LG is removing a McAfee pop-up ad from its LG Monitor App Installer after criticism that some LG monitors were silently installing the app through Windows Update and showing ads on every boot. Microsoft says LG agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up, but the broader issue remains: Windows allows certain peripheral companion apps to install automatically without notifying users. Ars Technica reports: Following Gamers Nexus' video, a Microsoft representative stated that the LG Monitor App Installer will no longer show pop-up ads for McAfee. In response to a social media post about the app, Pavan Davuluri, EVP of Windows and devices at Microsoft, said this week: "We've connected with the team at LG and as an immediate next step, they have agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up from their app. We appreciate LG working with us toward a shared goal of a better experience for our mutual customers. We will keep improving here with our ecosystem partners."... [ Read it >> ]

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The European Union fined Google more than $1 billion for allegedly using Google Play and Search to steer users toward its own services and apps at the expense of competitors. The Associated Press reports: Google had recently lost its appeal of a $4.5 billion antitrust fine imposed by the EU for throttling competition and reducing consumer choice through the dominance of its mobile Android operating system. The European Commission, the bloc's executive branch and highest antitrust enforcer, said it was acting in the interest of consumers after an investigation of Google.... [ Read it >> ]

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Amazon is integrating its Luna cloud gaming service into Prime Video, adding a new "Games" tab where Prime members can play titles like "Hogwarts Legacy," "EA Sports FC 26," "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle," "Clue," and "Taboo." The games will be available starting today on Fire TVs in the U.S. and U.K., with additional supported devices and countries in the coming months. TechCrunch reports: With this move, Amazon is hoping games can turn Prime Video into a one-stop entertainment destination, borrowing a strategy from Netflix, which has increasingly embraced party games over the past several years. Since Amazon already operates a gaming service, it makes sense for the tech giant to integrate it into its streaming platform. [...] Amazon says its vision is to remove the barriers to gaming and make it accessible to anyone regardless of their experience or budget. The tech giant says Luna is designed to bring gaming to a much broader audience by removing the need for expensive consoles or gaming PCs and making games as easy to access as movies or TV shows.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Many gamers have been lamenting Sony's recently announced decision to halt sales of physical game discs in 2028. However, new data revealed by Circana analyst Mat Piscatella highlights how years of stark economic trends helped lead Sony to that decision. In a social media thread Thursday morning, Piscatella shared insights into Circana's tracking data on physical game sales in the U.S. dating back to 2003. A graph of those trends shows physical sales peaking in the 12 months ending June 2009, when 297 million units were sold across the US. Those physical unit sales have been on a steady downward trajectory since then, leading to just 37 million physical units selling in the U.S. in the last 12 months.... [ Read it >> ]

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Ford will become the first automaker to embed Apple Maps directly into its vehicles, starting with an all-electric midsize pickup built on its new Universal Electric Vehicle platform. "The pickup -- with Ford testing preproduction models on roads now -- is expected to start at $30,000 when it comes to market in 2027," reports the Detroit Free Press. "Ford has said several other EVs off that platform will follow, including a small all-electric SUV." From the report: Ford CEO Jim Farley said the new EVs will redefine advanced technology as simple, useful, and at a price point that is attainable for most people. "We're proud to embed Apple Maps' navigation and mapping technology directly into our Universal Electric Vehicle Platform, giving customers the ultimate navigation experience alongside our Ford app, a full suite of software, and next-generation BlueCruise, all enabled by a new zonal architecture," Farley said in a statement. "Apple Maps has delivered a world-class product, and we're honored to be among the first to embed it directly into a vehicle, helping define intuitive, capable driving."... [ Read it >> ]

