"Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is launching paid subscriptions for users who do not want to see adverts in the UK," reports the BBC: The company said it would start notifying users in the coming weeks to let them choose whether to subscribe to its platforms if they wish to use them without seeing ads. EU users of its platforms can already pay a fee starting from €5.99 (£5) a month to see no ads — but subscriptions will start from £2.99 a month for UK users.

"It will give people in the UK a clear choice about whether their data is used for personalised advertising, while preserving the free access and value that the ads-supported internet creates for people, businesses and platforms," Meta said. But UK users will not have an option to not pay and see "less personalised" adverts — a feature Meta added for EU users after regulators raised concerns...

Meta said its own model would see its subscription for no ads cost £2.99 a month on the web or £3.99 a month on iOS and Android apps — with the higher fee to offset cuts taken from transactions by Apple and Google... [Meta] reiterated its critical stance on the EU on Friday, saying its regulations were creating a worse experience for users and businesses unlike the UK's "more pro-growth and pro-innovation regulatory environment".
"Meta said its own model would see its subscription for no ads cost £2.99 a month on the web or £3.99 a month on iOS and Android apps," according to the BBC, "with the higher fee to offset cuts taken from transactions by Apple and Google."

Even users not paying for an ad-free experience have "tools and settings that empower people to control their ads experience," according to Meta's announcement. The include Ad Preferences which influences data used to inform ads including Activity Information from Ad Partners. "We also have tools in our products that explain 'Why am I seeing this ad?' and how people can manage their ad experience. We do not sell personal data to advertisers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: It had all the makings of a viral X post, and viral it did go, with over 8 million views in under 24 hours. The message was straightforward: "I reverse engineered the San Francisco parking ticket system. I can see every ticket seconds after it's written." Underneath it was a familiar image for any iPhone user -- an Apple map of the city dotted with gray, initialed bubbles, and an explanation: "So I made a website. Find My Friends?" No. "AVOID THE PARKING COPS." The anarchy, however, was short-lived. [...]

Given the potential lost revenue at stake, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency caught on like the rest of the internet, and by Tuesday afternoon, the site had been quickly rendered obsolete. Undeterred, [creator of the site, Riley Walz] restored the site again after 10 p.m., though this, too, didn't last. By his estimation, it was only active for a few more hours. "We made sure that all access to citation data was via authorized routes," said Erica Kato, a spokesperson for SFMTA, in an email to SFGATE. "But when our staff's safety, and personal information of people who have received parking citations, is at risk, we must act on that swiftly."

Yet the saga wasn't over. By Wednesday, the official SFMTA ticket payment site was also down, citing "maintenance." "I'm curious what was going on there," said Walz over the phone. "If it is even because of me." As of Wednesday afternoon, that site is functional and the chaos seems over for now. According to SFMTA, there is no need for a site like Walz's."The official way to access our parking citation data is via our public website on DataSF," Kato said. "Anyone is still able to see [the] type of citation, date of issuance and data that can be mapped and analyzed on DataSF daily."

Longtime Slashdot reader hackingbear writes: President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that he says will allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States in a way that meets national security concerns. Trump's order will enable an American-led of group of investors to "buy the app" (up to 80% ownership) from China's ByteDance, though the deal is not yet finalized and also requires China's approval. However, much about the deal is still unknown. So, did the U.S. successfully snatch TikTok from ByteDance? It is probably up to individual's interpretation.

As with any deals between U.S. and China, the devil is in the details. According Shen Yi, an internet influencer and a professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, what the U.S. investor will eventually take control of is an entity known as TikTok U.S. Data Security Company ("USDS"), which is a subsidiary of TikTok U.S. and is exclusively responsible to handle data security in the U.S.. ByteDance will continue, through its U.S. subsidiary "ByteDance TikTok U.S. Company," to operate business and other related activities (such as e-commerce, advertising for brands, and cross-border commercial activities). It is important to stress that "Byte TikTok U.S. Company" remains 100% owned by ByteDance through its global TikTok subsidiary -- this arrangement has not changed. The TikTok algorithm remains the property of ByteDance, only licensed to USDS for use. This point was in fact explicitly clarified by a relevant official of China's Cyberspace Administration at the press conference following the Madrid talks.

