A federal judge rejected Meta's bid to dismiss claims from 29 state attorneys general alleging that Facebook and Instagram were designed to addict children while concealing the harms. The judge found significant factual disputes that must be decided at trial. They also ruled that Meta failed to comply with federal parental notice and consent requirements for children under 13, "and granted summary judgement to the states on that issue," reports Reuters. From the report: In a separate statement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the decision a "critical win" in holding Meta accountable for fueling a mental health crisis among American children. Gonzalez Rogers also oversees related multidistrict litigation by more than 2,600 individuals, school districts and local governments over whether social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok addict children.

The states said research has shown that children's use of Facebook and Instagram could lead to depression, anxiety, insomnia, interference with education and daily life, and self-harm including suicide. Meta countered that the attorneys general had no evidence it misled consumers about its platforms' alleged addictiveness, including in congressional testimony by Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. The Menlo Park, California-based company said this was because "social media addiction" is not an established psychiatric condition, and therefore statements that its platforms are not addictive could not be false. Meta also said it didn't violate the children's online privacy law because it directed Facebook and Instagram to a general audience, not just children under age 13.

In a 38-page decision, Gonzalez Rogers found material factual disputes over whether Meta's social media platforms are addictive, whether Meta falsely denied it designed them that way, and whether it "partially" directed the platforms at children. "The AGs present a reasonable interpretation of [Meta's] statements that Facebook and Instagram are not designed in ways that cause teens to compulsively use the platforms to their detriment," the judge wrote. "To the extent plaintiffs' evidence shows that the platforms are in fact designed to do just that, a jury could reasonably find the statements were untrue to a reasonable person," she added. A trial over California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey's claims against Meta is scheduled for August 18, court records show. Further reading: Will Social Media Change After YouTube and Meta's Court Defeat?

Donald Trump shuttered the web site Climate.gov in 2025, cutting off public access to climate information from America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

But "former members of the site's team have brought much of it back at a new domain," reports The Register: "Trusted climate information should not disappear when politics change," Climate.us managing director Rebecca Lindsey said of the new platform in a press release. Lindsey, who previously served as the Climate.gov program manager and lead editor, told The Register in an email that she and one of the web developers responsible for the site were the first to be caught up in government purges when DOGE swept through the department in late February 2025... Created in cooperation with sustainability nonprofit accelerator Multiplier, Climate.us aims to be an independent alternative to its old .gov, and many of the former NOAA crew behind the previous website have teamed up for the new initiative to "keep climate information accurate, accessible, scientifically rigorous, and useful for the people who rely on it."

Climate.gov, which now redirects to a NOAA page about climate but which hosts none of the data the shuttered site used to contain, was taken offline in July 2025 following a Trump executive order prioritizing "gold standard science...." arguing that prior climate science models relied on worst-case scenarios, which somehow meant the public availability of 15 years of climate data and reporting ought to change...

All of the content that was purged from the .gov is now back, along with blogs from experts, climate status reports, maps and data pathways, and national assessments of climate change as well. Lindsey told us that rapidly changing political winds have led her to believe that the government isn't the right place for that mission to continue, and that she would have concerns about returning the site to federal management if a future administration changed its position on climate change... Lindsey said that the Climate.us team will continue with the same mission it had before the Trump administration attempted to quash it: Getting climate science in front of the public in a manner that's understandable so they can make their own decisions about how to respond.

The New York Times tells the story of a 63-year-old retiree who wrote a check for several thousand dollaras to pay her taxes. But she discovered much later that her taxes were never paid because that check had been intercepted and then altered to be payable to someone else: In some cases, thieves may pilfer one or more checks from local mailboxes. Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, said thieves sometimes "fish" for checks at free-standing drop boxes, using long tools with sticky pads on the ends to grab letters. In other cases, more sophisticated criminals may steal large batches of checks, copy them and then sell them on the internet. Often, the purloined checks are chemically altered in what's known as "check washing" to remove the name of the recipient. The thief replaces it with a fraudulent name, and often increases the amount of the check, before cashing or depositing it.
The 63-year-old retiree's bank told her she'd waited too long to recover the funds: Schwab's "security guarantee," outlined on its website , says that "Schwab will cover losses in any of your Schwab accounts due to unauthorized activity." But fine print at the bottom of the page notes that reimbursement "requires your timely reporting of unauthorized activity to Schwab," and that Schwab "will not be liable for additional or increased losses resulting from a failure to report unauthorized activity in a timely manner." It notes that more details are available in account agreements... Notify your bank as soon as possible, said Scott Anchin, senior vice president of strategic initiatives and policy at the independent bankers association. Banks generally allow at least 30 days and sometimes up to 90 days from the time your statement is made available to you to report suspected check fraud, he said.
So how can you avoid check fraud? Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, just suggests that "No one should ever mail a check." If you must write a check, he said, try to deliver it in person or take it inside a post office to mail rather than relying on your own mailbox or public drop boxes. The American Bankers Association recommends using permanent "gel" ink pens when you do write checks to reduce the risk of tampering... And if you don't already, consider using your bank's online bill payment service.
The article notes that even the U.S. federal government "has been moving away from paper checks for things like benefit payments and income tax refunds, saying digital payment methods are more secure."