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Scientific American reports that the 2026 Fields Medals went to four mathematicians for work ranging from the theory of knots to the motion of fluid: The Fields Medals went to Hong Wang of New York University and France's Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies (IHES), Yu Deng of the University of Chicago, John Pardon of Stony Brook University and Jacob Tsimerman of the University of Toronto. In the awards' 90-year history, Wang is only the third woman to win one, after mathematicians Maryam Mirzakhani and Maryna Viazovska in 2014 and 2022, respectively. Wang and Deng represent the prizes' only Chinese-born recipients besides mathematician Shing-Tung Yau, who won a Fields Medal in 1982. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Nearly 200 Silicon Valley companies, including Proton and Y Combinator, are urging the Trump administration not to block U.S. access to Chinese open-weight AI models or risk crippling the next generation of U.S. startups. Politico reports: On Wednesday, the newly-formed Little Tech Association sent letters to President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and others in the administration with its appeal, marking the first coordinated effort by Silicon Valley's wider influential startup community to weigh in on one of the Trump administration's most closely watched AI debates. At issue: whether Washington should restrict access to increasingly powerful open-weight -- meaning, AI models whose weights are publicly available -- AI models released by Chinese companies such as Moonshot AI and Alibaba.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: It's rare that cancerous tumors can spread from one individual to another. But a genetic study suggests that's what's happening with melanoma tumors among catfish in Quebec and the northeastern U.S. The discovery represents the first known transmissible cancer in fish and one of very few transmissible cancers ever found, reported the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.... [ Read it >> ]

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BrianFagioli writes: Verisign is finally bringing web domains to the internet after a decade of fighting. Verisign says the .web top-level domain has finally been delegated into the DNS root, clearing the way for public registrations later in 2026. Until now, consumers could not buy normal working .web domains, despite the extension attracting a record $135 million winning bid in 2016. The launch could make .web one of the more recognizable alternatives to .com, but Verisign already operates both .com and .net, raising questions about whether this creates real competition or simply gives the dominant registry operator another valuable extension. The decade-long fight began after a company called Nu Dot Co won the rights to operate .web in a 2016 ICANN auction with a record $135 million bid secretly funded by Verisign. Rival bidder Afilias, which was later acquired by Donuts, challenged the sale, arguing ICANN should have investigated the relationship before allowing the auction. This triggered years of complaints, reviews, and legal disputes that have ultimately now been resolved under undisclosed terms.... [ Read it >> ]

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Northrop Grumman has launched a private satellite-servicing mission to attach life-extending "jetpacks" to aging communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit. "It's the second satellite-saving mission to launch this month, all part of a growing, money-saving effort to keep spacecraft running as long as possible," reports Phys.org. From the report: Launched by SpaceX, Northrop Grumman's mission robotic vehicle -- dubbed MRV -- and its jetpacks will spend the next year angling into the proper orbit 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth. Hundreds of satellites orbit at this so-called geosynchronous orbit, where they match the speed of Earth's rotation and keep to the same part of the sky for continuous coverage. Once in place by mid-2027, the minivan-sized spacecraft will use its 10-foot (9-meter) arms to attach a jetpack to an aging communication satellite. Then it will zip off to two more satellites in need.... [ Read it >> ]

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Longtime Slashdot reader BeaverCleaver shares a report from the BBC: The wreckage of a Pan American Airways plane has been found 74 years after it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in a crash that prompted mandatory airline safety briefings. The Clipper Endeavor was found 2,000ft (610m) below sea level off the coast of Puerto Rico with a sonar-equipped drone. It went down on April 11, 1952, following multiple-engine failure shortly after take-off.... [ Read it >> ]

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"General Motors has been pulling a Tim Cook and boosting its software and subscription business," reports Business Insider. During the automaker's Tuesday earnings call, executives said they're increasingly leaning on software subscriptions like OnStar and Super Cruise to generate high-margin recurring revenue long after customers buy their vehicles. GM says OnStar brought in about $800 million in the second quarter, while Super Cruise revenue grew about 70% year over year. From the report: GM says its software business keeps roughly 70 cents of every dollar it brings in. That's a rare level of profitability in the auto industry, as many car sales generate just four to 10 cents per sales dollar. [...] GM expects to add about 1 million OnStar subscribers this year, bringing the total close to 13 million. Super Cruise, GM's hands-free, eyes-on driving system, is growing even faster. GM added about 70,000 subscribers during the quarter and expects to end the year with more than 850,000. Revenue from the service increased about 70% from a year earlier.... [ Read it >> ]

