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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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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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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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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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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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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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French President Emmanuel Macron vowed a strong response [non-paywalled source] if any country takes measures that undermine Europe's digital sovereignty. From a report: Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump threatened to impose fresh tariffs and export restrictions on countries that have digital services taxes or regulations that harm American tech companies. France was among the first nations to implement a digital services tax. "We will not let anyone else decide for us on this matter," he told reporters in Toulon, France, on Friday. "We cannot allow our digital sector or the regulations we have chosen for ourselves, which are a necessity, to be threatened today." Trump has long railed against EU tech and antitrust regulation over US tech giants including Alphabet's Google and Apple.

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Linus Torvalds has quietly changed the maintainer status of bcachefs to "externally maintained", indicating that further changes are unlikely to enter the mainline anytime soon. This change also suggests, though, that the immediate removal of bcachefs from the mainline kernel is not in the cards.

One of Australia's largest banks has apologized to staff who found out they had been fired through an automated email asking them to hand back their laptops. From a report: ANZ's retail banking executive Bruce Rush said it was "not our intention to share such sensitive news with you in this way" as the firm cuts jobs in its retail banking business. The bank said the emails were sent to some staff ahead of schedule in error. It said it has since stopped sending the emails and that staff have been spoken to personally. The Financial Sector Union said the email caused "panic and distress" and was a result of the company forcing through a "chaotic pace of change." The union's president Wendy Streets said it had not been consulted on the changes the bank was making, adding that "ANZ must do better." "Speed and cost-cutting cannot come at the expense of dignity and respect for workers," Ms Streets said, describing the "botched" episode as "disgusting." Mr Rush wrote in an email to staff: "Unfortunately, these emails indicate an exit date for some of our colleagues before we've been able to share their outcome with them."

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A newly published Investigatory Powers Tribunal filing indicates the UK government's Technical Capability Notice to Apple went beyond the company's Advanced Data Protection encryption to include standard iCloud services used by millions [non-paywalled source]. The document states the UK Home Office order "is not limited to" ADP data and applies "globally in respect of the relevant data categories of all iCloud users." The filing emerged days after Trump administration officials claimed the UK had agreed to drop efforts targeting American citizens' data. Apple launched its legal challenge in March after receiving the TCN, which the company cannot discuss publicly under the Investigatory Powers Act. The tribunal scheduled a hearing for early next year. Apple withdrew ADP from UK customers in February.

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Universities facing federal research budget cuts are increasingly turning to corporate partnerships for funding as Georgia Tech secures $70 million from industry this fiscal year -- 28% more than last year and representing 15% of campus research funding versus the 6% national average. The Atlanta school's corporate engagement office has fielded multiple weekly calls from other institutions seeking guidance after securing deals including Hyundai's $55 million stadium naming rights agreement alongside undisclosed research investments in electric vehicle and hydrogen fuel technologies. The arrangements come with restrictions: nondisclosure agreements limit publication options for graduate students, and companies typically avoid funding basic research without immediate commercial applications. Federal grants still constitute over half of university research spending nationally, supporting early-stage discovery work that laid groundwork for current quantum computing developments.

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Keynote sessions at Open Source Summit events tend not to allow much time for detailed talks, and the 2025 Open Source Summit Europe did not diverge from that pattern. Even so, Daniel Stenberg, the maintainer of the curl project, managed to cram a lot into the 15 minutes given to him. Like the maintainers of many other projects, Stenberg is feeling some stress, and the problems appear to be getting worse over time.

