Comment Durov's planes are a target too (Score 1) 40
Just ask former Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world...
Submission + - ICE Dismantles SIM Farms in Nationwide Operation (ice.gov)
An anonymous reader writes: Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) Homeland Security Investigations carried out a nationwide operation between June 22 and July 10 that dismantled “SIM farms” run by transnational criminal organizations.
SIM (subscriber identity module) farms are systems containing large numbers of SIM cards from different wireless carriers, often housed in banks of cellphones, modems, or specialized devices known as SIM boxes.
These can be used to send and receive bulk messages or calls and often exploit voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology to do so. Initially developed for legitimate purposes, the technology has become prominent among organized fraudsters targeting mass audiences through phishing texts, scam calls, and fraudulent online accounts.
The recent nationwide operation, dubbed Operation Signal Break, “dismantled critical command-and-control infrastructure used to perpetrate large-scale telecommunications fraud across the United States,” ICE said in a July 24 statement.
Authorities will now analyze the seized SIM data to identify victims and assess losses caused by such fraud. The illicit proceeds from the fraud, which are suspected to be linked to Chinese transnational criminal organizations and distribution networks, will be traced.
This is expected to support criminal indictments, sanctions targeting national and international infrastructure used in criminal activity, and asset seizures. SIM box operations are estimated to result in losses worth $15 million annually to Americans, according to ICE.
SIM box fraud, “also known as interconnect bypass fraud, is a scheme in which fraudsters reroute international calls to appear as local ones,” a Nov. 8, 2025, post from IT services provider Synaptique said.
For instance, when a foreign national calls someone in the United States, the call is diverted through VOIP to a SIM box in America instead of passing through a legitimate international call gateway. The SIM box then uses one of the local SIM cards to place a new local call to the recipient.
SIM (subscriber identity module) farms are systems containing large numbers of SIM cards from different wireless carriers, often housed in banks of cellphones, modems, or specialized devices known as SIM boxes.
These can be used to send and receive bulk messages or calls and often exploit voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology to do so. Initially developed for legitimate purposes, the technology has become prominent among organized fraudsters targeting mass audiences through phishing texts, scam calls, and fraudulent online accounts.
The recent nationwide operation, dubbed Operation Signal Break, “dismantled critical command-and-control infrastructure used to perpetrate large-scale telecommunications fraud across the United States,” ICE said in a July 24 statement.
Authorities will now analyze the seized SIM data to identify victims and assess losses caused by such fraud. The illicit proceeds from the fraud, which are suspected to be linked to Chinese transnational criminal organizations and distribution networks, will be traced.
This is expected to support criminal indictments, sanctions targeting national and international infrastructure used in criminal activity, and asset seizures. SIM box operations are estimated to result in losses worth $15 million annually to Americans, according to ICE.
SIM box fraud, “also known as interconnect bypass fraud, is a scheme in which fraudsters reroute international calls to appear as local ones,” a Nov. 8, 2025, post from IT services provider Synaptique said.
For instance, when a foreign national calls someone in the United States, the call is diverted through VOIP to a SIM box in America instead of passing through a legitimate international call gateway. The SIM box then uses one of the local SIM cards to place a new local call to the recipient.
Comment DUPE (Score 1) 1
i didn't see the one posted earlier
Comment Re:This is no surprise (Score 1) 51
Should states' rights trump individual rights?
This is a free society. If consenting adult Minnesotans want to use these markets why should a state be permitted to stop them? States should be permitted to regulate to ensure clarity and no fraud, and to tax.
Comment Re:It's disturbing (Score 1) 3
They are also shredding rare and old books.
Submission + - AI Co's bulk-buying rare books, remove spine, high speed scan and shredding them (x.com) 3
schwit1 writes: A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."
This is irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026.
This is irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026.
Submission + - Elon Musk's Boring Company reportedly raising funding at a $20 billion valuation (wsj.com)
schwit1 writes: Elon Musk’s tunneling startup The Boring Company is in talks to raise a $4 billion funding round at a valuation of $20 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The deal hasn’t closed and the terms could change, the WSJ says. At $20 billion, the valuation would be a significant increase from The Boring Company’s $5.7 billion valuation in 2022.
The startup has already built a network of tunnels under Las Vegas, through which Teslas shuttle customers to different stations.
The Boring Company has announced plans to build tunnel networks under Nashville and Dubai. The WSJ says the startup has also pitched projects in Baltimore, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
The deal hasn’t closed and the terms could change, the WSJ says. At $20 billion, the valuation would be a significant increase from The Boring Company’s $5.7 billion valuation in 2022.
The startup has already built a network of tunnels under Las Vegas, through which Teslas shuttle customers to different stations.
The Boring Company has announced plans to build tunnel networks under Nashville and Dubai. The WSJ says the startup has also pitched projects in Baltimore, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Comment ULA got a loan to cover losses of Vulcan grounding (Score 1) 34
Submission + - Robby Starbuck's Lawsuit Alleging Google AI Had Defamed Him Can Go Forward (reason.com)
schwit1 writes: A Delaware trial court has denied Google's motion to dismiss, and concluded that, if the facts as alleged by Starbuck were true, he would have a legal basis for recovery.
