HP has quietly launched a gaming laptop subscription service called the OMEN Gaming Subscription that lets customers pay a monthly fee to use one of several gaming laptops but never actually own the hardware, even after paying well past the machine's retail price.

The service ranges from $50 a month for an HP Victus 15-inch laptop with an RTX 4050 to $130 a month for an Omen Max 16 with an RTX 5080. At current sale prices, subscribers would exceed the cost of buying the laptop outright within 16 to 19 months; at MSRP, that window stretches to roughly 25 months. In exchange for giving up ownership, subscribers get yearly hardware upgrades, next-day replacements, 24/7 support, and an ongoing warranty. There is a 30-day trial period, but cancelling in the second month triggers steep early termination fees -- $550 for the Victus 15 and $1,430 for the Omen Max 16. Cancellation becomes free only after the 13th month. HP also offers accessories like the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless headset as add-on rentals for $8 a month.

Comcast's attempt to slow broadband customer losses still isn't stopping the bleeding as fiber and fixed wireless competition intensifies. In Q4 2025 alone, Comcast lost 181,000 broadband subscribers, even as it leans harder into wireless bundling and other business lines like Peacock and theme parks. Ars Technica reports: The Q4 net loss is more than the 176,000 loss predicted by analysts, although not as bad as the 199,000-customer loss that spurred [Comcast President Mike Cavanagh's] comment about Comcast "not winning in the marketplace" nine months ago. The Q4 2025 loss reported today is also worse than the 139,000-customer loss in Q4 2024 and the 34,000-customer loss in Q4 2023.

"Subscriber losses were 181,000, as the early traction we are seeing from our new initiatives was more than offset by continued competitive intensity," Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said during an earnings call today, according to a Motley Fool transcript. Comcast's residential broadband customers dropped to 28.72 million, while business broadband customers dropped to 2.54 million, for a total of 31.26 million.

Armstrong said that average revenue per user grew 1.1 percent, "consistent with the deceleration that we had previewed reflecting our new go-to-market pricing, including lower everyday pricing and strong adoption of free wireless lines." Armstrong expects average revenue per user to continue growing slowly "for the next couple of quarters, driven by the absence of a rate increase, the impact from free wireless lines, and the ongoing migration of our base to simplified pricing." Comcast Connectivity & Platforms chief Steve Croney said the firm is facing "a more competitive environment from fiber" and continued competition from fixed wireless. "The market is going to remain intensely competitive," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple today introduced a new Apple Creator Studio bundle that offers access to six creative apps, as well as exclusive AI features and content, as part of a single subscription. In the U.S., pricing is set at $12.99 per month or $129 per year. Here are the six apps included with an Apple Creator Studio subscription: Final Cut Pro on the Mac and iPad; Logic Pro on the Mac and iPad; Pixelmator Pro on the Mac and iPad; Motion on the Mac; Compressor on the Mac; and MainStage on the Mac.

Pixelmator Pro was previously only available on the Mac, but it is coming to the iPad. Apple Creator Studio subscribers will also receive access to exclusive AI features and premium content across not only the Final Cut Pro and Pixelmator Pro apps, but also the iWork apps Numbers, Pages, and Keynote, and the Freeform app later this year. So if you want the best, fully-featured versions of all of these apps going forward, you will need to subscribe to the bundle.

Apple says there will be separate Creator Studio and one-time purchase "versions" of each app. If you have both versions installed on your Mac, the Creator Studio versions will have "unique icons" so that they stand out, according to Apple. Apple Creator Studio will be available through the App Store starting Wednesday, January 28. All new subscribers will be able to receive a one-month free trial, and customers who purchase a new Mac or a qualifying iPad model with an A16, A17 Pro, or M-series chip or later will be eligible for an extended three-month free trial. "If you are not interested in subscribing to the new Apple Creator Studio bundle introduced today, you will officially start to miss out on some new features," adds MacRumors in a separate article. If you bought the apps via a one-time purchase, or plan to do so in the future, "you will no longer have access to all new features," though they will continue to receive updates.

