Submission + - AV1's Open, Royalty-Free Promise In Question As Dolby Sues Snapchat Over Codec (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) was invented by a group of technology companies to be an open, royalty-free alternative to other video codecs, like HEVC/H.265. But a lawsuit that Dolby Laboratories Inc. filed this week against Snap Inc. calls all that into question with claims of patent infringement. Numerous lawsuits are currently open in the US regarding the use of HEVC. Relevant patent holders, such as Nokia and InterDigital, have sued numerous hardware vendors and streaming service providers in pursuit of licensing fees for the use of patented technologies deemed essential to HEVC.

It’s a touch rarer to see a lawsuit filed over the implementation of AV1. The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix, says it developed AV1 “under a royalty-free patent policy (Alliance for Open Media Patent License 1.0)” and that the standard is “supported by high-quality reference implementations under a simple, permissive license (BSD 3-Clause Clear License).”

Yet, Dolby’s lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware [PDF] alleges that AV1 leverages technologies that Dolby has patented and has not agreed to license for free and without receiving royalties. The filing reads: "[AOMedia] does not own all patents practiced by implementations of the AV1 codec. Rather, the AV1 specification was developed after many foundational video coding patents had already been filed, and AV1 incorporates technologies that are also present in HEVC. Those technologies are subject to existing third-party patent rights and associated licensing obligations." Dolby is seeking a jury trial, a declaration that Dolby isn’t obligated to license the patents in questions under FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) licensing obligations, and for the court to enjoin Snap from further “infringement.”

Submission + - Popular LiteLLM PyPI package backdoored to steal credentials, auth tokens (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: LiteLLM is an open-source Python library that serves as a gateway to multiple large language model (LLM) providers via a single API. The package is very popular, with over 3.4 million downloads a day and over 95 million in the past month.

The TeamPCP hacking group compromising the massively popular "LiteLLM" Python package on PyPI and claiming to have stolen data from hundreds of thousands of devices during the attack. According to research by Endor Labs, threat actors compromised the project and published malicious versions of LiteLLM 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 to PyPI today that deploy an infostealer that harvests a wide range of sensitive data.

The malicious code was injected into 'litellm/proxy/proxy_server.py' [VirusTotal] as a base64 encoded payload, which is decoded and executed whenever the module is imported. "Once triggered, the payload runs a three-stage attack: it harvests credentials (SSH keys, cloud tokens, Kubernetes secrets, crypto wallets, and .env files), attempts lateral movement across Kubernetes clusters by deploying privileged pods to every node, and installs a persistent systemd backdoor that polls for additional binaries," explains Endor Labs.
Stolen data is bundled into an encrypted archive named tpcp.tar.gz and sent to attacker-controlled infrastructure at models.litellm[.]cloud, where the threat actors can access it.

If compromise is suspected, all credentials on affected systems should be treated as exposed and rotated immediately. Both malicious LiteLLM versions have been removed from PyPI, with version 1.82.6 now the latest clean release.

Submission + - Big Tech deserves its Big Tobacco moment (marketwatch.com) 1

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Landmark verdicts shatter the Section 230 shield, turning ‘addictive’ product design into a legal thicket for Meta, Alphabet and others.

The fact that social media is designed to be addictive is now court-tested fact.

Submission + - Judge Blocks Pentagon's Effort To 'Punish' Anthropic With Supply Chain Risk Labe (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A federal judge in California has indefinitely blocked the Pentagon’s effort to “punish” Anthropic by labeling it a supply chain risk and attempting to sever government ties with the AI company, ruling that those measures ran roughshod over its constitutional rights. "Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” US District Judge Rita Lin wrote in a stinging 43-page ruling.

Lin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said she would delay implementation of her ruling for one week to allow the government to appeal. But in her ruling, she made it clear she disapproved of the government’s actions, which she said violated the company’s First Amendment and due process rights. [...] “These broad measures do not appear to be directed at the government’s stated national security interests,” she wrote. “The Department of War’s records show that it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk because of its ‘hostile manner through the press.’” “Punishing Anthropic for bringing public scrutiny to the government’s contracting position is classic illegal First Amendment retaliation,” she added.

