ArsTechnica: Today's video game consoles are hundreds of dollars more expensive than you'd expect based on historic pricing trends. That's according to an Ars Technica analysis of decades of pricing data and price-cut timing across dozens of major US console releases.

The overall direction of this trend has been apparent to industry watchers for a while now. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have failed to cut their console prices in recent years and have instead been increasing the nominal MSRP for many current consoles in the past six months.

But when you crunch the numbers, it's pretty incredible just how much today's console prices defy historic expectations, even when you account for higher-than-normal inflation in recent years. If today's consoles were seeing anything like what used to be standard price cuts over time, we could be paying around $200 today for pricey systems like the Switch OLED, PS5 Digital Edition, and Xbox Series S.

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Microsoft has found no link between the August 2025 KB5063878 security update and customer reports of failure and data corruption issues affecting solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs). From a report: Redmond first told BleepingComputer last week that it is aware of users reporting SSD failures after installing this month's Windows 11 24H2 security update. In a subsequent service alert seen by BleepingComputer, Redmond said that it was unable to reproduce the issue on up-to-date systems and began collecting user reports with additional details from those affected.

"After thorough investigation, Microsoft has found no connection between the August 2025 Windows security update and the types of hard drive failures reported on social media," Microsoft said in an update to the service alert this week. "As always, we continue to monitor feedback after the release of every Windows update, and will investigate any future reports."

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Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson accused Google of using "partisan" spam filtering in Gmail that sends Republican fundraising emails to the spam folder while delivering Democratic emails to inboxes. From a report: Ferguson sent a letter yesterday to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, accusing the company of "potential FTC Act violations related to partisan administration of Gmail." Ferguson's letter revives longstanding Republican complaints that were previously rejected by a federal judge and the Federal Election Commission.

"My understanding from recent reporting is that Gmail's spam filters routinely block messages from reaching consumers when those messages come from Republican senders but fail to block similar messages sent by Democrats," Ferguson wrote. The FTC chair cited a recent New York Post report on the alleged practice.

The letter told Pichai that if "Gmail's filters keep Americans from receiving speech they expect, or donating as they see fit, the filters may harm American consumers and may violate the FTC Act's prohibition of unfair or deceptive trade practices." Ferguson added that any "act or practice inconsistent with" Google's obligations under the FTC Act "could lead to an FTC investigation and potential enforcement action."

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DOD: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon has halted a decade-old Microsoft program that has allowed Chinese coders, remotely supervised by U.S. contractors, to work on sensitive DOD cloud systems. In a digital video address to the public posted yesterday, the secretary said DOD was made aware of the "digital escorts" program last month and that the program has exposed the Defense Department to unacceptable risk -- despite being designed to comply with government contracting rules.

"If you're thinking 'America first,' and common sense, this doesn't pass either of those tests," Hegseth said, adding that he initiated an immediate review of the program upon learning of it. "I want to report our initial findings. ... The use of Chinese nationals to service Department of Defense cloud environments? It's over," he said. Additionally, Hegseth said DOD has issued a formal letter of concern to Microsoft, documenting a breach of trust, and that DOD is requiring a third-party audit of the digital escorts program to pore over the code and submissions made by Chinese nationals. The audit will be free of charge to U.S. taxpayers, he said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: WhatsApp said on Friday that it fixed a security bug in its iOS and Mac apps that was being used to stealthily hack into the Apple devices of "specific targeted users." The Meta-owned messaging app giant said in its security advisory that it fixed the vulnerability, known officially as CVE-2025-55177, which was used alongside a separate flaw found in iOS and Macs, which Apple fixed last week and tracks as CVE-2025-43300.

Apple said at the time that the flaw was used in an "extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals." Now we know that dozens of WhatsApp users were targeted with this pair of flaws. Donncha O Cearbhaill, who heads Amnesty International's Security Lab, described the attack in a post on X as an "advanced spyware campaign" that targeted users over the past 90 days, or since the end of May. O Cearbhaill described the pair of bugs as a "zero-click" attack, meaning it does not require any interaction from the victim, such as clicking a link, to compromise their device.