"There are some exceptions, as Apple says Logic Pro and MainStage will have all the same features whether they are subscription or one-time-purchase versions," notes MacRumors. "It looks like most if not all of the new features that will be limited to Creator Studio subscribers will be powered by AI, as Apple repeatedly describes them as 'intelligent' features. The apps are continuing to receive other new features that do not require a subscription over time, so one-time purchasers are not completely left out."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Google is putting even more generative AI tools into Gmail as part of its goal to further personalize user inboxes and streamline searches. On Thursday, the company announced a new "AI Inbox" tab, currently in a beta testing phase, that reads every message in a user's Gmail and suggests a list of to-dos and key topics, based on what it summarizes. In Google's example of what this AI Inbox could look like in Gmail, the new tab takes context from a user's messages and suggests they reschedule their dentist appointment, reply to a request from their child's sports coach, and pay an upcoming fee before the deadline. Also under the AI Inbox tab is a list of important topics worth browsing, nestled beneath the action items at the top. Each suggested to-do and topic links back to the original email for more context and for verification.

[...] For users who are concerned about their privacy, the information Google gleans by skimming through inboxes will not be used to improve the company's foundational AI models. "We didn't just bolt AI onto Gmail," says Blake Barnes, who leads the project for Google. "We built a secure privacy architecture, specifically for this moment." He emphasizes that users can turn off Gmail's new AI tools if they don't want them. At the same time Google announced its AI Inbox, the company made free for all Gmail users multiple Gemini features that were previously available only to paying subscribers. This includes the Help Me Write tool, which generates emails from a user prompt, as well as AI Overviews for email threads, which essentially posts a TL;DR summary at the top of long message threads. Subscribers to Google's Ultra and Pro plans, which start at $20 a month, get two additional new features in their Gmail inbox. First, an AI proofreading tool that suggests more polished grammar and sentence structures. And second, an AI Overviews tool that can search your whole inbox and create relevant summaries on a topic, rather than just summarizing a single email thread.

The Academy has struck a multi-year deal to move the Oscars to YouTube starting in 2029, ending decades on ABC and making the ceremony free to stream worldwide with YouTube holding exclusive global rights. Variety reports: The Oscars, including red carpet coverage, behind-the-scenes content and Governors Ball, will be available live and for free on YouTube to viewers around the world, as well as to YouTube TV subscribers in the United States. Architects of the agreement said they hope the move to YouTube will help make the Oscars more accessible to "the Academy's growing global audience through features such as closed captioning and audio tracks available in multiple languages." [...]

The Academy had been seeking a new broadcast licensing agreement for the better part of 2025. Over the summer, several expected and unconventional buyers, including NBCUniversal and Netflix, had come into the mix as potential suitors. Insiders believe that YouTube shelled out over nine figures for the Oscars, besting the high eight-figure offers from Disney/ABC and NBCUniversal. Under the most recent contract, Disney was paying around $100 million annually for the Oscars -- but given the ratings declines for the kudocast, Disney/ABC were reportedly looking to spend less on license fees.

[...] It's not a secret that the Academy and Disney/ABC would occasionally have disagreements over the best path for the Oscars, including the show's length, which awards to present and who should host. Now, on a streamer with no time limits, the Oscars can be any length, and the Academy likely has carte blanche to do whatever it wants with the telecast. "They can do whatever they want," says one insider. "You can have a six-hour Oscars hosted by MrBeast."

Mozilla is officially ending its partnership with Onerep after more than a year of controversy over the company's founder secretly running people-search and data-broker sites. Monitor Plus will be discontinued by December 2025, existing subscribers will receive prorated refunds, and Mozilla says it will focus on privacy tools it fully controls. KrebsOnSecurity reports: In a statement published Tuesday, Mozilla said it will soon discontinue Monitor Plus, which offered data broker site scans and automated personal data removal from Onerep. "We will continue to offer our free Monitor data breach service, which is integrated into Firefox's credential manager, and we are focused on integrating more of our privacy and security experiences in Firefox, including our VPN, for free," the advisory reads.