Jack Nekhala had a business selling on Amazon — and in December he received an unusual offer, reports Bloomberg. A woman said she could bribe an Amazon employee "to help him retrieve $90,000 in funds that the e-commerce giant had frozen after suspending him over an alleged violation of review policy." Hoping to ingratiate himself with the company and restart his business, Nekhala offered to provide evidence, including recorded conversations and screen shots, that he said proved Amazon personnel were peddling inside information and influence. The smoking gun, Nekhala told the representative: information about his seller account. Only certain Amazon employees are supposed to have access to such details, but Nekhala had received them from the woman on WeChat, the Chinese messaging app. Nekhala's experience, which he documented and shared with Bloomberg, provides a rare glimpse into an international black market that has been a persistent scourge of Amazon's online store. On one side are sellers looking for a variety of favors: a competitive edge over their rivals, information on how to boost sales, a way to get themselves unsuspended. On the other are middlemen who lurk on message apps like Telegram, WeChat and WhatsApp offering access to people inside Amazon who can get things done for a price...

It's impossible to determine the scope of the illicit activity, but it's an open secret among Amazon sellers and consultants, who are frequently approached on social-media platforms and messaging apps. "The message is always the same: 'I'm going to show you screenshots to prove I have inside access,'" said Chris McCabe, a former Amazon employee who runs a seller consulting firm... In 2020, federal prosecutors exposed an international bribery scheme involving Amazon sellers and employees. The ring allegedly extracted about $100 million in unfair advantages by bribing Amazon employees in Asia to help them sell more products and sabotage their competitors. Five people in the US were convicted and received jail terms or probation. Last year, law enforcement officials in India began investigating more than 20 former Amazon employees suspected of accepting bribes from trucking companies in exchange for routes, according to The Times of India.

After Nekhala reported his own experience to Amazon, the representative committed to "do some digging" and to email him instructions on how his evidence could be shared, according to a recording of the conversation. But Nekhala said he never heard back. The employee who leaked his personal information had already been fired for unrelated misconduct, according to Amazon.
Amazon told Bloomberg employee involvement was "very rare," and that "We invest heavily in this area and have dedicated teams and systems in place to prevent all types of fraud, including by our own employees."

After Ford's automated quality-control systems and AI tools fell short, the automaker hired 350 veteran engineers over the past three years to mentor younger staff and reprogram the underperforming technology. "Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it," Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters on a call Wednesday. "Over prior years, we didn't pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles." Bloomberg reports: Those engineers were "at the heart" of Ford's efforts to turn around quality problems, said Kumar Galhotra, chief operating officer. They now run mandatory meetings that rigorously troubleshoot quality problems and they have reprogrammed AI tools to head off glitches before they happen. "We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems" and not getting the desired results, Galhotra said. "We brought back technical specialists" and "they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor."

The return of the veteran engineers at Ford cuts against the prevailing wisdom -- and fear -- that AI will replace all kinds of knowledge workers. But Ford found the machines couldn't replace experience. "Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product," Poon said. But "we recognized that for us to enhance some of our automation and machine learning and artificial intelligence tools we needed to ensure that they were trained by the most experienced individuals."

As a result of the efforts of the old hands, Ford vaulted above quality stalwarts such as Toyota and Honda on JD Power's bellwether survey that measures the quality of a car during the first three months of ownership. Only luxury brands Porsche and Genesis topped Ford this year.

Longtime Slashdot reader MattSparkes shares a report from NewScientist, captioned: "For years we've had unconfirmed reports, rumors, hints... now we know." From the report: Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defense industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare. The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled "Terminator" drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. Russian soldiers were killed.

"We tried it," says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. "It's a test. We never implemented it [more widely]." The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage "Terminator mode," in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets. "We just launch it and we know everything will be dead -- everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead," says Kokhanovskyy. "There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing... Everything it sees will be killed."

With no way to tell what the automated drones had seen or targeted, human-piloted drones were sent into the area after the test to manually check results. Victims included "a couple of soldiers, one truck," says Kokhanovskyy. While there is no recording of the automated drones attacking these targets, it was concluded that the drones had killed them. Kokhanovskyy says that he was not at the test personally but that it was carried out by an unnamed military unit near the cities of Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar as part of a Ukrainian counteroffensive push. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence did not respond to questions about the test or the current legal position on the use of fully autonomous weapons.