The two bugs chained together allow an attacker to deliver a malicious exploit through WhatsApp that's capable of stealing data from the user's Apple device. Per O Cearbhaill, who posted a copy of the threat notification that WhatsApp sent to affected users, the attack was able to "compromise your device and the data it contains, including messages." It's not immediately clear who, or which spyware vendor, is behind the attacks. When reached by TechCrunch, Meta spokesperson Margarita Franklin confirmed the company detected and patched the flaw "a few weeks ago" and that the company sent "less than 200" notifications to affected WhatsApp users. The spokesperson did not say, when asked, if WhatsApp has evidence to attribute the hacks to a specific attacker or surveillance vendor.

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The Federal Communications Commission has rejected a call from the National Association of Broadcasters and some industry trade groups that would have imposed cable-style regulatory fees on streaming services, tech companies and pure broadband providers. From a report: In a Report and Order issued on Friday, the FCC reaffirmed that regulatory fees are calculated based on the number of full-time equivalent employees assigned to specific industries under the agency's jurisdiction. Broadcasters, satellite operators and other licensees are already assessed annual payments, which help fund the FCC's operational costs.

The NAB, in concert with other groups like Telesat, Iridium and the State Broadcasters Associations, pressed the FCC to expand the list of fee payers to include broadband providers and large technology firms. They argued that companies operating online platforms and broadband services rely on FCC resources and should contribute to the costs of regulation. "Big Tech should not be permitted to free ride on the FCC's oversight," NAB said in submitted comments earlier this year. The NAB argued that online platforms enjoy regulator benefits without paying into the agency's budget, as broadcasters and satellite operators do.

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Linus Torvalds updated the kernel's MAINTAINERS file to mark Bcachefs as "externally maintained," signaling he won't accept new Bcachefs pull requests for now. "MAINTAINERS: mark bcachefs externally maintained," wrote Torvalds with the patch. "As per many long discussion threads, public and private."

"The Bcachefs code is still present in the mainline Linux kernel likely to prevent users from having any immediate fall-out in Bcachefs file-systems they may already be using, but it doesn't look like Linus Torvalds will be honoring any new Bcachefs pull requests in the near future," adds Phoronix's Michael Larabel.

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Reuters has found that Meta appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities to create dozens of flirty social-media chatbots without their permission. "While many were created by users with a Meta tool for building chatbots, Reuters discovered that a Meta employee had produced at least three, including two Taylor Swift 'parody' bots." From the report: Reuters also found that Meta had allowed users to create publicly available chatbots of child celebrities, including Walker Scobell, a 16-year-old film star. Asked for a picture of the teen actor at the beach, the bot produced a lifelike shirtless image.
"Pretty cute, huh?" the avatar wrote beneath the picture. All of the virtual celebrities have been shared on Meta's Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms. In several weeks of Reuters testing to observe the bots' behavior, the avatars often insisted they were the real actors and artists. The bots routinely made sexual advances, often inviting a test user for meet-ups. Some of the AI-generated celebrity content was particularly risque: Asked for intimate pictures of themselves, the adult chatbots produced photorealistic images of their namesakes posing in bathtubs or dressed in lingerie with their legs spread.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone told Reuters that Meta's AI tools shouldn't have created intimate images of the famous adults or any pictures of child celebrities. He also blamed Meta's production of images of female celebrities wearing lingerie on failures of the company's enforcement of its own policies, which prohibit such content. "Like others, we permit the generation of images containing public figures, but our policies are intended to prohibit nude, intimate or sexually suggestive imagery," he said. While Meta's rules also prohibit "direct impersonation," Stone said the celebrity characters were acceptable so long as the company had labeled them as parodies. Many were labeled as such, but Reuters found that some weren't. Meta deleted about a dozen of the bots, both "parody" avatars and unlabeled ones, shortly before this story's publication.

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