Submission + - Newly Purchased Vizio TVs Now Require Walmart Accounts To Use Smart Features (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Prospective Vizio TV buyers should know there’s a good chance the set won’t work properly without a Walmart account. In an attempt to better serve advertisers, Walmart, which bought Vizio in December 2024, announced this week that select newly purchased Vizio TVs now require a Walmart account for setup and accessing smart TV features. Since 2024, Vizio TVs have required a Vizio account, which a Vizio OS website says is necessary for accessing “exclusive offers, subscription management, and tailored support.” Accounts are also central to Vizio’s business, which is largely driven by ads and tracking tied to its OS.

A Walmart spokesperson confirmed to Ars Technica that Walmart accounts will be mandatory on “select new Vizio OS TVs” for owners to complete onboarding and to use smart TV features. The representative added: "Customers who already have an existing Vizio account are being given the option to merge their Vizio account with their Walmart account. Customers with an existing Vizio account can opt out by deleting their Vizio account." The representative wouldn’t confirm which TV models are affected. Walmart’s representative said the Walmart account integration is “designed to respect consumer choice and privacy, with data used in aggregated, permissioned, and compliant ways” but didn’t specify how.

Submission + - Mozilla and Mila team up on open source AI push (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla just teamed up with Mila to push open source AI, and it feels like a direct response to Big Tech tightening its grip on the space. Instead of relying on closed models, the goal here is to build AI thatâ(TM)s more transparent, privacy-focused, and actually under the control of developers and even governments. Theyâ(TM)re starting with things like private memory for AI agents, which sounds niche but matters if you care about where your data goes. Big question is whether open source can realistically keep up with the billions being poured into proprietary AI, but at least someoneâ(TM)s trying to give folks an alternative.

Submission + - Iran blocks accounts of Starlink users as crackdown continues (iranintl.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Iranian police said on Thursday they had blocked 61 bank accounts belonging to users of Starlink satellite internet in the central city of Yazd, as part of a broader crackdown on unauthorized connectivity.

A local police commander said six Starlink devices were seized and six people detained following searches carried out with judicial approval.

Authorities accused the suspects of trading access to the service, sharing information with foreign-based outlets and engaging in activities deemed hostile. The individuals were referred to prosecutors, police said.

The move comes amid a broader wave of arrests across Iran, with authorities detaining dozens in recent days on security-related charges, including alleged links to militant activity, contacts with foreign media and online activity. Officials have also reported seizing weapons, explosives and Starlink devices in multiple provinces.

Starlink is banned in Iran, where authorities have imposed a near-total internet blackout during the war. Monitoring group NetBlocks says connectivity has dropped to around 1% of normal levels, leaving satellite services among the few ways to access the global internet.

Submission + - IBM quantum computer simulates real magnetic materials and matches lab data (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: IBM says its quantum computer can now simulate real magnetic materials and match actual lab experiment results, which is something people have been waiting years to see. Instead of just theoretical output, the system reproduced neutron scattering data from a known material, meaning it lines up with real world physics. It still relies on a mix of quantum and classical computing and this is a narrow use case for now, but it is one of the first times quantum hardware has produced results that scientists can directly validate against experiments, which makes it a lot more interesting than the usual hype.

Submission + - Tracy Kidder, Author of "The Soul of a New Machine", has died.

Submitted by wiredog
wiredog writes: Tracy Kidder, author of "The Soul of a New Machine" has died at the age of 80.

"The Soul of a New Machine" is about the people who designed and built the Data General Nova, one of the 32 bit superminis that were released in the 1980's, just before the PC destroyed that industry. It was excerpted in The Atlantic.

"I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."

Submission + - Researchers At CERN Transport Antiprotons By Truck In World-First Experiment (physicsworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the CERN particle-physics lab have successfully transported antiprotons in a lorry across the lab’s main site. The feat, the first of its kind, follows a similar test with protons in 2024. CERN says the achievement is “a huge leap” towards being able to transport antimatter between labs across Europe. [...] To do so, in 2020 the BASE team began developing a device, known as BASE-STEP (for Baryon-Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment-Symmetry Tests in Experiments with Portable Antiprotons), to store and transport antiprotons. It works by trapping particles in a Penning trap composed of gold-plated cylindrical electrode stacks made from oxygen-free copper that is surrounded by a superconducting magnet bore operated at cryogenic temperatures.

