A software developer who built his own home server in response to Amazon's removal of Kindle book downloads now argues that self-hosting "is NOT the future we should be fighting for." Drew Lyton constructed a home server running open-source alternatives to Google Drive, Google Photos, Audible, Kindle, and Netflix after Amazon announced that "Kindle users would no longer be able to download and back up their book libraries to their computers."

The change prompted Amazon to update Kindle store language to say "users are purchasing licenses -- not books." Lyton's setup involved a Lenovo P520 with 128GB RAM, multiple hard drives, and Docker containers running applications like Immich for photo storage and Jellyfin for media streaming. The technical complexity required "138 words to describe but took me the better part of two weeks to actually do."

The implementation was successful but Lyton concluded that self-hosting "assumes isolated, independent systems are virtuous. But in reality, this simply makes them hugely inconvenient." He proposes "publicly funded, accessible, at cost cloud-services" as an alternative, suggesting libraries could provide "100GB of encrypted file storage, photo-sharing and document collaboration tools, and media streaming services -- all for free."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: Edward Saatchi isn't totally sure people will flock to Showrunner, the new AI-generated TV show service his company is launching publicly this week. But he has a vote of confidence from Amazon, which has invested in Fable, Saatchi's San Francisco-based start-up. The amount of Amazon's funding in Fable isn't being disclosed. The money is going toward building out Showrunner, which Fable has hyped as the "Netflix of AI": a service that lets you type in a few words to create scenes -- or entire episodes -- of a TV show, either from scratch or based on an existing story-world someone else has created.

Fable is launching Showrunner to let users tinker with the animation-focused generative-AI system, following several months in a closed alpha test with 10,000 users. Initially, Showrunner will be free to use but eventually the company plans to charge creators $10-$20 per month for credits allowing them to create hundreds of TV scenes, Saatchi said. Viewing Showrunner-generated content will be free, and anyone can share the AI video on YouTube or other third-party platforms. [...] Fable's Showrunner public launch features two original "shows" -- story worlds with characters users can steer into various narrative arcs. The first is "Exit Valley," described as "a 'Family Guy'-style TV comedy set in 'Sim Francisco' satirizing the AI tech leaders Sam Altman, Elon Musk, et al." The other is "Everything Is Fine," in which a husband and wife, going to Ikea, have a huge fight -- whereupon they're transported to a world where they're separated and have to find each other. [...]

Showrunner is powered by Fable's proprietary AI model, SHOW-2. Last year, the company published a research paper on how it built the SHOW-1 model. As part of that, it released nine AI-generated episodes based on "South Park." The episodes, made without the permission of the "South Park" creators, received more than 80 million views. (Saatchi said he was in touch with the "South Park" team, who were reassured the IP wasn't being deployed commercially.) [...] Out of the gate, Showrunner is focused on animated content because it requires much less processing power than realistic-looking live-action video scenes. Saatchi said Fable wants to stay out of the "knife fight" among big AI companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta that are racing to create photorealistic content. "If you're competing with Google, are you going to win?" Saatchi said. "Our goal is to have the most creative models," he said.

Australia's first domestically built rocket to attempt orbital launch crashed just 14 seconds after liftoff, though the company still declared the mission a success for igniting all engines and leaving the launch pad. The Associated Press reports: The rocket Eris, launched by Gilmour Space Technologies, was the first Australian-designed and manufactured orbital launch vehicle to lift off from the country and was designed to carry small satellites to orbit. It launched Wednesday morning local time in a test flight from a spaceport near the small town of Bowen in the north of Queensland state. In videos published by Australian news outlets, the 23-meter (75-foot) rocket appeared to clear the launch tower and hovered in the air before falling out of sight. Plumes of smoke were seen rising above the site. No injuries were reported. The company hailed the launch as a success in a statement posted to Facebook. A spokesperson said all four hybrid-propelled engines ignited and the maiden flight included 23 seconds of engine burn time and 14 seconds of flight. "Of course I would have liked more flight time but happy with this," wrote CEO Adam Gilmour on LinkedIn. Gilmour said in February that it was "almost unheard of" for a private rocket company to successfully launch to orbit on its first attempt.

"This is an important first step towards the giant leap of a future commercial space industry right here in our region," added Mayor Ry Collins of the local Whitsunday Regional Council.

Earlier this month, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise settled its antitrust case with the U.S. Justice Department, "paving the way for its acquisition of rival kit maker Juniper Networks" for $14 billion. According to Axios, the deal was heavily influenced by national security concerns and a desire to bolster American competition against China's Huawei. The outlet reports that the U.S. intelligence community "intervened to persuade the Justice Department that allowing the merger to proceed was essential to helping U.S. business compete with China's Huawei Technologies, among other national-security issues." From the report: "In light of significant national security concerns, a settlement ... serves the interests of the United States by strengthening domestic capabilities and is critical to countering Huawei and China." The official said blocking the deal would have "hindered American companies and empowered" Chinese competitors. A Justice Department spokesman added that DOJ "works very closely with our partners in the IC [intelligence community] and always considers their views when deciding how best to proceed with a case."