Mozilla said current Monitor Plus subscribers will retain full access through the wind-down period, which ends on Dec. 17, 2025. After that, those subscribers will automatically receive a prorated refund for the unused portion of their subscription. "We explored several options to keep Monitor Plus going, but our high standards for vendors, and the realities of the data broker ecosystem made it challenging to consistently deliver the level of value and reliability we expect for our users," Mozilla statement reads.

OpenAI today released GPT-5.1, an update to its flagship model line. The update includes two versions: GPT-5.1 Instant, which OpenAI says adds adaptive reasoning capabilities and improved instruction following, and GPT-5.1 Thinking, which adjusts its processing time based on query complexity.

The Thinking model responds roughly twice as fast on simple tasks and twice as slow on complex problems compared to its predecessor. The company began rolling out both models to paid subscribers and plans to extend access to free users in coming days. OpenAI added three personality presets -- Professional, Candid, and Quirky -- to its existing customization options. The previous GPT-5 models will remain available through a legacy dropdown menu for three months.

Speaking of Australia, its government has introduced content quotas on global streamers. From a report: The rules require Netflix, Prime Video and the other global streamers with more than one million Australian subscribers to spend 10% of their total Australian expenditure -- or 7.5% of their revenues -- on local originals, whether they are dramas, children's shows, docs, or arts and educational programs.

Following the announcement, the legislation will be introduced into the Australian parliament. Australia's Labor government has long planned to being in the quotas as part of its Revive cultural policy, but months and months of delays had left the local industry wondering how committed their political leaders were to the plan. Global streamers have broadly rejected the necessity of quotas, claiming their local investment in content and jobs offsets them.

Hackers have been spreading malware through more than 3,000 YouTube videos advertising cracked software and game hacks, cybersecurity firm Check Point warned this week. The campaign, active since at least 2021, tripled its video production in 2025. The videos promoted free versions of Adobe Photoshop, FL Studio, Microsoft Office, and game cheats for titles like Roblox. Fake comments created the appearance of legitimacy, the researchers found.

Users who downloaded archives from Dropbox, Google Drive, or MediaFire were instructed to disable Windows Defender before opening files. The downloads contained malware including Lumma and Rhadamanthys, which steal passwords and cryptocurrency wallet information. The hackers hijacked existing accounts and created new ones. One compromised channel with 129,000 subscribers posted a cracked Photoshop video that reached 291,000 views. Another video for FL Studio received over 147,000 views.

"Earlier available only to the paying subscribers, the Comet browser now offers its core features to all users at no cost," writes the Times of India. "This includes AI-powered search, contextual recommendations, and integrated tools designed to streamline research and content discovery." They say the move reflects the Chromium-based browser's goal to "compete with incumbents like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge" — but also reflects Perplexity's "broader mission to democratize AI tools."
More details from The Verge: The internet is better on Comet," the company says, promising to remain free forever as it styles the browser as a serious challenger to Google's Chrome...

It's supposed to make surfing the web simpler and help you with tasks like shopping, booking trips, and general life admin. To borrow the company's words again: you "get more done." The AI-powered browser launched in July, though was only available for users who subscribed to the $200 per month Perplexity Max plan... No subscription at all will be needed to use Comet going forward, the company says.
Perplexity has even struck deals with major sites including the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times to offer free access to their sites for one month through the Comet browser. And last week Perplexity also launched an agressive paid referral program, where active Perplexity Pro/Max subscribers get a payout of up to $15 for each friend who downloads and uses Comet through their affiliate link. (The payout size is based on the friend's country, with $15 being the payout amount for a U.S. user, with $10 payouts for users in 19 other countries include Canada, Australia, the U.K., several EU countries, Japan, and South Korea.

In addition, Srinivas has been sharing positive tweets about Comet. (Like "This is unbelievable. Comet automatically hunts down Sora 2 invite codes across the web and signs you up!") But Perplexity is making even bigger claims for its browser: Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas said that the Comet AI browser can improve productivity so that companies won't need to hire more people. "Instead of hiring one more person on your team, you could just use Comet to supplement all the work that you're doing," Srinivas told CNBC's "Squawk Box"... The CEO said the artificial intelligence-powered web browser is a "true personal assistant" that allows users to complete more tasks in the same amount of time and said that the productivity gained could be worth $10,000 per year for a single person...

