UPDATE: Within three days Meta removed this controversial feature. TechCrunch notes reports that the decision came "amid scrutiny from users and talent agencies, including CAA."

Tuesday an anonymous reader had shared this report from Wired: Meta launched its inaugural AI image model from the Meta Superintelligence Labs on Tuesday, its effort to compete with the likes of OpenAI's GPT Images 2.0 and Google's Nano Banana 2 in the AI image generation race. The new model, called Muse Image, rolled out with deep integrations woven into the Instagram app. As part of this update, public Instagram profiles are now automatically opted into being fodder for generative AI remixes. All someone has to do is tag your account's profile in a prompt -- if it's public -- and they can use Meta AI to generate an image using your likeness.

Meta positions this feature as a cheeky way to personalize generations with images of real people. "Whether you want to design a custom event invitation, mock up a collaborative creative concept, or generate a personalized graphic, tagging a username lets Meta AI use public photos to build a visual that's ready to post," reads one of Meta's announcement blogs about the new AI tool. [...] Instagram's help center site includes more details about how this feature will impact users, saying that "people may be able to create content with your Instagram content using AI features at Meta" if you leave your account public and on the default settings. (A previously archived version of this page from 2025 does not include similar, AI-focused language.) Instagram users who want to stop others from using their public posts for AI images (without switching your account to private) must manually disable the options under the app's "Sharing and reuse" settings. However, turning off the setting only blocks future AI generations; any AI images already created from their content will remain.

Meta also says users will not be notified when others create AI-generated content using their posts.

Doom developer id Software is reportedly laying off about half its staff as part of Microsoft's broader Xbox cuts. The reported layoffs potentially affects around 90 employees. Engadget reports: While neither Microsoft nor id Software have formally acknowledged the layoffs, one former member of the studio's staff, Michael Maynard, has echoed the 50 percent figure on LinkedIn. According to at least one of Game Developer's sources, that could translate to around 90 job cuts, though it's so far unclear what departments at id Software have been hit hardest.

[...] Bloomberg reported yesterday that as part of the "reset" at Xbox, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of id Software, will be focusing on its biggest franchises -- like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein and Doom -- going forward. It's possible that motivated the cuts to id Software, but the developer at least outwardly appears to be already heavily focused on Doom. The studio launched Doom: The Dark Ages in 2025 and an expansion to the game on July 7, 2026. Whatever the reason, the cuts at Xbox aren't over: While Microsoft eliminated 1,600 roles alongside the announcement that Xbox is restructuring, it still plans to lay off another 1,600 employees over the coming months.

Microsoft will turn on Windows settings backup and restore by default for eligible Windows 11 business devices outside the EU, starting with Windows 11 26H2. The Register reports: Now dubbed "Windows settings backup and restore," the service backs up a device's settings and a list of installed Microsoft Store apps, which can then be restored to a new device. Microsoft gave a use case for the technology: "Imagine a lost laptop, a hardware refresh, or an unexpected reset. These are some of the moments when your users need backup most. And that's rarely when anyone wants to discover that backup was never turned on."

However, some organizations might not want it on. Perhaps those with strict privacy or data sovereignty requirements, or those regulated by the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), for whom the default-on behavior won't apply. Windows 11 25H2 and earlier are also excluded, as is any device with a backup policy that explicitly disables the setting. Everything else running Windows 11 26H1 will get switched on after a feature update, and the same applies to 26H2, currently with Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel.

Administrators might reasonably be wary of this being opt-out rather than opt-in. Backups are useful, but Microsoft is clear that this is not a comprehensive backup solution, calling it only "one step in a broader Windows resiliency effort." The implications still need consideration. An opt-out setting that quietly ships settings data off-device is exactly the sort of thing that adds to administrators' workloads rather than lightening them.