After reaching the TikTok deal, Beijing and Washington are now selling it to their respective domestic audience, each highlighting the part of the deal that it can characterize as a win. Shen's details are not in conflict with the widely-reported account given by Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, who emphasized "a new board with six American directors out of seven." Observers can also find the TikTok arrangement being very similar to that of Apple's iCloud operation in China being run by GCBD (AIPO Cloud (Guizhou) Technology Co. Ltd.) while Apple retain controls of the brand and business.

Cloudflare announced plans Thursday to launch NET Dollar, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin designed to enable autonomous AI agents to conduct instant financial transactions. The company says the stablecoin will support microtransactions and pay-per-use models as AI agents take over tasks like booking flights and ordering groceries. BrianFagioli comments: A U.S. dollar-backed cryptocurrency from Cloudflare feels unusual to me, and I'm still surprised by it. The decision shows just how much the Internet is shifting in response to artificial intelligence.

CEO Matthew Prince said, "For decades, the business model of the Internet ran on ad platforms and bank transfers. The Internet's next business model will be powered by pay-per-use, fractional payments, and microtransactions -- "tools that shift incentives toward original, creative content that actually adds value." He added that by using its global network, Cloudflare aims to "help modernize the financial rails needed to move money at the speed of the Internet."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: Twenty-one years after Facebook's launch, Australia's top 25 news outlets now have a combined 27.6 million followers on the platform. They rely on Facebook's reach more than ever, posting far more stories there than in the past. With access to Meta's Content Library (Meta is the owner of Facebook), our big data study analysed more than three million posts from 25 Australian news publishers. We wanted to understand how content is distributed, how audiences engage with news topics, and the nature of misinformation spread. The study enabled us to track de-identified Facebook comments and take a closer look at examples of how misinformation spreads. These included cases about election integrity, the environment (floods) and health misinformation such as hydroxychloroquine promotion during the COVID pandemic. The data reveal misinformation's real-world impact: it isn't just a digital issue, it's linked to poor health outcomes, falling public trust, and significant societal harm. [...]

Our study has lessons for public figures and institutions. They, especially politicians, must lead in curbing misinformation, as their misleading statements are quickly amplified by the public. Social media and mainstream media also play an important role in limiting the circulation of misinformation. As Australians increasingly rely on social media for news, mainstream media can provide credible information and counter misinformation through their online story posts. Digital platforms can also curb algorithmic spread and remove dangerous content that leads to real-world harms. The study offers evidence of a change over time in audiences' news consumption patterns. Whether this is due to news avoidance or changes in algorithmic promotion is unclear. But it is clear that from 2016 to 2024, online audiences increasingly engaged with arts, lifestyle and celebrity news over politics, leading media outlets to prioritize posting stories that entertain rather than inform. This shift may pose a challenge to mitigating misinformation with hard news facts. Finally, the study shows that fact-checking, while valuable, is not a silver bullet. Combating misinformation requires a multi-pronged approach, including counter-messaging by trusted civic leaders, media and digital literacy campaigns, and public restraint in sharing unverified content.

In a bid to slash red tape, the European Commission wants to eliminate one of its peskiest laws: a 2009 tech rule that plastered the online world with pop-ups requesting consent to cookies. From a report: It's the kind of simplification ordinary Europeans can get behind. European rulemakers in 2009 revised a law called the e-Privacy Directive to require websites to get consent from users before loading cookies on their devices, unless the cookies are "strictly necessary" to provide a service. Fast forward to 2025 and the internet is full of consent banners that users have long learned to click away without thinking twice.

"Too much consent basically kills consent. People are used to giving consent for everything, so they might stop reading things in as much detail, and if consent is the default for everything, it's no longer perceived in the same way by users," said Peter Craddock, data lawyer with Keller and Heckman. Cookie technology is now a focal point of the EU executive's plans to simplify technology regulation. Officials want to present an "omnibus" text in December, scrapping burdensome requirements on digital companies. On Monday, it held a meeting with the tech industry to discuss the handling of cookies and consent banners.