The next release of systemd has been percolating for an unusually long time. Systemd releases are usually about six months apart, but v257 came out in December 2024, and v258 just now seems to be nearing the finish line; the third release candidate for v258 was published on August 20 (release notes). Now is a good time to dig in and take a look at some of the new features, enhancements, and removals coming soon to systemd. These include new workload-management features, a concept for multiple home-directory environments, and the final, once-and-for-all removal of support for control groups version 1.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Valve has started to comply with the UK's Online Safety Act, by rolling out a requirement for all Brits to verify their age with a credit card to access "mature content" pages and games on Steam. UK users won't even be able to access the community hubs of mature content games unless a valid credit card is stored on a Steam account. While platforms like Reddit, Bluesky, and Discord have opted for age verification checks using selfies, Valve is restricting its age checks to just credit cards, according to a support article. "Among all age assurance mechanisms reviewed by Valve, this process preserves the maximum degree of user privacy," says Valve. "Having the credit card stored as a payment method acts as an additional deterrent against circumventing age verification by sharing a single Steam user account among multiple persons."

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Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (aide, fence-agents, firefox, kernel-rt, python-cryptography, and thunderbird), Debian (golang-github-gin-contrib-cors, libxml2, and udisks2), Fedora (chromium), Oracle (postgresql16, postgresql:16, python3.11, and thunderbird), Red Hat (lz4 and mpfr), SUSE (chromium, docker, dpkg, firefox, gdk-pixbuf, git, git, git-lfs, obs-scm-bridge, python-PyYAML, gnutls, kernel, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0-RT_Update_2, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0-RT_Update_3, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0-RT_Update_4, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0-RT_Update_5, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0-RT_Update_6, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0-RT_Update_7, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0-RT_Update_8, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_10, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_2, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_3, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_4, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_5, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_6, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_7, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_8, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_9, libarchive, libxml2, net-tools, netty, perl-Crypt-CBC, polkit, postgresql14, postgresql15, sqlite3, thunderbird, tomcat10, and udisks2), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.14, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-6.14, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.14, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-gcp, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.8, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-azure, linux-fips, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gke, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-raspi, linux-gke, linux-kvm, linux-oem-6.14, linux-realtime, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-raspi-realtime, openldap, and udisks2).

A 56-year-old tech industry veteran killed his mother and himself in Old Greenwich, Connecticut on August 5 after months of interactions with ChatGPT that encouraged his paranoid delusions. Greenwich police discovered Stein-Erik Soelberg and his 83-year-old mother Suzanne Eberson Adams dead in their home. Videos posted by Soelberg documented conversations where ChatGPT repeatedly assured him he was sane while validating his beliefs about surveillance campaigns and poisoning attempts by his mother. The chatbot told him a Chinese food receipt contained demonic symbols and that his mother's anger over a disconnected printer indicated she was "protecting a surveillance asset." OpenAI has contacted Greenwich police and announced plans for updates to help keep users experiencing mental distress grounded in reality.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.org: In a first-of-its-kind experiment, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania brought quantum networking out of the lab and onto commercial fiber-optic cables using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that powers today's web. Reported in Science, the work shows that fragile quantum signals can run on the same infrastructure that carries everyday online traffic. The team tested their approach on Verizon's campus fiber-optic network. The Penn team's tiny "Q-chip" coordinates quantum and classical data and, crucially, speaks the same language as the modern web. That approach could pave the way for a future "quantum internet," which scientists believe may one day be as transformative as the dawn of the online era. Quantum signals rely on pairs of "entangled" particles, so closely linked that changing one instantly affects the other. Harnessing that property could allow quantum computers to link up and pool their processing power, enabling advances like faster, more energy-efficient AI or designing new drugs and materials beyond the reach of today's supercomputers. Penn's work shows, for the first time on live commercial fiber, that a chip can not only send quantum signals but also automatically correct for noise, bundle quantum and classical data into standard internet-style packets, and route them using the same addressing system and management tools that connect everyday devices online. "By showing an integrated chip can manage quantum signals on a live commercial network like Verizon's, and do so using the same protocols that run the classical internet, we've taken a key step toward larger-scale experiments and a practical quantum internet," says Liang Feng, Professor in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and in Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), and the Science paper's senior author. "This feels like the early days of the classical internet in the 1990s, when universities first connected their networks," added Robert Broberg, a doctoral student in ESE and co-author of the paper. "That opened the door to transformations no one could have predicted. A quantum internet has the same potential."