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Code found in the iOS 27 beta suggests Apple is developing a system that could restrict leased iPhones when customers fall behind on payments. The discovery follows a recent Bloomberg report that Apple may soon launch a new "Apple Upgrade" leasing program, allowing customers to pay for hardware through monthly installments. 9to5Mac reports: The code describes a system called App Managed Features, which allows an authorized financing or provider app to enroll an iPhone and perform ongoing status checks. If the contract is no longer in good standing, Apple's system services can place the iPhone in "Restricted Mode," which blocks access to most apps until the payment or contract issue is resolved, while keeping a small set of apps available. The fixed allowlist currently found in the iOS 27 beta includes: Accessibility Reader, App Store, Health, Magnifier, Phone, Clock, Settings, Wallet, Passwords, and the Restricted Mode interface itself.... [ Read it >> ]

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Ancient Slashdot reader alanw shares a post from the OSS Security mailing list, where sysadmin Jan Schaumann wonders what to do after the Linux kernel cranked out 432 CVEs in a little over 24 hours: "I understand the position that CVEs were always a flawed way to track or prioritize security changes... But this onslaught really shows it's not feasible to attempt to prioritize individual kernel changes. I'm not sure what to do here going forward." The Register reports: The nixCraft team speculated on social media that AI bug reports are a likely reason for all those kernel CVEs, which wouldn't be without precedent - Linus Torvalds himself said in May that the Linux kernel security mailing list had become "almost entirely unmanageable" due to AI-assisted bug hunting. Nonetheless, Torvalds has described AI as a useful tool for Linux development while still noting it can be a drag for maintainers, both from a workload standpoint and the fact "it keeps finding embarrassing bugs." [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple is reportedly launching a Klarna financing deal that will let U.S. customers spread the cost of devices over up to three years, pushing the company closer to a hardware-as-a-service model. "The only thing you don't get under the new arrangement is AppleCare, for which you'll allegedly need to pay extra," notes Computerworld. From the report: The introduction of the scheme gives consumers a way to purchase the company's popular high-end devices when they are introduced -- no doubt,at higher cost -- this fall. [...] A combination of changed customer habits and external threat means the stars are now aligned for hardware-as-a-service models. "Reframing a device as a low monthly payment protects that [upgrade] cadence and allows Apple to start marketing their products as device-as-a-service to consumers, which no other vendor was ever able to do," [IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo] wrote to me.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A little over a month after the Department of Defense (DOD) bragged that nearly half of its 3.5 million employees were using AI at work, members of the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) received an email informing them that they were burning through tokens, and needed to limit use. "Although the Army CIO announced in May 2026 that they were offering unlimited tokens, by mid-June the Army CIO pool was exhausted of tokens and had to re-establish limits," the email reads. The email goes on to say that although the Army has chosen to renew token usage at "its current levels," it's unclear "if the Army CIO pool will be renewed after 1 Oct."... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft has announced Xbox Backward Compatibility for PC, a new preservation program that will let players run select classic Xbox games on Windows PCs and handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally. Tom's Hardware reports: "This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve XBOX games from the past and bring them to PC over time," the company said in a blog post authored by Xbox "VP next generation" Jason Ronald. Alongside backward compatibility, the company says games will also include new features. The four titles in the announcement are: BLiNX: The Time Sweeper; Conker: Live and Reloaded; Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge; and Fuzion Frenzy.... [ Read it >> ]