Other tech companies have also been rolling out their own AI browser assistants. In January, OpenAI introduced its web agent, Operator, and Google released Gemini AI to its Chrome browser in September.
Meanwhile, The Verge adds, The Browser Company (makers of the Arc browser) "is going all in on Dia, and Opera just launched its own AI browser, Neon."

Of course, popularity brings problems, writes the Times of India: iPhone users are being warned by Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas against downloading a fake 'Comet' app on the App Store. He clarified that the official iOS version is not yet released and the current listing is unauthorized spam..
And earlier this month the browser security platform LayerX described a "CometJacking" attack where malicious prompts could be hidden in URLs (as a parameter). Comet is instructed "to look for data in memory and connected services (e.g., Gmail, Calendar), encode the results (e.g., base64), and POST them to an attacker-controlled endpoint... all while appearing to the user as a harmless 'ask the assistant' flow." (And with some trivial encoding it also seems to evade exfiltration checks.)

The Hacker News reported that Perplexity has classified the findings as "no security impact."

Paramount has acquired The Free Press, Bari Weiss's Substack-born media outlet, for $150 million and appointed Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News. The move effectively places a conservative-leaning Substack writer at the helm of a legacy news network, following the FCC's approval of the Skydance-Paramount merger, which required CBS to feature a broader "diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum." The Verge reports: Before starting The Free Press, Weiss worked as an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal from 2013 to 2017 and later became an op-ed editor and writer at The New York Times to expand the publication's stable of conservative columnists during Donald Trump's first term. She resigned from the NYT in 2020, citing an "illiberal environment."

Weiss started a Substack newsletter in 2021, called Common Sense, which later evolved into The Free Press, touting itself as a media company "built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of great American journalism." As noted in the press release, The Free Press has grown its revenue 82 percent over the past year, while subscribers increased 86 percent to 1.5 million, 170,000 of which are paid subscriptions.

alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: Critics of YouTuber Ethan Klein are pushing back on subpoenas that would reveal their identities as part of an ongoing legal fight between Klein and his detractors. Klein is a popular content creator whose YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers. He's also involved in a labyrinthine personal and legal beef with three other content creators and the moderators of a subreddit that criticizes his work. Klein filed a legal motion to compel Discord and Reddit to reveal the identities of those moderators, a move their lawyers say would put them in harm's way and stifle free speech on the internet forever.

[...] On July 31, a judge allowed Klein's lawyers to file a subpoena with Reddit and Discord that would reveal the identities of the people running r/h3snark and an associated Discord server. On September 22, lawyers for the defendants filed a motion to quash the subpoenas. "On its face, the Action is about copyright infringement," the latest filing said. "At its heart, however, the Action is about stifling criticism and seeking retribution by unmasking individuals for perceived reputational harms TEI [Klein's production company] attributes to [John Doe moderators] unrelated to TEI's intellectual property rights." [...]

The anonymity of places like Reddit and Discord grant a layer of protection to people seeking to critique power. This case could set a dangerous precedent, the lawyers believe. "If the court allows TEI's Subpoenas, it would enable TEI to impose a considerable price on Does' use of the vehicle of anonymous speech -- including public exposure, real risks of retaliation and actual harm, and the financial and other burdens of defending the Action," the filing said. The filing added: "Very few would-be commentators are prepared to bear costs of this magnitude. So, when word gets out that the price tag of criticizing Ethan is this high -- that speech will disappear. But that is precisely what Ethan Klein wants."

Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a major copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, accusing the AI image generator of exploiting its movies and TV shows to train models and generate near-identical reproductions of iconic characters like Batman, Bugs Bunny, and Rick and Morty. From The Hollywood Reporter: The company "brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery's intellectual property" by letting subscribers produce images and videos of iconic copyrighted characters, alleges the complaint, filed on Thursday in California federal court. "The heart of what we do is develop stories and characters to entertain our audiences, bringing to life the vision and passion of our creative partners," said a Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson in a statement. "Midjourney is blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works, and we filed this suit to protect our content, our partners, and our investments."