The device, which also contains a carbon-steel vacuum chamber to shield the particles from stray magnetic fields, is then mounted on an aluminium frame. This allows it to be transported using standard forklifts and cranes and withstand the bumps and vibrations of transport. In 2024, BASE researchers used the device to transport a cloud of about 105 trapped protons across CERN’s Meyrin campus for four hours. After that feat, the researchers began to adjust BASE-STEP to handle antiprotons and yesterday the team successfully transported a trap containing a cloud of 92 antiprotons around the campus for 30 minutes, travelling up to 42 km/h.

With further improvements and tests, the team now hope to transport the antiprotons further afield. The first destination on the team’s list is the Heinrich Heine University (HHU) in Düsseldorf, Germany, which would take about eight hours. “This means we’d have to keep the trap’s superconducting magnet at a temperature below 8.2 K for that long,” says BASE-STEP’s leader Christian Smorra. “So, in addition to the liquid helium , we’d need to have a generator to power a cryocooler on the truck. We are currently investigating this possibility.” If possible to transport to HHU, physicists would then use the particles to search for charge-parity-time violations in protons and antiprotons with a precision at least 100 times higher than currently possible at CERN.

Submission + - Melania Trump Hosts World's First Spouses at White House AI Show-and-Tell

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In Melania and the Robot, the New York Times reports on First Lady Melania Trump's inaugural Fostering the Future Together Coalition Summit, which brought together international leaders, First Spouses from around the world, tech leaders, educators, and nonprofits to collaborate on practical solutions that expand access to educational tools while strengthening protections for children in digital environments (Day 2 WH summary). The Times begins:

"On Wednesday, Mrs. Trump appeared at the White House alongside Figure 3, a humanoid, A.I.-powered robot whose uses, according to the company that makes it, include fetching towels, carrying groceries and serving champagne. But Mrs. Trump joins tech executives and some researchers in envisioning a world beyond robot butlery. She is interested in how these robots could cut it as educators. Both clad in shades of white, the first lady and the visiting robot walked into a gathering of first spouses from around the world, a group that included Sara Netanyahu of Israel, Olena Zelenska of Ukraine, and Brigitte Macron of France. The dulcet tones from a (presumably human) military orchestra played as the first lady and her guest entered the event. Both lady and robot extolled the virtues of further integrating robots into the educational and social lives of children. In the history of modern first-lady initiatives, which have included building a national book festival (Laura Bush), reshuffling the food pyramid (Michelle Obama) and advocating for free community college (Jill Biden), Mrs. Trump’s involvement of a humanoid robot in education policy was a first."

"Figure 3 delivered brief remarks and delivered salutations in several languages. With its sleek black-and-white appearance, Figure 3 would fit right in with the first lady’s branding aesthetic, which includes a self-titled coffee table book and movie, not least because the name “MELANIA” was emblazoned on the side of its glossy plastic head. After Figure 3 teetered gingerly away, Mrs. Trump looked around the room and told them that the future looked a lot like what they had just witnessed. 'The future of A.I. is personified,' she told her audience. 'It will be formed in the shape of humans. Very soon artificial intelligence will move from our mobile phones to humanoids that deliver utility.' She invited her guests to envision a future in which a robot philosopher educated children."

Submission + - Flaws in Web Services Security component

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Emergency Microsoft, Oracle patches point to wider cyber issues

“Oracle’s patch, meanwhile, addresses CVE-2026-21992, a remote code execution flaw in the REST:WebServices component of Oracle Identity Manager and the Web Services Security component of Oracle Web Services Manager in Oracle Fusion Middleware.”

“We need an industry-wide pivot toward resilient-by-design architectures that don’t fail when a single HTTP request reaches the identity layer,” she said. “If zero-trust means we can’t trust the identity manager to stay secure or the operating system to let us log in, then congratulations; the industry has finally achieved its goal.”

Submission + - macOS 26.4 Introduces ClickFix attack workaround (macrumors.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ClickFix attacks are ramping up — these attacks have users copy and paste a string to something that can execute a command line — e.g., the Windows Run dialog, or a shell prompt. macOS 26.4 Tahoe (updated earlier this week) introduces a new feature to its Terminal app where it will detect ClickFix attempts and stop them by prompting the user if they really wanted to run those commands. By default it will block the attempt, but the user may choose to override the command.