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Taco Bell's rollout of AI-powered drive-thru assistants has run into problems, with glitches and trolls gaming the system by making absurd orders like thousands of water cups. It's so bad that the company is reconsidering where and how to deploy the tech, admitting it may not work well in "super busy" restaurants. "We're learning a lot, I'm going to be honest with you," Dane Mathews, Taco Bell's chief digital and technology officer, told the WSJ. "I think like everybody, sometimes it lets me down, but sometimes it really surprises me." The Verge reports: Since announcing plans to put AI in the drive-thru last year, Taco Bell has deployed the tech in over 500 locations across the US, according to the WSJ. Other fast-food chains are experimenting with AI, too, including McDonald's, Wendy's, and White Castle. Mathews tells the outlet that while the company still plans on pushing ahead with AI voice technology and evaluating the data, he's discovered that using AI exclusively in certain situations, like a drive-thru for "super busy restaurants with long lines," might not be such a great idea after all.

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Longtime Slashdot reader cristiroma shares a report from New Atlas: Wouldn't it be great if the plants in your home could do more than just sit there looking pretty? Researchers at South China Agricultural University in the city of Guangzhou have found a way to upgrade them into soft glowing night lights in a range of hues, with the use of nanoparticles. The team developed a light-emitting phosphor compound that enabled succulents with fleshy leaves to charge in sunlight or indoor LED light in just a couple of minutes, and then emit a soft uniform glow that lasts up to two hours. The afterglow phosphor compound -- which is similar to those found in glow-in-the-dark toys -- is inexpensive, biocompatible, and negates the need for more complex methods of infusing bioluminescence in plants, like genetic modification. It simply gets injected into the leaves. [...] Beyond modifying a commercial compound for this project, the team also had to figure out the right size for the phosphor particles so they'd work as intended inside plants. Shuting Liu, first author on the study that appeared in Matter this week, noted, "Smaller, nano-sized particles move easily within the plant but are dimmer. Larger particles glowed brighter but couldn't travel far inside the plant." Through extensive testing, the researchers arrived at an optimal size of around 7 micrometers, about the width of a red blood cell. They also determined through experimentation that the particles worked best in succulents, rather than plants with thinner leaves like bok choy. Once they'd landed on the right particle size, loading concentration, and plant type, the team found that the phosphor material diffused into succulent leaves almost instantly, and uniformly lit up entire leaves -- enough to illuminate nearby objects. The scientists were also able to create modified phosphors that glowed in colors like green, red, and blue. That could make for novel indoor or garden decor, as well as pathway lighting. These luminous plants also don't cost much -- according to Liu, "Each plant takes about 10 minutes to prepare and costs a little over 10 yuan (about $1.4), not including labor." Over the course of 10 days, the injected plants didn't show any signs of damage, yellowing, structural integrity, or even reduced levels of chlorophyll.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: They look, move and even smell like the kind of furry Everglades marsh rabbit a Burmese python would love to eat. But these bunnies are robots meant to lure the giant invasive snakes out of their hiding spots. It's the latest effort by the South Florida Water Management District to eliminate as many pythons as possible from the Everglades, where they are decimating native species with their voracious appetites. In Everglades National Park, officials say the snakes have eliminated 95% of small mammals as well as thousands of birds. "Removing them is fairly simple. It's detection. We're having a really hard time finding them," said Mike Kirkland, lead invasive animal biologist for the water district. "They're so well camouflaged in the field." The water district and University of Florida researchers deployed 120 robot rabbits this summer as an experiment. Previously, there was an effort to use live rabbits as snake lures but that became too expensive and time-consuming, Kirkland said. The robots are simple toy rabbits, but retrofitted to emit heat, a smell and to make natural movements to appear like any other regular rabbit. "They look like a real rabbit," Kirkland said. They are solar powered and can be switched on and off remotely. They are placed in small pens monitored by a video camera that sends out a signal when a python is nearby. "Then I can deploy one of our many contractors to go out and remove the python," Kirkland said. The total cost per robot rabbit is about $4,000, financed by the water district, he added.

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