The FCC has added the items to its Covered List — a register of goods and services that are deemed a risk to US national security. The ban applies to new foreign-produced advanced robotic devices and power inverters and does not prevent the sale or import of any existing models that had been previously authorized by the FCC.

The FCC cited concerns that the use of foreign-made inverters could allow overseas firms to turn them off, steal data, facilitate remote access and surveillance by “foreign government actors, or be otherwise exploited through a cyberattack.” It added that the use of robots made outside the US could allow “malign actors to surveil Americans, enhance the capabilities of foreign intelligence services, or to remotely commandeer the robots.”

A corporate fad of “tokenmaxxing” on artificial intelligence technology is hitting its limits as workplaces throwing AI at everything are seeing the costs rise without a similar spike in productivity. What started as tech industry-fueled springtime hype over squeezing as much AI-generated work as possible out of products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude has shifted to a summertime backlash. […] Just a few months ago, Silicon Valley executives were promoting high token consumption as a signal of high-performing employees. The stereotypical tokenmaxxer was staying up late — perhaps ignoring their significant other — while orchestrating an army of 24-hour AI agents performing work on their behalf. […] The trend boosted revenue for leading AI large language model developers like Anthropic and OpenAI, but it fizzled as it became apparent it wasn’t necessarily the best strategy for everyone else.

[…] Bain & Company management consultant Jue Wang said many of the big businesses her firm advises have been taking a closer look at returns on their AI investments. “The token cost for them has been doubling, almost every other month,” she said. “Let’s say $200 per developer per month. Multiply that by 20,000 developers, which is often what we’re dealing with at these companies, and that quickly gets you to a number that is not a line item that any general manager has planned for.” Sometimes that just means not using the AI equivalent of a sledgehammer to crack a nut. “Not everything needs a Claude Opus 4.6,” she said of one of Anthropic’s more capable models suited to software engineering or deep research. “And yet you see so many companies, so many users, default to using Opus for everything, including generating emails.” That’s led to a search for tools that do AI “model routing” — in which easier queries get automatically sent to cheaper and more efficient AI systems and more complex tasks go to more powerful models.

[…] At the same time, those who favor racking up as many tokens as possible are having a field day with new open-source models from Chinese startups like Moonshot’s Kimi or Zhipu’s GLM, which nearly match the capabilities of top U.S. models at a fraction of the price. “There is some validity to the theory that this could push tokenmaxxing a little bit further,” said Raffi Krikorian, the chief technology officer at Mozilla. “But if we look at the industry overall, I think it’s realizing that tokenmaxxing is a dumb thing.” It’s similar, Krikorian said, to how software companies once considered how many lines of code a programmer wrote to be a good metric of productivity. That later fell out of favor. “I think tokenmaxxing is moving through the exact same pattern,” he said. “I think this is going to be an interesting blip that we’re all going to look back to laugh at in a year.”

Apple Upgrade has lower base prices than the iPhone Upgrade Program, with iPhones available starting at $17.99 per month and the Apple Watch available starting at $11.99 per month. Macs can be leased starting at $24.99 per month, and iPads start at $11.99 per month. AppleCare+ is optional and not included in the lease price, with customers also able to opt for AppleCare One. There are 12-month and 24-month leasing options for the iPhone and Apple Watch, along with 24-month and 36-month leasing options for the Mac and iPad. Lease cost varies based on device, and is lower with a device trade-in that’s applied on a monthly basis. […]

When leasing an iPhone, customers are required to choose a plan from AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile, and prepaid plans are not eligible. iPhones need to be leased with a carrier plan, but the iPhones are unlocked so customers can switch carriers if desired. MVNOs like Mint Mobile or Visible are not supported. At the end of the leasing period, customers can choose to return the device and exit the program, pay off the remaining amount owed on the device with a one-time payment and keep it, or return it and upgrade to a new device with a new lease.

The payoff amount is the difference between what was paid during the leasing period and the retail price of the device, minus any remaining trade-in credits. Klarna is not charging a fee for the leasing program, so an iPhone that’s $1,099 can be leased and then purchased for $1,099 with no extra cost beyond taxes. As with trade-ins, Apple will send a pre-labeled and prepaid shipping box for device returns or upgrades. If you don’t opt to pay the purchase fee at the end of the leasing program, you will not own the device and must return it.