Cloudflare blocked the largest-ever DDoS attack against a European network infrastructure company, which peaked at 22.2 Tbps and 10.6 Bpps. The hyper-volumetric attack has been linked to the Aisuru botnet and lasted just 40 seconds, but was double the size of the previous record. SecurityWeek reports: Cloudflare told SecurityWeek that the attack was aimed at a single IP address of an unnamed European network infrastructure company. Cloudflare has yet to determine who was behind the attack, but believes it may have been powered by the Aisuru botnet, which was also linked earlier this year to a massive 6.3 Tbps attack on the website of cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs. Aisuru has been around for more than a year. The botnet is powered by hacked IoT devices such as routers and DVRs that have been compromised through the exploitation of known and zero-day vulnerabilities.

According to Cloudflare, the 22 Tbps attack was traced to over 404,000 unique source IPs across over 14 ASNs worldwide. "Based on internal analysis using a proprietary system, the source IPs were not spoofed," the company explained. The security firm described it as a UDP carpet bomb attack targeting an average of 31,000 destination ports per second, with a peak of 47k ports, all of a single IP address. Cloudflare revealed in July that the number of DDoS attacks it blocked in the first half of 2025 had already exceeded all the attacks mitigated in 2024.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Cloudflare has unveiled the Content Signals Policy, a free addition to its managed robots.txt service that aims to give website owners and publishers more control over how their content is accessed and reused by AI companies. The idea is pretty simple: robots.txt already lets site operators specify which crawlers can enter and where. Cloudflare's new policy adds a layer that signals how the data may be used once accessed, with plain-language terms for search, AI input, and AI training. "Yes" means allowed, "no" means not allowed, and no signal means no preference.

Matthew Prince, Cloudflare's co-founder and CEO, said: "The Internet cannot wait for a solution, while in the meantime, creators' original content is used for profit by other companies. To ensure the web remains open and thriving, we're giving website owners a better way to express how companies are allowed to use their content." Cloudflare says more than 3.8 million domains already use its robots.txt tools to signal they don't want their content used for AI training. Now, the Content Signals Policy makes those preferences clearer and potentially enforceable. Further reading: Cloudflare Flips AI Scraping Model With Pay-Per-Crawl System For Publishers

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: After deflecting the US Department of Justice's attack on its illegal monopoly in online search, Google is facing another attempt to dismantle its internet empire in a trial focused on abusive tactics in digital advertising. The trial that opened Monday in an Alexandria, Virginia, federal court revolves around the harmful conduct that resulted in US district Judge Leonie Brinkema declaring parts of Google's digital advertising technology to be an illegal monopoly in April. The judge found that Google has been engaging in behavior that stifles competition to the detriment of online publishers that depend on the system for revenue.

Google and the justice department will spend the next two weeks in court presenting evidence in a "remedy" trial that will culminate in Brinkema issuing a ruling on how to restore fair market conditions. If the justice department gets its way, Brinkema will order Google to sell parts of its ad technology -- a proposal that the company's lawyers warned would "invite disruption and damage" to consumers and the internet's ecosystem. The justice department contends a breakup would be the most effective and quickest way to undercut a monopoly that has been stifling competition and innovation for years. [...]

The case, filed in 2023 under Joe Biden's administration, threatens the complex network that Google has spent the past 17 years building to power its dominant digital advertising business. Digital advertising sales account for most of the $305 billion in revenue that Google's services division generates for its corporate parent Alphabet. The company's sprawling network of display ads provide the lifeblood that keeps thousands of websites alive. Google believes it has already made enough changes to its "ad manager" system, including providing more options and pricing options, to resolve the problems Brinkema flagged in her monopoly ruling.

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman told The Verge today that the company plans to transform Edge into an "agentic browser" where Copilot controls tabs, navigates websites and completes tasks while users watch. Unlike The Browser Company's new Dia browser, Microsoft will integrate these capabilities directly into Edge.