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At a Galaxy Unpacked event in London today, Samsung unveiled a new foldable smartphone designed to compete with the still-unannounced iPhone Fold. Called the Galaxy Z Fold 8, it features a wider 4:3 form factor with a 7.6-inch inner AMOLED display, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. "The inner display has enough extra real estate for multi-tasking and entertainment," reports Mashable, which got a chance to try the new foldable ahead of the event. "And if you're worried about a crease in the middle of the display, don't be. We got up close with the device, and the crease fully disappears when the display is activated." From the report: As stated above, the main distinguishing factor of the new Z Fold 8 is its wider 4:3 proportions compared to the Z Fold 8 Ultra. If the latter is a book-style foldable, the former can almost be called a tablet-style foldable, instead. We think the wide screen will serve even better for reading books or multi-tasking with several apps open at once.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one's television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available for download on LG's webOS store allow unknown third-parties to route their Internet traffic through a user's TV. On July 2, [KrebsOnSecurity] featured research by the security firm Spur that examined the prevalence of residential proxy software development kits (SDKs) in smart TV apps. Spur found more than 42 percent of apps available for download on LG smart TVs include SDKs that turn one's television in a proxy node indefinitely, and that more than a quarter of the apps made for Samsung's Tizen operating system had similar residential proxy components.... [ Read it >> ]

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Jack Dorsey's Block has launched Buzz, an open-source workplace collaboration platform that combines messaging, project management, and software development workflows for teams of both humans and AI agents. Dorsey described Buzz as "a new groupchat platform for teams of people and agents of all sizes" that is "model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign and open source." SmartCompany reports: According to the Buzz website, users can invite specialized AI agents into team chats, allowing them to collaborate with employees and even other AI agents. From there, they can reportedly move directly from discussions into planning, coding, pull requests and project management without switching between multiple applications.... [ Read it >> ]

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Scientists have rediscovered a healthy coral reef off the coast of Benin more than 60 years after surveyors first hinted at its existence. "At least eight coral types and eight fish species have formed a thriving ecosystem on this long-forgotten site," reports Inside Climate News. "What they had captured was a wealth of marine life: six types of soft coral; two black corals; and eight species of sheltering fish, from golden African snappers to the Monrovia doctorfish." From the report: While no coral samples have yet been extracted, researchers have classified the site as a mesophotic coral ecosystem (MCE). Such systems are light-dependent communities existing at the lower limits of reef-building corals. At more than 175 feet below the surface, the coral garden they discovered appears patchily scattered on a rocky substrate. Bridging the gap between shallow reefs and deeper benthic habitats, MCEs are home to distinct species and unique environmental conditions. While scientists are increasingly recognizing their ecological and climatic importance, they remain among the least explored elements of tropical and subtropical marine biodiversity. And this one has real potential to unlock new information about coral history.... [ Read it >> ]

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"GPT-5.6 Sol and an 'even more capable' model used stolen credentials and exploited vulnerabilities in the Hugging Face API to obtain secret information used to cheat on evaluations," writes longtime Slashdot reader Dr. Bombay. The Associated Press reports: "We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media. AI startup Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent autonomously acting on its own. "We suspected last week's cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent," Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clement Delangue said in a statement. "Turns out it did!"... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: France's parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making it the first European country to bar children from apps such as TikTok. The president, Emmanuel Macron, has championed the ban as a key reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September. "France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and teenagers," Macron said in a video posted on social media, hailing "a major step forward."... [ Read it >> ]

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Airbus is moving 70 critical applications from AWS to French cloud provider Scaleway as part of a broader digital sovereignty push to keep sensitive data "under European control." Eventually, the migration will cover 900 applications, including ERP, CRM, manufacturing execution, and product lifecycle management systems. Airbus says it will, however, continue using U.S. providers for less sensitive workloads. "We do not intend to move away from all non European solutions; we balance our choices based on the criticality of the data," the company said. The Register reports: Catherine Jestin, head of digital at Airbus, told us on Thursday: "The selection of Scaleway is a combination of a very strong technical answer and a very strong commercial offer making it competitive compared to hyperscalers' public cloud offerings. In addition, Scaleway is committed to involving Airbus in the definition of its future product roadmap." "The objective is to host Airbus's most critical applications (those required for the Minimum Viable Company). This represents 900 applications and we will start with 70 of them today hosted on AWS."... [ Read it >> ]