A burglar took a self-driving Waymo taxi to rob a San Francisco yoga studio this past January, reports TechCrunch — "and police have still not caught them."

Even the police officer assigned to the case thought it would be easier to solve, notes The San Francisco Chronicle, since Waymos are outfitted with multiple high-definition cameras and require users to make accounts with their credit card numbers: It's common for officers to seek video footage of a crime from any of the Waymos, Teslas and other high-tech vehicles that record their surroundings. That information can be crucial for identifying suspects or creating a reliable timeline of events. At times, police will go so far as to obtain search warrants to tow the vehicle "witnesses" to ensure they don't lose valuable video evidence. In the Hot 8 Yoga burglary case, San Francisco police issued a search warrant that forced Waymo to turn over information on the account that ordered the ride and video footage from the white Jaguar that served as the getaway car, police records show.

Faye said that he couldn't discuss certain details of the case, but that the Waymo user's account information didn't lead police to the suspect. In general, he said, it's not unusual for a criminal to order a service with stolen information or a burner phone. The video evidence didn't help much either, Faye said. He said that the company had not retained interior footage of the car by the time the search warrant was filed in April and that it had kept the faces seen outside the car blurred for privacy reasons... Waymo does not publicly disclose how long it retains video footage. The company blurs faces and license plates in the public-facing images it uses in a database designed for research....

Last year in Los Angeles, a person allegedly robbed a grocery store before hopping in a Waymo. Officers were able to chase down the vehicle after the suspect got inside, and the car pulled itself over after police turned on the car's emergency lights, according to Los Angeles-area news outlets.
"Farah Issa, studio manager of Hot 8 Yoga, showed the Chronicle a copy of the surveillance video from her phone, noting how the Waymo dropped off the suspect and waited for him to finish the burglary before taking off again."

"When Hugo Parra was arrested last year on felony charges, his pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears," reports the Times of San Diego: San Diego police had a description of the Alfa Romeo car he was riding in [but no license plate number] and a witness who identified him during a curbside lineup as the man who brandished a handgun in Golden Hill. They had also checked the city's automatic license plate camera system, run by the private company Flock, and got a "hit," substantiating the claim. The problem, says attorney Alex Coolman, was that Parra was five miles away from Golden Hill at the time of the crime, and the so-called hit from the license plate reader was captured before any police pursuit began. "This Flock hit was obviously the wrong car, as it could not have been in both places simultaneously," said Coolman, who represents Parra and the driver, 23-year-old Ariel Beltran.

Despite the signs pointing to it being a different Alfa Romeo, police arrested Beltran and Parra... [An officer had informed dispatch that one of the men "matched the victim's description, other than having a different-colored hooded sweatshirt."] Parra spent nearly one month behind bars, missing Thanksgiving and other special events with his family, before the assault with a firearm and evasion charges were dropped.
Parras says he was incarcerated with actual murderers, according to the article, and Parra and Beltran are now preparing to sue the city, seeking $1.5 million each in damages for civil rights violations and negligence. Their claim notes they'd driven past several other Flock cameras which officers could've used to corroborate their story (not to mention location data on their cell phones).

Meanwhile, the article also notes that last month the Institute for Justice "identified at least 17 cases in the United States of officers allegedly using Automated License Plate Reader technology to keep tabs on partners, exes, and strangers who had caught their eye..."

A "growing wave" of Reddit's "promoted posts" are sending U.S. and European audiences to money-stealing scams that impersonate major news organizations including the BBC, the Financial Times, and The Guardian, according to new findings from Bitdefender Labs.

"Domains are short-lived and rapidly rotated to evade detection," they write, noting that the impersonating sites apparently even use language "to falsely imply that the investment platform had been reviewed, approved, or vetted" by the legitimate site they're impersonating: The campaign promotes fake AI-powered investment platforms such as Wencoin STX, Warrior Coin AI, and Nevo Coin, using fabricated celebrity endorsements, cloned news websites, fake interviews, and invented financial success stories to lure victims into depositing money. Researchers Andrea Olariu and Emanuel Puscasu have identified multiple promoted Reddit posts masquerading as legitimate financial or breaking news stories.

Some ads claimed that:

— NVIDIA and OpenAI were "creating the future"
— Heathrow police discovered hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash
— Governments and banks were allegedly trying to "hide" a revolutionary AI investment platform
— European regulators were "silencing" articles about AI trading systems

Some Reddit ads delivered in video format, including what appeared to be a deepfake BBC news segment featuring a news anchor presenting fabricated financial headlines... Examples observed by researchers included:

— Fake BBC pages discussing "$20 billion conversations" tied to AI investments
— Fraudulent Financial Times articles about Heathrow airport cash seizures
— Fake Guardian stories claiming governments were trying to suppress coverage of Wencoin STX or Nevo Coin

The pages featured fabricated interviews, fake profit screenshots, manipulated banking documents, false testimonials, and even fictional journalists or business editors designed to make the scam look legitimate. In many cases, the content sought to create a sense of exclusivity or conspiracy, suggesting that banks, regulators, or governments were trying to suppress public access to the investment platform...