The FCC plans to roll back broadband label rules that require ISPs to itemize all passthrough fees. Under the proposal, providers could instead list a single "up to" amount for location-based charges. It would also allow ISPs to link to pricing labels rather than display them prominently, while eliminating machine-readable pricing files. Ars Technica reports: ISPs routinely advertise prices much lower than those actually charged to consumers on their monthly bills. One method of raising monthly bill prices above advertised rates is to tack on fees that, ISPs claim, are used to offset charges imposed by local governments. ISPs would be well within their rights to advertise accurate monthly prices and charge those exact prices on monthly bills. But because ISPs rarely do that, the FCC has required them to make specific price disclosures to consumers for the past decade. The Biden-era FCC updated the broadband-label rules to require that ISPs "itemize on the label (PDF) all discretionary monthly fees that the provider passes through to the consumer." The change drew protest from Comcast and other ISPs that complained bitterly about the complexity of listing all the hidden fees they had chosen to charge.

Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the Trump FCC has steadily whittled away at requirements imposed under Democrats. An order (PDF) released in draft form last week would eliminate the requirement to itemize passthrough fees and let ISPs list them in a single "up to" amount. The "up to" amount can include both government fees and fees charged by non-government entities such as owners of utility poles. "Rather than continuing to require providers to itemize 'passthrough fees' that can vary by location, we allow providers to display such fees in the aggregate, either as a maximum or 'up to' amount for the total fees applicable in any location where the service plan is offered, or as the exact total of such fees assessed in a particular location," the FCC draft order said.

The order to be voted on later this month includes a few other changes that will please ISPs and their lobby groups. ISPs will be allowed to provide links to price labels instead of displaying the full labels prominently on ordering pages and account portals, and will be allowed to stop making the price-label information available in machine-readable spreadsheets. The FCC is also relaxing the requirement that price information be available over the phone. The FCC said the change will "allow phone sales representatives to present label information conversationally, as a summary of key label fields, rather than require verbatim recitation."

The changes have been in the works since October 2025, when the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to let the public submit comments on the proposals. The outcome of that process is the draft order, which will be voted on at the FCC's July 22 meeting and take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register. There are many types of passthrough fees that ISPs will be able to stop listing individually and roll into the "up to" amount. The FCC defined the fees as follows, saying they include just about anything that isn't a tax [...]. Another planned change will eliminate a requirement that providers archive all labels for at least two years after a service plan is no longer available. The Utility Reform Network, an advocacy group, told the FCC that the archived labels provide crucial data about how prices and services change over time, and that machine-readable labels are important for affordability research and information accessibility.

A criminal complaint against alleged Scattered Spider member Peter Stokes revealed that Microsoft can associate Windows activity with a persistent "Global Device ID," which investigators used to link his PC to online activity connected to a hack. While unique device IDs are common, the case has raised privacy concerns because the identifier can apparently persist across updates, has no simple opt-out, and may allow Microsoft to connect a Windows installation to activity on third-party services. PCMag reports: Last week, the U.S. announced it had extradited 19-year-old Peter Stokes from Europe for allegedly being a member of the notorious hacking group Scattered Spider. But the case stands out because Microsoft played a key role in linking Stokes to the suspected hacking crimes, according to an unsealed criminal complaint. Stokes allegedly hacked an unnamed luxury jewelry retailer in May 2025 while using a VPN. The 39-page criminal complaint shows the FBI used Microsoft records to discover that his IP address was associated with a Microsoft device identifier known as Global Device ID (GDID).

"According to a Microsoft representative, a Global Device Identifier in the Windows ecosystem is a persistent, device-level identifier designed to uniquely identify an installation of a Windows operating system on a device, either a physical device (e.g., a mobile phone or laptop) or virtual machine, across certain Microsoft services and scenarios," the complaint explains. The global device ID isn't exactly surprising, given that it's standard practice to assign a unique ID to each account or device so a tech provider can recognize and distinguish between them. But the complaint reveals Microsoft can associate the GDID with third-party services and the timing as well, giving Redmond a way to theoretically track a user's online activity. In other words, Redmond might be able to track the online activity of your Windows PC without third-party browser cookies.