For years, AI companies have been training their technology on data scraped across the internet without compensating creators. It's led to lawsuits from authors, record labels, news organizations, artists and studios, which contend that some AI tools erode demand for their content. Warner Bros. Discovery joins Disney and Universal, which earlier this year teamed up to sue Midjourney. By their thinking, the AI company is a free-rider plagiarizing their movies and TV shows. In the lawsuit, Warner Bros. Discovery points to Midjourney generating images of iconic copyrighted characters. At the forefront are heroes who're at the center of DC Studios' movies and TV shows, like Superman, Wonder Woman and The Joker; others are Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo characters who've become ubiquitous household names; more are Cartoon Network characters, including those from Rick and Morty, who've emerged as something of cultural touchstones in recent years. [...]

The lawsuit argues Midjourney's ability to return copyrighted characters is a "clear draw for subscribers," diverting consumers away from purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery-approved posters, wall art and prints, among other products that must now compete against the service. [...] Warner Bros. Discovery seeks Midjourney's profits attributable to the alleged infringement or, alternatively, $150,000 per infringed work, which could leave the AI company on the hook for massive damages. The thrust of the studios' lawsuits will likely be decided by one question: Are AI companies covered by fair use, the legal doctrine in intellectual property law that allows creators to build upon copyrighted works without a license? The lawsuit can be found here.

Investment research firm Bernstein warned Thursday that India faces a "strategic tech crisis" as US technology giants deploy predatory pricing strategies to lock up the Indian AI market. Perplexity Pro launched free for one year to Airtel's 350 million subscribers while OpenAI introduced a $5 monthly India subscription compared to $20 in the United States.

Bernstein analysts described regulatory "double standards" where foreign tech companies receive favorable treatment while domestic companies face what the firm called "crushing rules and government-led 'tech stacks' that make private business unviable." Private AI investment in India totaled $11.29 billion between 2013 and 2024 compared to $471 billion in the United States and $119 billion in China. From the report: When OpenAI, which is reportedly looking to set up a data center in India, announced the plans to launch a new office, it was met with another round of excitement -- "as if Open AI will hire all Indians at hefty salaries," the firm wrote in a note to clients Thursday. Bernstein analysts pour cold water on this excitement, dismissing it as a "repeat of the 90s" and arguing that the hype misses the fundamental power imbalance.

"Anyone, we repeat anyone, can build a data center... This is the start of the dominance of US tech in Indian AI environment ensuring Indian entrepreneurs do not get a fighting chance to stay relevant. They will run on the sidelines - piggybacking on the US foundation models or maybe even the Chinese," they wrote.

AOL (now a Yahoo subsidiary) just announced its dial-up internet service will be discontinued at the end of September.

"The change also means the retirement of the AOL Dialer software and the AOL Shield browser, both designed for older operating systems and slow connections that relied on the familiar screech of a modem handshake," remembers Slashdot reader BrianFagioli (noting that dial-up Internet "was once the gateway to the web for millions of households, back when speeds were measured in kilobits and waiting for a picture to load could feel like an eternity.")