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Tesla says it is launching its Robotaxi service in Orlando and Tampa, though it has not shared fleet sizes or whether customers can immediately hail rides. The Verge notes the announcement lands on Tesla earnings day and comes as the company's robotaxi rollout remains far smaller than Elon Musk previously projected, with tracker data showing only a small number of unsupervised vehicles operating in existing cities. From the report: [B]ack in May, Tesla had five unsupervised robotaxis in Dallas, six in Houston, and 29 in Austin. As of today, there are only 17 unsupervised vehicles in Austin, four in Dallas, and zero in Houston, according to the Robotaxi Tracker. By comparison, Waymo is estimated to have over 3,500 fully driverless vehicles in operation across over 10 cities.... [ Read it >> ]

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Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes: FireFox 153 was released today. The most important user-facing changes are improvements to PDF handling (you can now merge PDFs and add images to them), and HDR video playback (on Windows, provided HDR is active systemwide). Other under-the-hood changes include browser-wide containers and QWAC support. The full list is in the change notes.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: As AI companies search for more training data to improve their models, one company is offering old, printed books as an ideal source because they are guaranteed to be free of the very AI slop AI companies are producing. "The world's best AI training data is sitting on a shelf," ISBNdb, a company that produces what it claims is "the world's largest book database," and that offers high-volume book acquisition services for AI companies, says on its site. "Books represent curated, peer-reviewed, domain-specific human knowledge, structured in a way no web crawl can replicate. Dense, edited, authoritative."... [ Read it >> ]

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BrianFagioli writes: Canonical has launched the Enterprise Store as part of Ubuntu Pro, giving organizations a way to manage Ubuntu software distribution in restricted networks, behind firewalls, and in air gapped environments. The on premises proxy sits between devices and Canonical software stores, allowing companies to cache downloads, control software revisions, and manage snaps and charms without requiring every system to connect directly to the internet. The Enterprise Store is designed for organizations with strict security requirements, including regulated industries and environments where predictable software updates and audit controls are important.... [ Read it >> ]

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A federal judge has approved Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement over pirated books used to train its Claude chatbot, with authors and publishers set to receive about $3,000 per book. The case produced a mixed ruling for the AI industry: training on copyrighted books was found not to be illegal, but Anthropic's use of pirated copies from shadow libraries was. The Associated Press reports: District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides "meaningful relief" to affected authors and publishers. About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment. Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was "the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible."... [ Read it >> ]

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A federal judge rejected AT&T's request to temporarily block California rules requiring it to offer basic phone service to new customers in its wireline territory. AT&T wants to retire its copper-based phone network and stop service for nearly 200,000 California customers in 2027, but the state argues the company can meet its obligations with modern alternatives like fiber rather than abandoning Carrier of Last Resort requirements altogether. Ars Technica reports: To win a preliminary injunction, AT&T had to show it is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that California rules are preempted by a Federal Communications Commission order. US District Judge Linda Lopez denied AT&T's request for a preliminary injunction during a motion hearing on Thursday, according to a docket entry. The case is in US District Court for the Southern District of California. [...] AT&T could appeal Lopez's ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and could appeal later if it loses the underlying case. But since it has not obtained the injunction it asked for, AT&T for now remains under California's orders to keep offering phone service to potential customers while the case continues.... [ Read it >> ]