The report takes particular aim at Anthropic’s much-publicized Project Glasswing, unveiled in April with warnings that AI-assisted vulnerability discovery could allow attackers to hijack systems, disrupt operations, or steal data. Claude Mythos may have identified 23,019 vulnerability candidates, but there’s remarkably little public evidence showing what became of most of them. VulnCheck notes that only 126 have been published as CVEs, that just one has been confirmed exploited in the wild, and that Anthropic’s public disclosure record has seen little movement since Project Glasswing launched.

But that doesn’t mean AI-assisted vulnerability research has failed, according to Patrick Garrity, security researcher at VulnCheck. “AI-assisted vulnerability discovery clearly has value for both attackers and defenders,” Garrity wrote. “The data does not suggest that AI-discovered vulnerabilities are inherently more likely to be exploited than those found through traditional methods.” Instead, he argues, AI is simply helping researchers discover more flaws, giving defenders an opportunity to patch them before criminals get there.

Garrity stopped well short of declaring the threat overblown forever, but he did suggest some of the rhetoric has outpaced reality. “The data so far, including Anthropic’s own stalled disclosure ledger, suggests that AI-assisted vulnerability discovery and frontier capabilities have been overhyped relative to the evidence available today,” he wrote. “That doesn’t mean the risk is imaginary. It means the impact has been real but modest.”

Ina and David Steiner, a married couple and the co-authors of EcommerceBytes, inspired the ire of high-level eBay executives after occasionally criticizing the company in their newsletter. In 2019, a plot was concocted to intimidate the couple into halting their negative coverage. Executives used sock puppet social media accounts to harass the couple, while also sending them anonymous threatening letters and bizarre items in the mail — including live spiders and cockroaches, pornographic magazines, a bloody pig mask, a funereal wreath, and a book about surviving the death of a spouse. According to previously released court documents, a plan that was attempted but never successfully carried out involved affixing a GPS tracking device to the couple’s car. Yet another internally broached plan involved sending a “Samoan gang” to the Steiners’ home.

The settlement this week resolves a 2021 civil case brought by the couple against eBay. The law office representing the Steiners writes that the settlement includes $46.15 million paid to the couple by eBay itself, as well as $2 million from former eBay executive CEO Devin Wenig. Additionally, $500,000 will be paid out to the couple from former eBay executive Wendy Jones, as well as $50,000 from former eBay executive Steve Wymer. Additional funds are being paid to various non-profits. In 2022, seven former eBay employees were criminally charged and pled guilty in relation to the plot, including the company’s former security chief, James Baugh — who was sentenced to nearly five years in prison. Others indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice include David Harville, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Popp, Stephanie Stockwell, Philip Cooke, and former eBay contractor Veronica Zea.

The flaws identified do not concern a cryptographic standard currently in use today, which means that modern banking and communication systems are not subject to immediate potential intrusions from A.I. Instead, Anthropic’s technology cracked a watered-down version of an algorithm for Advanced Encryption Standard, or A.E.S., a ubiquitous protocol that safeguards web traffic, wireless networks, data storage and more. It is common to perform tests on weaker versions of encryption algorithms to understand whether more powerful computers could someday crack the actual standards, akin to solving a simpler math problem to identify whether patterns may exist for a more complicated one. In the testing, Mythos was able to break the weaker version of Advanced Encryption Standard in a way that Anthropic said made an assault 200 to 1,000 times faster than what previous human research had managed to do. While the immediate ramifications are minimal, the long-term implications could be significant. In previous tests, large-language models seemingly could not match or best what humans can do in the mathematically dense field of cryptographic research, but their rapid advances could suggest a future in which top models can surmount traditional internet security protections that are foundational to just about everything that takes place on the internet.

[…] In addition to the attack on the encryption standard, Mythos also orchestrated another improved attack against a different digital cryptographic system known as HAWK that is designed to be bulletproof against both traditional and quantum computers. HAWK is not currently in use, but under consideration by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to become a new standard. The HAWK attack was validated by its authors, and independent cryptographers reviewed the Advanced Encryption Standard attack, Anthropic said, adding that it had shared its findings with the U.S. government and industry partners ahead of publication. Mythos devised the cryptographic attack on A.E.S. almost entirely autonomously, Anthropic said, but only after first refusing to contemplate the problem because it believed it was impossible to improve on existing methods of analysis. But after some coaxing, the chatbot sat with the puzzle for about a week before engineering its novel attack. Two human researchers then worked for nearly a month to verify that the method appeared correct.

