Univision on the main bundle.
The statement added, “To add insult to injury, YouTube TV chose to take this step during Hispanic Heritage Month—an act that is deeply insensitive and offensive.”
A major hurdle in the Univision talks is YouTube TV’s proposal to shift the company’s channels from its basic plan and put the Univision channel on a more expensive Spanish-language add-on package, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Univision’s programming includes news, dramas, popular soccer matches and games during the ongoing Major League Baseball playoffs.
According to the Times, Republican lawmakers — among them Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), — have criticized the move as “Google abusing its market power” to force subscribers to pay extra for Spanish-language shows.
As a 2024 candidate, Trump took questions from voters at a Univision town hall in Miami before his election victory.
Trump ultimately received support from 48 percent of Hispanic voters in the 2024 race, three percentage points behind former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the Pew Research Center.
That surpassed former President George W. Bush, who held the previous record of Hispanic support with 44 percent of the vote in 2004, according to Pew.
Quote:Google is willing to cough up more advertising data to publishers to address concerns about its illegal monopoly over digital advertising technology, a top executive at the search giant said Tuesday.
Glenn Berntson, an engineering director for Google Ad Manager, acknowledged the potential remedy during the second week of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Virginia federal court. He was called as a witness by Google’s defense lawyers.
Providing “publishers with these detailed insights, I think, is a good idea,” Berntson said during cross-examination by the Justice Department’s attorneys, according to Bloomberg. “The specifics is something we’d have to explore.”
Google is trying to wriggle out of a more damaging forced breakup of its digital advertising empire. The DOJ has argued that Google should be required to sell its key ad exchange, AdX, to restore fair competition and protect news publishers and advertisers that rely on the system.
Any remedy short of divestiture should be a “hard pass,” according to Jason Kint, the CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade group that represents online publishers.
“What publishers need isn’t another last-minute desperate gesture from Google as they try to avoid absolutely necessary structural remedies,” said Kint. “The Department of Justice has put on a brilliant case presenting remedies that will actually stop Google’s illegal conduct harming publishers, deny Google the fruits of it, restore competition and to avoid re-monopolization going forward.”
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who has final say over which remedies to implement, ruled in April that Google had violated the Sherman Act by dominating the online publisher ad server market, as well as the ad-exchange market that connects ad buyers to sellers.
The shared data could include details on how Google’s ad server determines which display ads to show – boosting transparency about the inner workings the auction system that the company uses to buy and sell ad space in real time, according to Berntston.
The DOJ has also proposed that Google make the auction process more transparent by sharing data, but Berntson testified on the stand that simply releasing source code about the auction process wouldn’t necessarily help publishers understand it.
Instead, Berntson said Google could release a breakdown explaining its digital auction process. At the same time, he admitted that larger publishers with more resources would likely want to see the source code itself.
Quote:Hackers linked to a prominent ransomware group have been targeting US business executives at “numerous organizations” in a massive campaign since last month, according to a warning issued by Google on Thursday.
Google’s researchers said the hackers claim to be part of the notorious “clOp” ransomware gang and have been sending the threatening emails as part of what it described as a “high-volume” attack.
It wasn’t immediately clear which other companies have been targeted in the ransomware campaign, or if any have paid the ransom to regain control of their data.
In the emails, the hackers are claiming to have stolen their data through popular business management apps offered by Oracle to corporate clients. The attacks began around Sept. 29, according to Genevieve Stark, head of cybercrime at Google Threat Intelligence Group.
“Initial analysis suggests that the targeting is opportunistic, as opposed to focusing on specific industries,” Stark added. “This is consistent with prior activity associated with the Cl0p data leak site.”
Oracle did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.
The hackers have demanded ransoms of up to $50 million and have sent victims screenshots as proof of the breach, according to cybersecurity firm Halcyon, which is also tracking the hacking campaign, according to Bloomberg.
“We have seen Cl0p demand huge seven- and eight-figure ransoms in the last few days,” Cynthia Kaiser, vice president at Halcyon’s ransomware research center, told the outlet. “This group is notorious for stealthy, mass data theft that heightens their leverage in ransom negotiations.”
Google said it “does not currently have sufficient evidence to definitively assess the veracity of these claims.” At least one of the email addresses linked to the attack was previously used by the hacker group.
“The malicious emails contain contact information, and we’ve verified that the two specific contact addresses provided are also publicly listed on the CLOP data leak site (DLS),” said Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Google Cloud cybersecurity unit Mandiant. “This move strongly suggests there’s some association with Clop and they are leveraging the brand recognition for their current operation.”
The emails reportedly bear the hallmarks of clOp’s work, including sloppy English and grammar.
Quote:OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has reached a valuation of $500 billion, following a deal in which current and former employees sold roughly $6.6 billion worth of shares, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
This represents a bump-up from its current valuation of $300 billion, underscoring OpenAI’s rapid gains in both users and revenue.
Reuters reported details of the stock sale earlier in August.
As part of the deal, OpenAI employees sold shares to a consortium of investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and T. Rowe Price, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The company had authorized sales of $10-billion-plus worth of stock on the secondary market, the source added.
Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer, MGX and T. Rowe Price did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The share sale adds to SoftBank’s earlier investment in OpenAI’s $40 billion primary funding round.
The company generated around $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, about 16% more than it generated all of last year, the Information reported earlier this week.