Stokes was discovered exploiting a web development tool called ngrok to bypass the jewelry retailer's network defenses. The complaint says Microsoft had records showing that on May 12, 2025, at 19:21 UTC, the GDID associated with Stokes' computer "accessed, among other ngrok pages, 'https://dashboard[.]ngrok.com/signup,' the ngrok page to set up an ngrok account." The document adds that Microsoft records also showed the GDID accessing "multiple sites" from servers at Tzulo, a web hosting provider, to help pull off the hack. Hence, the fact that federal investigators used the Microsoft identifier to nab a suspected hacker is raising concerns that it could be abused for other surveillance purposes. "Microsoft Windows is surveillance software," cybersecurity expert Matthew Hickey alleged in a tweet.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: These may be the last days of Amazon's Mechanical Turk. An announcement on the Mechanical Turk website says that on July 30, 2026, the crowdsourcing service will close to new customers. Amazon Web Services says the decision was made after "careful consideration," adding, "Existing customers can continue to use the service as normal. AWS continues to invest in security and availability improvements for Mechanical Turk, but we do not plan to introduce new features." In other words, Amazon isn't completely pulling the plug, but the service is very much on life support. Further reading: Horror Stories From Inside Amazon's Mechanical Turk (2020)

The long-running SCO/IBM Unix and Linux ownership dispute has resurfaced yet again, this time through SCO successor Xinuos, which is trying to pursue old license and copyright claims tied to Project Monterey. "The core issue seems to be whether Xinuos even has the right to litigate the matter, or if some ancient legalese in the original agreements means the window for legal argument has long since expired," reports The Register. From the report: [T]he roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created "Project Monterey" -- an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multiple processors. By 2001, Project Monterey was close to delivering a unified UNIX, an achievement made possible by blending code from IBM and SCO.

By then, a little project called "Linux" already ran on multiple processors. Big Blue decided Linux was the future and bailed from Project Monterey -- then allegedly contributed some Monterey code to the open-source project and to its own AIX and Z operating systems. SCO felt it owned some of that code, so sued IBM.

SCO and its successors struggled to survive, but interested parties kept the lawsuit alive because the chance to emerge as owner of parts of the Linux codebase, and IBM's code, had the potential to turn into a colossal payday. The case and its successors ended in 2021, with a settlement that saw litigants agree to end the matter without IBM admitting fault. But by then, SCO had sold its software to a biz called Xinuos that decided to fight on.

The Xinuos case has burbled along quietly since, and on June 22nd reached the milestone of a hearing. The matter has become a little more modern, if only because this hearing was held online and the presiding judge appeared to unwittingly be on mute at one point. But the arguments otherwise seemed to revisit Project Monterey, debated the relevance of past litigation, contested who owned what, when they owned it, and how they could prove it. Xinuos argued IBM never had a license for SCO code. Big Blue argued that it did nothing wrong.

Australia plans to double fines for social media platforms that fail to keep under-16s off restricted services, after regulators found 70% of children with accounts remained active three months after the ban took effect. The government says the changes will also give the eSafety Commissioner more power to demand information from platforms and age-assurance providers as teens continue finding ways around the law. Euronews reports: The government said Sunday it would introduce draft legislation this week doubling the maximum penalty to 99 million Australian dollars (63 million euros) for platforms -- including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok -- that do not take reasonable steps to comply with the ban, which became law on 10 December. Communications Minister Anika Wells blamed the platforms directly. "We can all agree we would like the scheme to work better than it is currently, but that is on Big Tech taking the Mickey," she said, speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corp on Monday. Wells added that she had received monthly updates from the online safety regulator since March and "we are not seeing improvements."