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A federal judge has temporarily paused the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger after a 12-state coalition led by California argued the deal would violate antitrust law. The 14-day restraining order (PDF) preserves the status quo while the court considers a preliminary injunction, which could effectively determine whether the merger survives. Variety reports: "Plaintiff States' showing at least demonstrates that serious questions going to the merits remain, weighing in favor of preliminary injunctive relief," the judge wrote, adding that Paramount has acknowledged it will not be harmed by the delay until the end of September. "Paramount and Warner Bros. will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace while they wait for the Court to adjudicate this case. The balance of equities, combined with the public's vital interest in antitrust enforcement, therefore tips sharply in favor of the requested injunctive relief."... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Nearly seven years after Apple debuted the Apple Card, Samsung is following the iPhone maker's footsteps with the Galaxy Card, aiming for its own slice of the credit card market. The announcement comes two days before Samsung's second Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, where it's expected to showcase new smartwatches and folding smartphones. The Galaxy Card is issued by Barclays on the Visa network; the Apple Card, originally issued by Goldman Sachs but now transitioning to Chase, is on the MasterCard network. There is a physical card -- it's not made of titanium but recycled steel.... [ Read it >> ]

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Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an X post by Josh Walkos, author of the Substack We the Free: If you thought Flock was bad check out Falconet. Falconet from Israeli company Cognyte serves as a cell tower simulator that intercepts cell phone data from all devices within range. Police mount these systems in Tahoes so the vehicles can collect information while driving through areas without any direct interaction with targets. This mobile approach generates ongoing records of phone locations and communications for everyone nearby rather than only suspects, which creates comprehensive movement profiles and bypasses traditional warrant requirements under the Fourth Amendment.... [ Read it >> ]

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A new American Heart Association scientific statement concludes that up to about 400 milligrams a day, or roughly three to five cups of plain coffee, is safe for most adults and may be linked to lower risks of cardiovascular disease. The benefits appear to depend heavily on the source and preparation, with coffee and tea looking more favorable than energy drinks, and added sugar, cream, syrups, or sweeteners potentially canceling out the upside. ScienceAlert reports: "Caffeine consumed in coffee is a key part of daily life for millions of people," says Gregory Marcus, cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and Chair of the AHA volunteer writing group behind the statement. "In our review of the most recent research, for most adults, intake of up to 400 milligrams of caffeine per day, the equivalent of up to five cups of caffeinated coffee per day without added sugars or fillers, is safe and does not increase cardiovascular risk."... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Hackers are breaking into websites that run vulnerable versions of the popular blogging software WordPress, according to several cybersecurity firms. One estimate puts the number of vulnerable WordPress websites at tens of millions as of Monday. Last week, WordPress patched two critical security flaws, urging people who run its software on their websites to update it "immediately." The vulnerabilities are so severe that WordPress enabled forced updates where possible. Since then, cybersecurity companies Patchstack, Hexastrike, and WatchTowr have all warned that hackers are exploiting the vulnerabilities in the wild, meaning they are taking over websites that are still running susceptible versions of WordPress.... [ Read it >> ]

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A draft New Orleans Police Department drone manual briefly published online would have allowed police drones to carry weapons with written approval from the superintendent, according to 404 Media. NOPD says the document was only an early draft and that its current policy (PDF) bans drones from carrying weapons or hazardous materials. 404 Media reports: The current version, live as of July 1, has different language: "The sUAS shall not be equipped with weapons or hazardous materials of any kind," referring to small Unmanned Aerial Systems, or drones. According to the NOPD, the operations manual it published to the internet with the rules for weaponized drones was an early draft. "The manual published on July 1 is the current published version of the policy. Earlier versions were draft versions that were presented for review before adoption of the current policy," NOPD told 404 media. "NOPD has made it clear we are not and will not be equipping drones with weapons or other hazardous materials."... [ Read it >> ]

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sandbagger writes: Fark.com is ancient in internet terms. It's not social media. It's not quite a news site. It's a holdover from the dot-com era and is invisible to Google, which makes its community great but has necessitated begging. "[W]e won't survive this year without more TF subscribers," wrote founder Drew Curtis in a post on Bluesky. "Spread the word."... [ Read it >> ]