Submission + - NASA replaces Vulcan Centaur with SpaceX Falcon Heavy for space weather mission (space.com)
schwit1 writes: Vulcan is losing more launches to ULA's competitors.
The six satellites of NASA's Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) mission are poised to launch to Earth orbit soon, to serve as an early warning system for incoming solar storms. They were originally slated to lift off on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket but have now been assigned a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, according to a NASA mission update.
SunRISE will fly to space as part of a rideshare mission sponsored by the U.S. Space Force's (USSF's) Space Systems Command (SSC). Though it's not stated specifically in the NASA release, that may be a hint as to why the mission's rocket was changed. On its most recent launch, USSF-87, Vulcan experienced an anomaly in one of its solid rocket boosters — the second such incident to occur during the rocket's four launches to date.
Vulcan succeeded in delivering the USSF-87 payload to its designated orbit on that launch, but the recurrence of the booster issue during ascent prompted the Space Force to pause national security launches on Vulcan until it could be addressed. Which mission SunRISE will be manifested on has not yet been released, but SSC has already shifted other launches between Vulcan and SpaceX's Falcon 9 , so NASA's change in rockets for SunRISE could indicate either that the mission has been remanifested on a different SSC rideshare, or that another SSC mission has been shifted from Vulcan entirely.
The six satellites of NASA's Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) mission are poised to launch to Earth orbit soon, to serve as an early warning system for incoming solar storms. They were originally slated to lift off on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket but have now been assigned a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, according to a NASA mission update.
SunRISE will fly to space as part of a rideshare mission sponsored by the U.S. Space Force's (USSF's) Space Systems Command (SSC). Though it's not stated specifically in the NASA release, that may be a hint as to why the mission's rocket was changed. On its most recent launch, USSF-87, Vulcan experienced an anomaly in one of its solid rocket boosters — the second such incident to occur during the rocket's four launches to date.
Vulcan succeeded in delivering the USSF-87 payload to its designated orbit on that launch, but the recurrence of the booster issue during ascent prompted the Space Force to pause national security launches on Vulcan until it could be addressed. Which mission SunRISE will be manifested on has not yet been released, but SSC has already shifted other launches between Vulcan and SpaceX's Falcon 9 , so NASA's change in rockets for SunRISE could indicate either that the mission has been remanifested on a different SSC rideshare, or that another SSC mission has been shifted from Vulcan entirely.
Submission + - John C. Dvorak, an early and influential technology journalist, 80 (talkingbiznews.com)
sandbagger writes: Dvorak loomed large in the 1980s and 1990s in the computer industry press.
Submission + - Aral Sea Has Been Drying Up, but Also Releasing Massive Amounts of Carbon (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 writes: If you've ever walked past a drying lakebed in the peak of summer, you might have noticed some very unpleasant smells emanating from the mud.
That pungent odor is a mix of gases being released from the soil, as enormous quantities of organic matter – a rich sludge of poop, algae, plants, decaying bodies, and other pondy things – dry out.
On a larger scale, that phenomenon stinks much worse than a bad smell.
In many parts of the world, lakes are drying out at a scale so massive that scientists are warning they may be emitting enough greenhouse gases to rival our fossil fuel habit.
In a new study published in Science , scientists say the Aral Sea – the world's largest desiccated lake – has emitted a whopping 204 megatons (~225 million US tons) of carbon dioxide since it was drained in the 1960s.
But it might not be too late to turn the tide.
That pungent odor is a mix of gases being released from the soil, as enormous quantities of organic matter – a rich sludge of poop, algae, plants, decaying bodies, and other pondy things – dry out.
On a larger scale, that phenomenon stinks much worse than a bad smell.
In many parts of the world, lakes are drying out at a scale so massive that scientists are warning they may be emitting enough greenhouse gases to rival our fossil fuel habit.
In a new study published in Science , scientists say the Aral Sea – the world's largest desiccated lake – has emitted a whopping 204 megatons (~225 million US tons) of carbon dioxide since it was drained in the 1960s.
But it might not be too late to turn the tide.
Submission + - 32/35 students failed professor's midterm because he used a white text trap (xcancel.com)
An anonymous reader writes: 32/35 students failed this professor's midterm because he secretly hid an AI command in white font in his text.
Comment Are the Chinese prices legit or more dumping? (Score 1) 102
The Chinese are notorious for massive subsidizing in order to bankrupt foreign competition and capture entire markets. Is this happening here?
Submission + - Worlds first Wave Power Generator gets certified for regular use
Qbertino writes: The Norwegian certification agency DNV has certified the commercial Wave-driven power generator Corpower C4 for regular use. German tech news site heise.de has a detailed writeup. See a CGI video of the powerstation and it's internals here and the companies website here.