Minnesota, the first US state to prohibit prediction markets, was prevented from enforcing the law by a federal court ruling just days before the ban was scheduled to take effect. But while Minnesota was stopped from enforcing a total ban, the state may ultimately be allowed to prohibit some types of prediction-market wagers. The Trump administration and the two largest prediction markets — Kalshi and Polymarket — sued Minnesota after the state enacted the law in May. The cases were consolidated, and a ruling (PDF) issued yesterday imposed a preliminary injunction blocking the law that was scheduled to take effect on August 1.

Minnesota lawmakers saw prediction markets as indistinguishable from gambling, but the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) argues it has exclusive authority to regulate the platforms under federal law. One of the primary legal questions is whether event contracts are “swaps,” which are regulated by the CFTC. Swaps are defined broadly in US law to include contracts in which payment “is dependent on the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or the extent of the occurrence of an event or contingency associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence.” US District Judge Katherine Menendez in the District of Minnesota, a Biden appointee, said Minnesota’s total ban on prediction markets is likely to violate US law because many trades on Kalshi and Polymarket are swaps.

Menendez wrote: “Specifically, it appears that whether the Minnesota statute is expressly preempted turns on whether the state law attempts to regulate trades in event contracts that qualify as “swaps” within the meaning of the CEA [Commodity Exchange Act]. And there are several examples of event contracts hosted by Kalshi and Polymarket US that fit that definition because they concern the occurrence of events with clear potential economic, financial, or commercial consequences that are neither remote or unattenuated. Kalshi and Polymarket US are designated contract markets, so the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction to regulate transactions involving those ‘swaps.’"

Menendez said the CFTC, Kalshi, and Polymarket met their burden of showing they are likely to succeed on the merits, so she issued “a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of Minnesota’s prediction market statute until a final decision on the merits is reached.” But she said Minnesota may be able to prohibit some types of event contracts offered on Kalshi and Polymarket because not all of them appear to meet the definition of swaps. For example, Menendez doesn’t think prediction-market bets on the outcome of Love Island USA meet the legal definition of swaps. Minnesota could continue litigating the case in district court or ask a federal appeals court to overturn the preliminary injunction.

[The conference’s official photo policy] has not been updated since 2023, predating the recent growth of camera-equipped eyewear developed by Meta with EssilorLuxottica under its Ray-Ban and Oakley brands. It states that public photography is permitted but with several caveats that essentially prohibit capturing the image of anyone, except on-stage speakers, unless the photographer obtains consent from the subject(s).

In a post on Saturday, the Canadian nonprofit behind the operating system, the GrapheneOS Foundation, explained that the software offers a range of features to prevent data extraction. For example, one safeguard is the "auto-reboot timer" that’ll reboot a locked device after a set period of time to put the data at rest, leaving all files inside encrypted.

The group’s post subtly suggests that GrapheneOS phones can withstand law enforcement searches without requiring users to resort to a duress password. “People should carefully consider how to use it in an actual duress situation where there can be physical or legal consequences for wiping the device,” the nonprofit wrote. “GrapheneOS doesn’t require it to protect data from being extracted from the device, but it takes recovering it completely off the table even with the PIN/password for each profile on the device.”

On X, the nonprofit has also said it can do nothing to help US law enforcement recover data from Tunick’s phone. “Data cannot be recovered after the key derivation material is reliably wiped. It’s not possible and there’s nothing we can do to assist with it,” the group wrote. “Similarly, it’s not possible to assist with bypassing encryption because the hardware and software has been designed to prevent it.”

Claude is exposing a wealth of users’ chats and creations in Google search results, meaning anyone can dig through conversations or other material that people used Claude to make but may not have realized were publicly available for strangers to see. The exposed data includes an AI-powered therapy app that someone appears to have vibe-coded, notes on meetings, and a dashboard someone made apparently to analyze medical billing data. Exposed chats reportedly include private cryptocurrency wallet keys and personal information like peoples’ addresses

Like other chatbots, Claude lets people share their conversations with others by creating a publicly accessible link of the chat. People may do this to send the full text of a conversation to their friends or coworkers in a group chat, for example. But they may not realize Google is also surfacing these links in search results, making them available to essentially anyone. […] Claude users can change their privacy and sharing settings to make their chats no longer publicly accessible.