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Moonshot AI has temporarily paused new subscriptions for its Kimi K3 model after demand surged beyond the company's current capacity within days of the launch. The open-source Chinese AI model, described as one of the largest of its kind at 2.8 trillion parameters, has rattled U.S. rivals by beating Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol in front-end coding tests. The Associated Press reports: "Kimi K3 has received far more love than we expected," Moonshot AI, which is Beijing-based, wrote in a X post late on Sunday. "Over the past 48 hours, demand has pushed close to the limits of our current capacity." Moonshot said that it's prioritizing existing subscribers and would be temporarily pausing new ones. "We're adding capacity as fast as we can and will reopen new subscription spots in batches," it added. The AI startup also posted a similar message on Chinese social media.... [ Read it >> ]

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Chris Fall has resigned as director of the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation just three months after being appointed to lead the Commerce Department's federal AI testing institute. Arvind Raman, who oversees the Commerce office responsible for the institute, will serve temporarily in the role. "The Commerce Department did not provide a reason for Fall's departure," reports Reuters. From the report: Fall's exit marks the latest change in direction for Trump's approach to AI. The president upon returning to office in 2025 said the federal government should take a hands-off approach to the tech sector. He has since taken a more active role in monitoring the technology, though his public statements and policies appear to change week by week.... [ Read it >> ]

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The European Commission has fined AliExpress more than $625 million, the largest penalty yet under the Digital Services Act, after finding that the marketplace failed to "diligently assess and mitigate risks relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe, or counterfeit products on its e-commerce platform." EU officials said flagged products repeatedly reappeared, sellers could evade safeguards, and AliExpress's recommendation and ad systems helped amplify dangerous goods. Ars Technica reports: For shady sellers, the risks of detection appeared low. The e-commerce site's mandatory brand authorization system was also ineffective and understaffed, the EC found, and AliExpress did not penalize traders for selling illegal products as its policy claims it would. Making things worse, AliExpress "inadequately assessed how its recommender and advertising systems exacerbate the spread of illegal products," the EC said. So rather than remove illegal products, AliExpress was recommending them to consumers and helping to maximize exposure. Talking to the press, the European Union's tech chief, Henna Virkkunen, noted that one in five Europeans shop monthly at retail sites like AliExpress, Temu, and Shein.... [ Read it >> ]

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VideoCardz reports that connecting certain LG monitors to Windows PCs can trigger Windows Update to automatically install the LG Monitor App Installer, which runs at startup and repeatedly displays McAfee trial promotions. From the report: Gamers Nexus reproduced the behavior with an LG UltraGear 34GX900A-B after receiving reports from monitor owners. Windows Update first installed LG extension and software component packages. Windows Reliability Monitor showed that LG Monitor App Installer appeared one minute later. The installation did not display a consent prompt or require the user to approve the download.... [ Read it >> ]

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A hacker reportedly wiped Romania's entire land registry database after a failed extortion attempt, halting property transactions across the country and preventing notaries from issuing land extracts, authenticating sales, or registering mortgages. "On the dark web, the hacker also boasted to have begun backup copies of stolen data in an attempt to prevent it from being restored," reports Cybernews. "However, Romanian officials have managed to at least restore the ANCPI's website and post a message saying they were rebuilding the agency's entire network from scratch. It appears that the agency has an offline copy of the wiped data." From the report: First, the hacker breached Romania's cadastre agency, the National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Advertising (ANCPI), posting on a hacking forum: "[RO] Thy arss shall be spanked, Romania! [ANCPI]." "In addition to the data of Romanian citizens, from various databases collected through ANCPI networks, there is also a copy of the GitLab servers containing the source code of all their systems, such as Eterra, RENNS, as well as a version of my little ransomware program," the announcement continued.... [ Read it >> ]