The sale comes at a time when tech giants are competing aggressively for AI talent with lucrative compensation packages.
Quote:Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos predicted on Friday gigawatt-scale data centers will be built in space within the next 10 to 20 years and that continuously available solar energy meant they would eventually outperform those based on Earth.
Speaking at the Italian Tech Week in Turin, Bezos also compared the surge in artificial intelligence to the internet boom of the early 2000s, urging optimism despite the risk of speculative bubbles.
The concept of orbital data centers has gained traction among tech giants as those on Earth have driven up demand for electricity and water to cool their servers.
“These giant training clusters, those will be better built in space, because we have solar power there, 24/7. There are no clouds and no rain, no weather,” Bezos said in a public conversation with Ferrari and Stellantis Chairman John Elkann.
“We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centers in space in the next couple of decades.”
Bezos said the shift to space infrastructure is part of a broader trend of using space to improve life on Earth.
“It already has happened with weather satellites. It has already happened with communication satellites. The next step is going to be data centers and then other kinds of manufacturing,” he said.
Hosting data centers in space has its own challenges, including the difficulty of maintenance and carrying out upgrades and the cost of launching rockets, as well as the risk the launches may fail.
The executive chair of Amazon said the AI wave shares traits with the dot-com era, when massive hype was followed by a crash.
“We should be extremely optimistic that the societal and beneficial consequences of AI, like we had with internet 25 years ago, are for real and there to stay,” he said.
For some reason, Bezos forgets everything concerning the Leonids, the infamous meteor shower that could easily hit one of those centers on the Moon.
HUMAN RESOURCES PROVIDER HACKED, SENTENCED DELIVERED LAST WEEK
Used Google Translate to translate it to English...
Quote:In 2022, French temporary employment giant Adecco announced it had been the victim of a large-scale cyberattack. Millions of personal data were stolen and used to carry out massive fraud campaigns across France. The verdict in the trial of the 14 defendants in this case was delivered on September 26, 2025.
Expectations were high in Lyon when the trial of those responsible for the Adecco hack opened in June 2025.
This massive theft of personal data from the French temporary employment giant had enabled the defrauding of thousands of people, whose information was recorded in the databases of the temporary employment agency, based in Villeurbanne.
At the time of the judgment, nearly 100,000 victims had been identified, including some 6,000 civil parties claiming damages, defended by more than 360 lawyers.
On September 26, 2025, only one man appeared in custody at the time of the verdict: Timothée Lhomond, aged 20 at the time of the events. Suspected of being the mastermind of a 14-person cybercriminal network, he was charged with 20 counts, including organized fraud, money laundering, forging identity papers, and compromising data systems.
A CEO as the brain and an intern as the gateway
In court, Timothée Lhomond is presented as a high-level hacker , a label he categorically denies. According to the prosecution, he began online scams at just 17 years old, before completing a work-study program and founding his own cybersecurity company, specializing in... data leak management for businesses.
An entrepreneurial adventure that came to a sudden halt two years ago when he was arrested in connection with the Adecco hacking investigation. The prosecutor had requested a seven-year prison sentence, but he was ultimately sentenced to six years in prison and a €30,000 fine.
The presiding judge justified this heavy sentence by the scale of the fraud, the significant harm inflicted on the victims, and the fact that Lhomond had continued his fraudulent schemes from his cell, going so far as to attempt to influence witnesses and accomplices using a contraband telephone.
His 13 accomplices, most of them very young, were also sentenced to prison terms of 6 months to 3 years, some of which could be extended to electronic monitoring.
Initial access to the Adecco database was made possible through the complicity of a 19-year-old apprentice, approached by Lhomond and his associates on a dark web forum, who sold his login details. He was sentenced to two years in prison, one of which was suspended.
Quote:Tesla’s third-quarter deliveries trounced Wall Street estimates on Thursday, powered by an unusual sales boost from US EV buyers rushing to lock in popular tax credits before their expiration at the end of September.
The Elon-Musk-led carmaker had frequently talked up the expiration, using it alongside discounts and financing deals to spur sales and leases of its EVs.
However, worries over cooling sales in the upcoming quarters due to the withdrawal of the $7,500 federal tax credit weighed on the company’s shares, which fell nearly 1% in morning trading.
“While the third quarter was strong, we expect fourth quarter sales will see a decline, consistent with the first half of the year, largely due to the US tax credit expiration,” said Seth Goldstein, senior equity analyst at Morningstar.
Europe remained a weak spot as rivals aggressively promoted plug-in hybrids, while Chinese EV brands started gaining groundin the hyper-competitive market.
The company’s European sales, including the UK, fell 22.5% from a year earlier in August, cutting its market share to 1.5%, according to data from the region’s Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
Overall, Tesla said it delivered 497,099 vehicles in the third quarter, up 7.4% from 462,890 a year earlier.
It also delivered 481,166 units of its Model 3 compact sedan and Model Y crossover in the September quarter, well above Wall Street expectations. The carmaker is set to report quarterly results on October 22.
Full-year 2025 deliveries are projected to be around 1.61 million, roughly 10% below 2024, according to Visible Alpha. Tesla will need to deliver 389,498 vehicles in the December quarter to meet that projection.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
News of the Cyber World
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cyber-crooks.
"scanning the web for free resources only", it's easy to keep 
costs quite low.