Suleyman described Copilot opening tabs, reading multiple pages simultaneously and performing research transparently in real-time. The AI visits websites directly, preserving publisher traffic. Current Copilot features include tab navigation, page scrolling and content highlighting. Users will have the option to disable AI features entirely. Suleyman predicted that within years, AI companions will handle most browsing tasks while users provide oversight and feedback.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A new dark web portal to recruit spies for the UK was launched last Friday (19th September), as the UK steps up its commitment to national security. Harnessing the anonymity of the dark web for the first time, MI6's new secure messaging platform -- Silent Courier -- enables anyone, anywhere in the world with access to sensitive information relating to terrorism or hostile intelligence activity to securely contact the UK and offer their services. Instructions on how to access the portal will be publicly available on MI6's verified YouTube channel as the UK reaches out to potential new agents in Russia and around the world. MI6 advises individuals accessing its portal to use trustworthy VPNs and devices not linked to themselves, to mitigate risks which exist in some countries.

The announcement was made by the outgoing Chief of MI6, Sir Richard Moore, in Istanbul where he stated that the platform will make it easier for MI6 to recruit agents online. As MI6 establishes its official presence on the dark web to reach new recruits and tackle hostile actors seeking to undermine UK security, Sir Richard said that the UK's intelligence services are "critical to calibrating risk and informing decisions" in navigating threats from hostile actors -- making platforms like these even more important in keeping our country safe. Sir Richard said: "Today we're asking those with sensitive information on global instability, international terrorism or hostile state intelligence activity to contact MI6 securely online. Our virtual door is open to you." Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "National security is the first duty of any government and the bedrock of the Prime Minister's Plan for Change. As the world changes, and the threats we're facing multiply, we must ensure the UK is always one step ahead of our adversaries. Our world class intelligence agencies are at the coalface of this challenge, working behind the scenes to keep British people safe. Now we're bolstering their efforts with cutting-edge tech so MI6 can recruit new spies for the UK - in Russia and around the world."

Writing in Communications of the ACM, former Go tech lead Russ Cox warns we need to keep improving defenses of software supply chains, highlighting "promising approaches that should be more widely used" and "areas where more work is needed." There are important steps we can take today, such as adopting software signatures in some form, making sure to scan for known vulnerabilities regularly, and being ready to update and redeploy software when critical new vulnerabilities are found. More development should be shifted to safer languages that make vulnerabilities and attacks less likely. We also need to find ways to fund open source development to make it less susceptible to takeover by the mere offer of free help. Relatively small investments in OpenSSL and XZ development could have prevented both the Heartbleed vulnerability and the XZ attack.
Some highlights from the 5,000-word article:

• Make Builds Reproducible. "The Reproducible Builds project aims to raise awareness of reproducible builds generally, as well as building tools to help progress toward complete reproducibility for all Linux software. The Go project recently arranged for Go itself to be completely reproducible given only the source code... A build for a given target produces the same distribution bits whether you build on Linux or Windows or Mac, whether the build host is X86 or ARM, and so on. Strong reproducibility makes it possible for others to easily verify that the binaries posted for download match the source code..."

• Prevent Vulnerabilities. "The most secure software dependencies are the ones not used in the first place: Every dependency adds risk... Another good way to prevent vulnerabilities is to use safer programming languages that remove error-prone language features or make them needed less often..."

• Authenticate Software. ("Cryptographic signatures make it impossible to nefariously alter code between signing and verifying. The only problem left is key distribution...") "The Go checksum database is a real-world example of this approach that protects millions of Go developers. The database holds the SHA256 checksum of every version of every public Go module..."

• Fund Open Source. [Cox first cites the XKCD cartoon "Dependencies," calling it "a disturbingly accurate assessment of the situation..."] "The XZ attack is the clearest possible demonstration that the problem is not fixed. It was enabled as much by underfunding of open source as by any technical detail."

The article also emphasized the importance of finding and fixing vulnerabilities quickly, arguing that software attacks must be made more difficult and expensive.

"We use source code downloaded from strangers on the Internet in our most critical applications; almost no one is checking the code.... We all have more work to do."

Fast Company ran a contrarian take about AI from entrepreneur/thought leader Faisal Hoque, who argues there's three AI bubbles.