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Researchers at Louisiana State University have created a room-temperature quantum material made from a thin gold film on glass, patterned with microscopic slits that act like artificial atoms. "We call this robust transport. These quantum states carry information," says physicist Omar Magana-Loaiza. "Our crystal can distinguish them and move them from one point to another in a robust way without requiring cryogenic cooling. That's what opens the door to practical quantum technologies." ScienceAlert reports: Crucial to the new material's room-temperature operation is the way it shifts the focus from electrons and atoms to photons (particles of light). This overcomes the usual atomic-level disruption that heat brings with it. The material is what's known as a plasmonic metacrystal: 'Plasmonic' because the light traveling over it makes ripples of electrons known as plasmons, and 'metacrystal' because it's an artificially created crystal. The tiny slit patterns etched into the material act as artificial atoms (meta-atoms), which dictate how different photon groups pass through (the quantum behavior).... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: One of the founding members of The Document Foundation and handler of LibreOffice's PR and media relations, Italo Vignoli, took to the LibreOffice blog to call out Microsoft's practices with its Office application. The last time we saw Vignoli take to the stage, we saw him accusing Euro-Office of being just as bad as Microsoft with its practices. Vignoli's new post focuses entirely on Microsoft's strategy. He says that "the dominant format for office documents" is owned by Microsoft Office, particularly the DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX formats. The problem with these formats, Vignoli states, is that they "belong to Microsoft, are controlled by Microsoft and serve Microsoft's interest." This makes it difficult for other formats to take hold.... [ Read it >> ]

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James Cameron filmed his Avatar sequels there. Marvel filmed Thor, Iron Man 2, and The Avengers. Manhattan Beach Studios in Los Angeles even handled Star Wars' series like Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Mandalorian, which Bloomberg points out is about "a heavily armed bounty hunter in a galaxy far, far away." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Ask Claude to make a pamphlet critical of China's leader, Thailand's king, or Saudi Arabia's crown prince — and it will decline, reports the Associated Press.

That's "a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday," their article points out: AI systems are more than twice as likely to refuse to product critical material if it's about a restrictive world leader or government. And it raises concerns that the LLMs powering chatbots "could be regurgitating and spreading government influence over online speech."... [ Read it >> ]

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ZDNet reports on June's Open Source Summit India 2026 in Mumbai, where Linux stable kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman gave a talk titled "Rust and Linux: How the Rust Language is Going to Help Linux Succeed."

Kroah-Hartman said in his keynote that "the [Linux] kernel is moving toward Rust. Git is moving toward Rust. Lots of projects are starting to move toward Rust."... [ Read it >> ]

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The Washington Post describes a mid-tier executive at Meta as one of Silicon Valley's "winners" whose financial security suddenly "evaporated" as their workforce "pushed headlong into AI and heavy job cuts," creating a transformed job market. "Her ex-husband, a designer at Meta who was laid off in 2020, eventually gave up looking for jobs in his profession. He now lifts boxes at a warehouse."... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shared this report from Tom's Hardware:

The Zilog Z80 has just turned 50 years old. This iconic 8-bit processor first went on sale in July 1976 and stayed in production for 48 years until Zilog, now a Littelfuse subsidiary, stopped accepting orders in June 2024. However, there's an open-source replacement closer than ever to shipping in the chip's original 40-pin DIP package thanks to community-funded fabrication... ... [ Read it >> ]

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"If tired or wasted passengers fall asleep in a traditional taxi or rideshare, the driver can shout or shake them awake," reports Bloomberg. "Not so in a robotaxi..."

Ditto Kasendar remembers soft music drifting from the robotaxi's speakers as he rode home late at night from a friend's birthday party in 2025. The next moment, Los Angeles firefighters were opening the door and asking if he was OK. His six-minute trip had ended nearly an hour before. A remote Waymo assistant, dialling in through the car's speakers, repeatedly tried to rouse him and finally called 911 when he wouldn't stir... ... [ Read it >> ]

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