The Content Creation BA is housed within ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and appears in the university’s 2026-2027 course catalog. The 120-credit-hour degree prepares students to become “an influencer and strategic storyteller” by teaching video production, podcasting, personal branding, audience analytics and social media strategy. The program was approved by the ASU University Senate in March 2026. Its proposal said graduates would be prepared to work independently as influencers and content creators across livestreaming, videography, writing, podcasting, graphics and emerging media.

[…] For the program’s final project, students will choose a social media platform, such as TikTok, create a content and growth strategy, and attempt to gain real followers throughout the semester. “They will have demonstrable audience growth,” [explained Jessica Pucci, senior associate dean at the Cronkite School]. “They will have a platform of their choice with real content and real followers and a real audience behind them.” The curriculum includes courses titled How to Become an Influencer, On-Camera Presence, Introduction to Editing, Videography, Podcasting and Audio Storytelling, Social Media Foundations and The Digital Audience.

One possibility lies deep within Earth itself. The planet’s mantle is constantly circulating through convection, albeit at an almost unimaginably slow pace. Periodic changes in mantle convection, or the initiation of mantle plumes, could influence volcanism, plate tectonics, mountain building, and other large-scale geological processes. Because these systems are closely interconnected, disturbances originating deep within Earth could eventually ripple through the planet’s surface, oceans, climate, and biosphere.

Another hypothesis focuses on interactions between Earth’s surface and interior. Long-term orbital variations influence climate and sea level, periodically redistributing enormous amounts of water, ice, and sediment across the planet. [New York University geologist Michael Rampino] discusses the possibility that these changing surface loads subtly modify stresses within Earth’s crust and upper mantle, potentially influencing tectonic and volcanic activity over geological timescales.

Rampino also considers possible influences beyond Earth, an idea he has been weighing up since the 1980s. As the Solar System orbits the center of the Milky Way, it oscillates above and below the galaxy’s mid-plane, with the timing of these passages aligning with that of Earth’s major upheavals. These crossings, other researchers have suggested, could also gravitationally perturb comets in the distant Oort Cloud, increasing the likelihood of large asteroid impacts.

Another, even more speculative, hypothesis suggests that if dark matter is concentrated near the galactic plane, a fraction of it could occasionally be captured by Earth. Over millions of years, this process could generate small amounts of internal heat, potentially influencing geological activity. At present, however, there is no direct evidence supporting either mechanism, so they remain very controversial.

Large asteroid impacts are discussed separately in the paper. Although they were not included in the statistical analysis of the 89 geological events, the timing of several of Earth’s largest known impact craters appears broadly consistent with the proposed 27.5-million-year rhythm, as Rampino has discussed in earlier papers. Rampino suggests this correspondence may warrant further investigation, but stops short of claiming a causal relationship.

One missing underscore in a Skyrim-themed username put an innocent Nova Scotia man in prison for 18 months. A 2018 child-luring investigation, which began in Madison, Wisconsin, and eventually extended to Halifax, Canada, was based on a false premise. Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name “fus__ro_dah” (two underscores after “fus”), but they accidentally requested records for the username “fus_ro_dah” (one underscore after “fus”). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme. (Ars readers may recognize “fus ro dah” as the Unrelenting Force “dragon shout" from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.)

Despite finding no evidence of the crime on his digital devices, Canadian police arrested Klayme in 2020 on child sex abuse charges. He was convicted after a trial in 2023 and sentenced in 2024 to 18 months in prison. He served the full term. Even after release, Klayme continued to fight his conviction. In the process of preparing his appeal, the username mistake that led to all these years of disruption was finally discovered. On Thursday, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal overturned Klayme’s conviction, writing: “Mr. Klayme is factually innocent of the offences. He should never have been charged, let alone convicted.” […] As the court puts it, “Although the information about the usernames was available at the time of the trial, there is no evidence confirming or explaining how it went unnoticed.”

Peacock has 48 million subscribers, while YouTube Premium and YouTube Music have a combined 125 million subscribers, though they don’t break out how many each of those offerings have. The agreement, which expands on the deal the company inked with YouTube parent company Google last year, will also extend the entertainment company’s programming deal with YouTube TV, while bringing some of YouTube’s offerings to Comcast Xfinity and Xumo platforms.

There’s also a notable sports and production element to the deal, with NBC Sports agreeing to stream some live sporting events on its YouTube channels, and with NBC agreeing to serve as the production partner for select live events on YouTube. YouTube will also bundle some of the company’s International streaming offerings like Universal+ and Hayu in select markets.