AOL's dial-up service "has been publicly available for 34 years," writes Tom's Hardware. But AppleInsider notes the move comes more than 40 years after AOL started "as a very early Apple service." AOL itself started back in 1983 under the name Control Video Corporation, offering online services for the Atari 2600 console. After failing, it became Quantum Computer Services in 1985, eventually launching AppleLink in 1988 to connect Macintosh computers together... With the launch of PC Link for IBM-compatible PCs in 1988 and parting from Apple in October 1989, the company rebranded itself as America Online, or AOL... Even at its height, dial-up connections could get up to 56 kilobits per second under ideal conditions, while modern connections are measured in megabits and gigabits. Most of the service was also what's considered a "walled garden," with features that were only available through AOL itself and that it wasn't the actual, untamed Internet.
In the 1990s AOL "was how millions of people were introduced to the Internet," the article remembers, adding that "Even after the AOL Time Warner acquisition and the 2015 acquisition by Verizon, AOL was still a popular service. Astoundingly, it counted about two million dial-up subscribers at the time." In the 2021 acquisition of assets from Verizon by Apollo Global Management, AOL was said to have 1.5 million people paying for services. However, this was more for technical support and software, rather than for actual Internet access. A CNBC report at the time reports that the dial-up user count was "in the low thousands".... While it dies off, not with a bang but a whimper, AOL's dial-up is still remembered as one of the most transformative services in the Internet age.
"This change does not impact the numerous other valued products and services that these subscribers are able to access and enjoy as part of their plans," a Yahoo spokesperson told PC Magazine this week. "There is also no impact to our users' free AOL email accounts." AOL's disastrous 2001 merger with Time Warner and ongoing inability to deliver broadband to its customers... left it on a path to decline that acquiring such widely read sites as Engadget [2005] and TechCrunch [2010] did not stem. By 2014, the number of dial-up AOL customers had collapsed to 2.34 million. A year later, Verizon bought the company for $4.4 billion in an internet-content play that turned out to be as doomed as the Time Warner transaction. In 2021, Verizon unloaded both AOL and Yahoo, which it had separately purchased in 2017, to the private-equity firm Apollo Global Management....

The demise of AOL's dial-up service does not mean the extinction of the oldest form of consumer online access. Estimates from the Census Bureau's 2023 American Community Survey show 163,401 Americans connected to the internet via dial-up that year.

That was by far the smallest segment of the internet-using population, dwarfed by 100,166,949 subscribing to such forms of broadband as "cable, fiber optic, or DSL"; 8,628,648 using satellite; 3,318,901 using "Internet access without a subscription" (which suggests Wi-Fi from coffee shops or public libraries); and 1,445,135 via "other service."

The remaining AOL dial-up subscribers will need to find some sort of replacement, which in rural areas may be limited to fixed wireless or SpaceX's considerably more expensive Starlink. Or they may wind up joining the ranks of Americans with no internet access: 6,866,059, in those 2023 estimates.

Digital Foundry, the gaming hardware analysis publication known for its technical console breakdowns, has separated from IGN ownership as of today, with founder Richard Leadbetter purchasing the outlet and its complete archives. Leadbetter, who retained 50% ownership since selling half to Eurogamer in 2015, acquired an additional 25 percent from IGN while investor Rupert Loman, Eurogamer's original co-founder, purchased the remaining quarter.

The five-person team will operate independently, maintaining its YouTube channel with 1.5 million subscribers and Patreon support generating approximately $200,000 annually. The publication plans to develop a full website for its written content and expand coverage while keeping most content free.

Proton VPN reported a 1,400 percent hourly increase in signups over its baseline Friday — the day the UK's age verification law went into effect. For UK users, "apps with explicit content must now verify visitors' ages via methods such as facial recognition and banking info," notes Mashable: Proton VPN previously documented a 1,000 percent surge in new subscribers in June after Pornhub left France, its second-biggest market, amid the enactment of an age verification law there... A Proton VPN spokesperson told Mashable that it saw an increase in new subscribers right away at midnight Friday, then again at 9 a.m. BST. The company anticipates further surges over the weekend, they added. "This clearly shows that adults are concerned about the impact universal age verification laws will have on their privacy," the spokesperson said... Search interest for the term "Proton VPN" also saw a seven-day spike in the UK around 2 a.m. BST Friday, according to a Google Trends chart.
The Financial Times notes that VPN apps "made up half of the top 10 most popular free apps on the UK's App Store for iOS this weekend, according to Apple's rankings." Proton VPN leapfrogged ChatGPT to become the top free app in the UK, according to Apple's daily App Store charts, with similar services from developers Super Unlimited and Nord Security also rising over the weekend... Data from Google Trends also shows a significant increase in search queries for VPNs in the UK this weekend, with up to 10 times more people looking for VPNs at peak times...