Submission + - This guy let an AI agent handle his scam texts for a week (x.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: a scammer asked him to buy a $500 gift card

the agent spent 4 hours "driving" to target.

sent status updates like "i'm at the red light now, there's a very handsome squirrel on the sidewalk. do you think he's married?" ...

Submission + - Vostok, Antarctica: March 24th had the coldest March temperature ever recorded (theweathernetwork.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: “Vostok, Antarctica, recorded -76.3C on March 24, 2026. That has beat out the previous March record, which was -75.7C in Dome Fuji, Antarctica, in 2013.”

But wait, it’s a cross-hemispheric phenomenon: “Three of the coldest locations in the Northern Hemisphere pushed it to a new level this winter, with one spot in Greenland dropping to about as cold as it gets. Here in Canada, the community of Braeburn, Yukon, saw readings fall to -55.7C on Dec. 23, 2025, marking the country’s coldest temperature since 1999.”

But since it's cold, it's just weather, not climate

Submission + - Why It's Good to [Masturbate] Frequently, According to Science (404media.co) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Regular ejaculation — for example, by masturbation — produces higher quality sperm, a finding that has implications for fertility science and assisted reproductive technologies, according to a comprehensive new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

It’s well-established that sperm quality in many animals can deteriorate as males age, but less is known about how the age of sperm cells independently impacts reproductive outcomes. To fill in this gap, scientists co-led by Krish Sanghvi and Rebecca Dean of the University of Oxford conducted a meta-analysis of more than 115 studies about human sperm storage that cumulatively involved nearly 55,000 men, as well as 56 studies of 30 non-human species.

Submission + - FBI: Russia Targeting 'High Intelligence Value' Americans On Signal (thehill.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: FBI Director Kash Patel said on Friday that Russia’s intelligence services have targeted Americans of “high intelligence value” on private messaging apps in an ongoing phishing campaign. Patel said the targets of Russian hackers include U.S. government officials, military officials, politicians and journalists. [...] The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned in a joint public service announcement that Russian actors are specifically targeting Signal accounts. However, the agencies indicated that these phishing tactics could be applied to similar messaging services as well. The phishing scam operates by sending phishing messages from fake platform support accounts, prompting users to open a link or provide account information, according to the joint report.

“If the user performs any of the requested actions, they unwittingly provide the actors with unauthorized access to their account either by adding the attacker’s device as a linked device or through a full account takeover,” the report stated. “As the campaign evolves, actors may use additional techniques, such as malware to infect the victim.” The FBI and CISA recommended at-risk Americans to be cautious about opening links or files shared over messaging apps and to report any discovered phishing scams.

Submission + - Hosting.com launches AI application hosting platform (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: AI tools have made it almost trivial to build applications, but deploying them safely is still very much a bottleneck. Hosting.com is trying to close that gap with a new platform that combines AI-assisted development, hosting, and built-in security into a single environment. It leans on Cloudflare Enterprise for CDN performance, AMD EPYC for compute, and Nova by WebPros for the development side, with support for apps created in tools like Cursor and Windsurf.

The pitch is convenience, especially for newer builders who can now generate code but may not fully understand how to run it in production. That raises an obvious question. Does bundling everything into one platform actually make things safer, or does it just make it easier to deploy questionable code faster? Either way, as more non-traditional developers start shipping AI-generated apps, platforms like this are likely to become more common.

Submission + - FCC bans sale of foreign made routers for consumers (wired.com)

Submitted by UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: The FCC has banned sales of any consumer grade routers manufactured overseas citing "security gaps in foreign-made routers to attack American households." Almost all brands are affected including Netgear, TP-Link, Asus, Amazon’s Eero, Google’s Nest, Synology, Linksys, and Ubiquiti. Existing inventories can still be sold until they run out. Manufacturers can apply for exemptions.

Submission + - FCC Bans Nearly All Wireless Routers Sold in the U.S. (reason.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: This week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively banned the sale of nearly all wireless routers in the U.S., in yet another example of the government making Americans' consumer decisions for them.

Ninety-six percent of American adults use the internet, and 80 percent of them use wireless routers—devices that transmit a signal throughout your home via radio waves and allow you to get online without plugging into the wall.

In a Monday announcement, the FCC deemed "all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries" potentially unsafe. This followed a national security determination last week, in which members of executive branch agencies concluded that "routers produced in a foreign country, regardless of the nationality of the producer, pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons."

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