Our researchers found that after users clicked links embedded within the fake Guardian articles, they were redirected to a registration form allegedly used to create a "Nevo Coin" investment account. The form requested personal contact information, including the victim's name, email address, and phone number. To increase pressure and encourage immediate action, the page warned that registration availability was limited, claiming that once all spots were filled, new user registrations would be suspended.
And in the final stage, they're asked to deposit money...

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders announced a plan for the public to take a 50% ownership stake in AI companies, remembers the Associated Press.

And then OpenAI's Sam Altman "told Sanders that he, too, wants the public to have equity in AI companies." Though the CEO said he couldn't support Sanders' threshold of 50%, he nonetheless wanted to work with him to advocate for the general idea, according to people with knowledge of the conversation. The nearly hourlong meeting in Sanders' Senate office this week, held at Altman's request, highlighted the inherent tension between AI powerhouses and policymakers as Americans are increasingly asked to accept the costs of the AI boom even as they remain unconvinced of its direct benefits.

Yet it's also creating odd political bedfellows fueled by populism as politicians from Sanders to President Donald Trump embrace giving the public a stake in AI's growth. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Trump described a potential partnership "where the American people can benefit from the success of AI" and said executives from leading AI companies will visit the White House, "probably next week," to discuss the idea.
The article points out that Altman also met with congressional leaders from both of America's political parties.

A security researcher says evidence suggests the U.S. military has been using an obscure GPS message field for nearly 20 years to broadcast encrypted key-distribution data, effectively turning GPS satellites into a global "numbers station." The hidden-looking 176-bit messages appear tied to the Pentagon's Over-the-Air Distribution system for remotely updating cryptographic keys, meaning ordinary GPS receivers may have been receiving the traffic all along without anyone outside the military noticing. The findings have been detailed by Steven Murdoch, an information security expert, in a new article in Inside GNSS. 404 Media reports: [...] From the beginning, he suspected that the subframe field contained encrypted transmissions because the data was so random. "Random data is actually very unusual to get in nature," Murdoch said. "If you see it, either it's been carefully designed to be random -- but then, why is someone sending out random data? -- or it's encrypted data. I thought encrypted data is by far the most likely explanation." He returned to the subframe on and off over the years, and solicited guesses about its content on Stack Exchange in 2023. Ahmed Kamruddin, a master's student at UCL, developed the project further in 2025. Then, this year, Murdoch put the last pieces of the puzzle together over several weeks by analyzing open archive Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) recordings collected since 2007 and kept by GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences.

This dataset included more than 12 million observations of Subframe 4, Page 17, yielding 3,994 unique 176-bit messages. Within this corpus, Murdoch pinpointed key-repeating "sentinels" including a pattern that appeared in February 2010 and was broadcast on and off across dozens of satellites for more than a decade. Murdoch discovered that this particular sentinel was transmitted by all 31 operational satellites within a window of a few hours on May 26, 2011, potentially heralding the activation of a new operational system. He confirmed that this timeline coincided with the rollout of the military's Over-the-Air Distribution (OTAD) and the Over-the-Air Rekeying (OTAR) by cross-referencing declassified documents, including a 2015 presentation about the dates of the operation.

"There was a perfect match between the timeline and that presentation and the change points that were automatically identified from the data," Murdoch said. "That was the smoking gun that made me think: This is what it's for." These automated systems replaced the cumbersome manual distribution of cryptographic keying material, allowing military GPS receivers around the world to be rekeyed remotely through satellite broadcasts rather than through onsite procedures. For the next 11 years, this expansive rekeying operation was overlooked in public GPS data. In 2022, the system entered a new phase, according to Murdoch's analysis. The shift was characterized by a slowing in the message rotation rate. Later, in December 2023, broadcasts carrying a distinctive "TEXT" prefix emerged then gradually spread across the constellation.

Murdoch isn't sure what explains the recent transition, though it could be a possible modernization of the infrastructure or the introduction of a new protocol. But to him, the bigger takeaway is that the signals were always available for anyone willing to take a closer look, a discovery that suggests that there could be more revelations hidden for the cryptographically curious among us. "Every receiver in the world decodes Subframe 4, Page 17," Murdoch said in his new article. "Almost none of them have ever looked at it. The lesson generalizes: There is more to learn from the bytes already arriving at our antennas than from the bytes we wish were specified differently. The data are publicly available. The signal is overhead, twice a day, every day."