The merger was back in the news this week with reports that two senior enforcers in the DOJ's antitrust division were fired Monday amid infighting over the department's settlement greenlighting HPE's $14 billion acquisition of Juniper. Attorney General Pam Bondi had conversations with top intelligence officials that convinced her there was a strong national interest in not driving allies to Chinese technology, a senior administration official tells us.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In a rare move, Google has confirmed it will sign the European Union's AI Code of Practice, a framework it initially opposed for being too harsh. However, Google isn't totally on board with Europe's efforts to rein in the AI explosion. The company's head of global affairs, Kent Walker, noted that the code could stifle innovation if it's not applied carefully, and that's something Google hopes to prevent. While Google was initially opposed to the Code of Practice, Walker says the input it has provided to the European Commission has been well-received, and the result is a legal framework it believes can provide Europe with access to "secure, first-rate AI tools." The company claims that the expansion of such tools on the continent could boost the economy by 8 percent (about 1.8 trillion euros) annually by 2034.

These supposed economic gains are being dangled like bait to entice business interests in the EU to align with Google on the Code of Practice. While the company is signing the agreement, it appears interested in influencing the way it is implemented. Walker says Google remains concerned that tightening copyright guidelines and forced disclosure of possible trade secrets could slow innovation. Having a seat at the table could make it easier to bend the needle of regulation than if it followed some of its competitors in eschewing voluntary compliance. [...] The AI Code of Practice aims to provide AI firms with a bit more certainty in the face of a shifting landscape. It was developed with the input of more than 1,000 citizen groups, academics, and industry experts. The EU Commission says companies that adopt the voluntary code will enjoy a lower bureaucratic burden, easing compliance with the block's AI Act, which came into force last year.

Under the terms of the code, Google will have to publish summaries of its model training data and disclose additional model features to regulators. The code also includes guidance on how firms should manage safety and security in compliance with the AI Act. Likewise, it includes paths to align a company's model development with EU copyright law as it pertains to AI, a sore spot for Google and others. Companies like Meta that don't sign the code will not escape regulation. All AI companies operating in Europe will have to abide by the AI Act, which includes the most detailed regulatory framework for generative AI systems in the world. The law bans high-risk uses of AI like intentional deception or manipulation of users, social scoring systems, and real-time biometric scanning in public spaces. Companies that violate the rules in the AI Act could be hit with fines as high as 35 million euros ($40.1 million) or up to 7 percent of the offender's global revenue.

Smartphone maker Nothing's $799 Phone 3 has been "mired in controversy among the same customers who rallied behind the company's past products" since its July launch, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Tech enthusiasts have "lambasted the company for the phone's peculiar industrial design and what they perceive to be an unreasonable price."

The Android device lacks the most performant Qualcomm processor chip found in premium Android phones and the camera performance "falls short of other handsets in this price bracket," the publication wrote in a scathing review. The phone costs $200 more than its predecessor and matches pricing with Apple's iPhone 16, Samsung's Galaxy S25, and Google's Pixel 9.

Critics across Reddit and social media have attacked Nothing for removing the signature Glyph Lights from previous models. Comments on Nothing's YouTube channel have been "bruising," focusing on the phone's oddly positioned camera array. "At its current price, the handset is too expensive for what it offers," the review concludes.

India launched the $1.5 billion NISAR radar imaging satellite on Wednesday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, marking the first joint mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation. The satellite uses dual radar frequencies -- NASA's L-band and ISRO's S-band -- to detect Earth surface changes as small as one centimeter from its 747-kilometer orbit.

NISAR will map the entire planet every 12 days using a 240-kilometer-wide radar swath, providing data for climate monitoring and disaster response that will be freely available to users worldwide.

Dropbox will shut down its password manager service by October 28, giving users until then to extract their data before permanent deletion. The discontinuation occurs in phases: Dropbox Passwords becomes view-only on August 28, the mobile app stops working September 11, and complete shutdown follows October 28. The company cited focusing on core product features as the reason for dropping the service, which launched in 2020 for paid users and expanded to all users in 2021.

Google will soon cast an even wider net with its AI age estimation technology. From a report: After announcing plans to find and restrict underage users on YouTube, the company now says it will start detecting whether Google users based in the US are under 18.

Age estimation is rolling out over the next few weeks and will only impact a "small set" of users to start, though Google plans on expanding it more widely. The company says it will use the information a user has searched for or the types of YouTube videos they watch to determine their age. Google first announced this initiative in February. If Google believes that a user is under 18, it will apply the same restrictions it places on users who proactively identify as underage.

Journalist Jack Poulson accidentally discovered that Google had completely removed two of his articles from search results after someone exploited a vulnerability in the company's Refresh Outdated Content tool.