"This is what happens when people who haven't got a clue about technology pass legislation," Anthony Rose, a UK-based tech entrepreneur who helped to create BBC iPlayer, the corporation's streaming service, said in a social media post. Rose said it took "less than five minutes to install a VPN" and that British people had become familiar with using them to access the iPlayer outside the UK. "That's the beauty of VPNs. You can be anywhere you like, and anytime a government comes up with stupid legislation like this, you just turn on your VPN and outwit them," he added...

Online platforms found in breach of the new UK rules face penalties of up to £18mn or 10 percent of global turnover, whichever is greater... However, opposition to the new rules has grown in recent days. A petition submitted through the UK parliament website demanding that the Online Safety Act be repealed has attracted more than 270,000 signatures, with the vast majority submitted in the past week. Ministers must respond to a petition, and parliament has to consider its topic for a debate, if signatures surpass 100,000.
X, Reddit and TikTok have also "introduced new 'age assurance' systems and controls for UK users," according to the article. But Mashable summarizes the situation succinctly.

"Initial research shows that VPNs make age verification laws in the U.S. and abroad tricky to enforce in practice."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A California lawmaker halted an effort to pass a law that would force Internet service providers to offer $15 monthly plans to people with low incomes. Assemblymember Tasha Boerner proposed the state law a few months ago, modeling the bill on a law enforced by New York. It seemed that other states were free to impose cheap-broadband mandates because the Supreme Court rejected broadband industry challenges to the New York law twice.

Boerner, a Democrat who is chair of the Communications and Conveyance Committee, faced pressure from Internet service providers to change or drop the bill. She made some changes, for example lowering the $15 plan's required download speeds from 100Mbps to 50Mbps and the required upload speeds from 20Mbps to 10Mbps. But the bill was still working its way through the legislature when, according to Boerner, Trump administration officials told her office that California could lose access to $1.86 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funds if it forces ISPs to offer low-cost service to people with low incomes.

That amount is California's share of a $42.45 billion fund created by Congress to expand access to broadband service. The Trump administration has overhauled program rules, delaying the grants. One change is that states can't tell ISPs what to charge for a low-cost plan. The US law that created BEAD requires Internet providers receiving federal funds to offer at least one "low-cost broadband service option for eligible subscribers." But in new guidance from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the agency said it prohibits states "from explicitly or implicitly setting the LCSO [low-cost service option] rate a subgrantee must offer." "All they would have to do to get exempted from AB 353 [the $15 broadband bill] would be to apply to the BEAD program," said Boerner. "Doesn't matter if their application was valid, appropriate, granted, or they got public money at the end of the day and built the projects -- the mere application for the BEAD program would exempt them from 353, if it didn't jeopardize from $1.86 billion to begin with. And that was a tradeoff I was unwilling to make."

Another California bill in the Senate would encourage, not require, ISPs to offer cheap broadband by making them eligible for Lifeline subsidies if they sell 100/20Mbps service for $30 or less.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT agent Thursday, an AI tool that can complete multi-step tasks including online shopping, creating PowerPoint presentations, and generating spreadsheets. The agent combines capabilities from two existing OpenAI services: Operator, which can browse and interact with websites like a human, and Deep Research, which handles complex online research tasks.

The tool runs on a new AI model developed specifically for agent capabilities and can perform tasks such as planning meals and ordering ingredients online, booking restaurant reservations, and creating slide decks based on competitor analysis. In demonstrations, the agent successfully browsed Etsy for vintage lamps under $200 with free shipping and automatically added items to a shopping cart.

ChatGPT agent is immediately available to Pro, Plus, and Team subscribers, with Enterprise and Education users gaining access later this summer. The tool requires user permission before making purchases or performing "irreversible" actions like sending emails. The startup, however, has cautioned that the agent "is far from perfect" and can take several minutes to complete tasks.

VPN provider BulletVPN has shut down its servers with immediate effect, leaving subscribers without service regardless of their subscription terms. The company announced the closure on its website, citing "shifts in market demand, evolving technology requirements, and sustainability of operations."

Users with active subscriptions can receive a free six-month subscription to competitor Windscribe, "along with discounted long-term plans." Windscribe clarified it has not acquired BulletVPN or assumed control of its operations, and no user data including email addresses or account information was shared between the companies.