The first is a classic speculative bubble, with asset prices soaring above their fundamental values (like the 17th century's Dutch "tulip mania"). "The chances of this not being a bubble are between slim and none..." Second, AI is also arguably in what we might call an infrastructure bubble, with huge amounts being invested in infrastructure without any certainty that it will be used at full capacity in the future. This happened multiple times in the later 1800s, as railroad investors built thousands of miles of unneeded track to serve future demand that never materialized. More recently, it happened in the late '90s with the rollout of huge amount of fiber optic cable in anticipation of internet traffic demand that didn't turn up until decades later. Companies are pouring billions into GPUs, power systems, and cooling infrastructure, betting that demand will eventually justify the capacity. McKinsey analysts talk of a $7 trillion "race to scale data centers" for AI, and just eight projects in 2025 already represent commitments of over $1 trillion in AI infrastructure investment. Will this be like the railroad booms and busts of the late 1800s? It is impossible to say with any kind of certainty, but it is not unreasonable to think so.

Third, AI is certainly in a hype bubble, which is where the promise claimed for a new technology exceeds reality, and the discussion around that technology becomes increasingly detached from likely future outcomes. Remember the hype around NFTs? That was a classic hype bubble. And AI has been in a similar moment for a while. All kinds of media — social, print, and web — are filled with AI-related content, while AI boosterism has been the mood music of the corporate world for the last few years. Meanwhile, a recent MIT study reported that 95% of AI pilot projects fail to generate any returns at all.
But the article ultimately argues there's lessons in the 1990s dotcom boom: that "a thing can be hyped beyond its actual capabilities while still being important... When valuations correct — and they will — the same pattern will emerge: companies that focus on solving real problems with available technology will extract value before, during, and after the crash." The winners will be companies with systematic approaches to extracting value — adopting mixed portfolios with different time horizons and risk levels, while recognizing organizational friction points for a purposeful (and holistic) integration.

"The louder the bubble talk, the more space opens for those willing to take a methodical approach to building value."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Tony Isaac for sharing the article.

The Leon Thevenin, Africa's only permanently stationed cable repair ship, maintains over 60,000 kilometers of undersea internet infrastructure from Madagascar to Ghana. The 43-year-old vessel employs a 60-person crew who perform precision repairs on fiber-optic cables that carry data for Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon -- companies that consumed 3.6 billion megabits per second of bandwidth in 2023.

Operating costs range from $70,000 to $120,000 daily, according to owner Orange Marine. The ship has experienced increased demand due to unusual underwater landslides in the Congo Canyon causing frequent cable breaks. Cable jointer Shuru Arendse and his team spend up to 48 hours on repairs that require fusing hair-thin glass fibers in conditions where a speck of dust can ruin the joint. The vessel gained Starlink connectivity last year after decades of relying on satellite phones and shared computers for crew communication. Sixty-two cable repair ships operate globally to maintain the infrastructure supporting streaming media and AI applications.

China's internet regulator has told the country's biggest technology companies to stop buying all of Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips and terminate their existing orders, as Beijing steps up efforts to boost its homegrown semiconductor industry and compete with the US. From a report: The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) informed companies including ByteDance and Alibaba this week to terminate their testing and orders of the RTX Pro 6000D, Nvidia's tailor-made product for the country introduced two months ago, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Several companies had indicated they would order tens of thousands of the RTX Pro 6000D, and had started testing and verification work with Nvidia's server suppliers before telling them to stop the work after receiving the CAC order, said the people. Nvidia CEO responds: In response to a question on the FT report, Huang said Wednesday that "we can only be in service of a market if the country wants us to be."

"We probably contributed more to the China market than most countries have. And I'm disappointed with what I see," Huang said. "But they have larger agendas to work out between China and the United States, and I'm understanding of that."

It comes after a tumultuous few years for Nvidia's business in China, which Huang described as "a bit of a rollercoaster."

"We've guided all financial analysts not to include China" in financial forecasts, Huang told reporters Wednesday at a press briefing in London. "The reason for that is because that's largely going to be within the discussions of the United States government and Chinese government."