The security flaw allowed malicious actors to de-list specific web pages by submitting URLs with altered capitalization to Google's recrawling system. When Google attempted to index these modified URLs, the system received 404 errors and subsequently removed all variations of the page from search results, including the original legitimate articles.

The affected stories concerned tech CEO Delwin Maurice Blackman's 2021 arrest on felony domestic violence charges. In a statement to 404 Media, Google confirmed the vulnerability and said it had deployed a fix for the issue.

BrianFagioli writes: AI might be the future of software development, but a new report suggests we're not quite ready to take our hands off the wheel. Veracode has released its 2025 GenAI Code Security Report, and the findings are pretty alarming. Out of 80 carefully designed coding tasks completed by over 100 large language models, nearly 45 percent of the AI-generated code contained security flaws.

That's not a small number. These are not minor bugs, either. We're talking about real vulnerabilities, with many falling under the OWASP Top 10, which highlights the most dangerous issues in modern web applications. The report found that when AI was given the option to write secure or insecure code, it picked the wrong path nearly half the time.

JPMorgan's proposed fees for customer data access would cost fintech startups between 60 and 100% of their annual revenue "just from one bank," according to a trade group representing the affected firms. Steve Boms, executive director of the Financial Data and Technology Association, said the charges would apply across all 30 companies in his group that received pricing notices from the nation's largest bank. The trade association, whose members include Plaid, Fiserv and Intuit, called JPMorgan's move a "pure and simple" attempt to kill competition that would "put third parties out of business altogether."

The fees could take effect in September, ending more than a decade of free data access that fintech companies have used to build their business models. JPMorgan can now charge for data access after the Trump administration changed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules that previously prohibited such fees. The Financial Technology Association has taken the dispute to federal courts seeking to restore the Biden-era protections, while crypto trade groups have written directly to President Trump warning the fees would hurt digital currency companies.

Manager engagement has plummeted to its lowest level since tracking began, with only 27% of managers globally reporting they feel involved and enthusiastic about their work, according to Gallup's annual State of the Global Workplace report. The 3-percentage-point decline from 2023 marks an unprecedented drop in manager satisfaction.

Overall employee engagement fell to 21% in 2024 from 23% the previous year, representing only the second decline in 15 years of data collection. The last drop occurred during 2020 COVID lockdowns. Female managers experienced the steepest decline at 7 percentage points, while younger managers fell 5 points. Managers now oversee nearly three times as many employees as in 2017, yet only 44% have received managerial training.

Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday that Meta's AI systems have begun improving themselves over the past few months, calling the development "slow for now, but undeniable" and declaring that superintelligence is now within reach. The Meta CEO staked out the company's vision in a blog post for what he termed "personal superintelligence" -- AI that helps individuals achieve their goals rather than replacing human work entirely.

Zuckerberg drew a sharp line between Meta's approach and that of other companies in the field, arguing that competitors want superintelligence "directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output." Meta's version would give people their own superintelligent assistants that know them deeply and help them create, experience adventures, and become better friends.

Zuckerberg envisions smart glasses as the primary computing device, understanding context through what users see and hear throughout their day. The next few years represent a critical juncture, Zuckerberg wrote, calling the rest of this decade "the decisive period for determining the path this technology will take."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Google executives are pushing employees to act with more urgency in their use of artificial intelligence as the company looks for ways to cut costs. That was the message at an all-hands meeting last week, featuring CEO Sundar Pichai and Brian Saluzzo, who runs the teams building the technical foundation for Google's flagship products. "Anytime you go through a period of extraordinary investment, you respond by adding a lot of headcount, right?" Pichai said, according to audio obtained by CNBC. "But in this AI moment, I think we have to accomplish more by taking advantage of this transition to drive higher productivity. [...] We are competing with other companies in the world," Pichai said at the meeting. "There will be companies which will become more efficient through this moment in terms of employee productivity, which is why I think it's important to focus on that." [...]

"We are going to be going through a period of much higher investment and I think we have to be frugal with our resources, and I would strive to be more productive and efficient as a company," Pichai said, adding that he's "very optimistic" about how Google is doing. At the meeting, Saluzzo highlighted a number of tools the company is building for software engineers, or SWEs, to help "everybody at Google be more AI-savvy." "We feel the urgency to really quickly and urgently get AI into more of the coding workflows to address top needs so you see a much more rapid increase in velocity," Saluzzo said. Saluzzo said Google has a portfolio of AI products available to employees "so folks can go faster." He mentioned an internal site called "AI Savvy Google" which has courses, toolkits and learning sessions, including some for individual product areas.

Google's engineering education team, which develops courses for internal and external use, partnered with DeepMind on a training called "Building with Gemini" that the company will start promoting soon, Saluzzo said. He also referenced a new internal AI coding tool called Cider that helps software engineers with various aspects of the development process. Since May, when the company first introduced Cider, 50% of users tap the service on a weekly basis, Saluzzo said. Regarding Google's internal AI tools, Saluzzo said that employees should "expect them to continuously get better" and that "they'll become a pretty integral part of most SWE work."