The amendments would also expand the powers of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to demand information and documents from platforms -- and from third parties such as age assurance technology providers -- to test claims made by companies about how under-16s continued to circumvent the ban. The government had initially reported more than 5 million children had accounts removed, deactivated or restricted after the legislation passed. But eSafety found in March that 70% of children who held accounts on restricted platforms on the day the ban took effect remained active on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

Inman Grant said in April she was considering court action against those platforms and YouTube, alleging they were not taking reasonable steps to exclude children. She said she was satisfied with progress made by the remaining restricted platforms: X, Kick, Reddit, Threads and Twitch. Senior opposition lawmaker Jane Hume said her party would consider supporting the reforms, but pinned blame on the original legislation. "The legislation was clearly undercooked in the first place. The eSafety Commissioner wasn't given the powers to be able to pursue these Big Tech companies," she said.

Google was ordered to pay almost $2 billion this week to Pricerunner, reports Bloomberg: The Patent and Market Court in Stockholm, which issued the judgment on Wednesday, dismissed most parts of the claim in which Pricerunner sought 80 billion Swedish kronor, or roughly $8.2 billion, in the wake of a European Union antitrust crackdown... The Swedish price-comparison website argued that Google has been abusing its dominant position as a search engine by favoring its own comparison shopping service over competing portals for more than a decade. Wednesday's award compensates for lost revenue caused by Google's preferential treatment of its own comparison-shopping service over independent price-comparison services, conduct that also drives up costs for consumers, [Pricerunner owner] Klarna said in a statement after the judgment...

A Google spokesperson said the company doesn't agree with the court's decision and will consider its legal options. [The ruling can be appealed.] Changes implemented in 2017 to Google's platform are working and generating growth and jobs for hundreds of comparison shopping services operating more than 1500 websites across Europe, according to the statement.

The litigation is linked to a 2017 decision by the European Commission to fine Google €2.4 billion for illegally leveraging its search dominance to give its own shopping service an edge. The EU decision unleashed a wave of so-called follow-on suits, which were delayed for years as Google appealed the EU fine. Two years ago the EU's top tribunal confirmed that the company did violate antitrust laws — meaning EU-based plaintiffs no longer have to prove that in court. A Berlin court last year ordered the tech giant to pay €573 million in damages to two German price-comparison websites, a ruling Google appealed. Similar cases are pending across Europe.

"Mozilla shut down the well-loved read-it-later Pocket app last year, and now Meta is launching an app called Pocket with an entirely different, AI-focused pitch," writes The Verge.

While it's not available for downloads in most locations, Meta's Pocket will allow people "to generate small, interactive apps and games using AI prompts," writes TechCrunch. They're called "gizmos", and Pocket "also offers a scrollable feed where you can play with gizmos others have made."

Some context from The Verge: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is all in on AI as the new social media, and he's previously described a vision of how users could use AI to make interactive experiences and share them with people. The launch of Pocket appears to be one manifestation of that idea... It follows Meta hiring engineers from a company called Atma Sciences Inc., which made an app called Gizmo, as Business Insider reported in March.

On a help center page, Meta also describes a gizmo as a "playable AI-generated experience," and when you post one, Meta says you can choose to let other people remix them.
"Based on the app's screenshots in Google Play, there are many similarities to Gizmo's original app, which is still listed," notes TechCrunch.

"Pocket is another example of Meta's push to make AI creation tools more mainstream, extending its earlier efforts, which included AI-generated images created via its Meta AI app and AI videos created with its app called Vibes. It has also added AI features across its social platforms... " Given that Meta has not officially announced Pocket's debut, it's likely that Pocket is still in its initial experimentation phase. Its counterpart Gizmo, however, had generated 635,000 lifetime installs across both iOS and Google Play, according to Appfigures, which noted it had a 98% positive sentiment.

America's Justice Department and FBI teamed joined Finland's National Bureau of Investigation to arrest a teenager they say is part of one of the world's biggest cybercrime syndicates, reports Tom's Hardware. The "Scattered Spider" syndicate has extorted over $100 million in ransom payments, according to Department of Justice figures: 19-year-old Peter Stokes is a dual U.S.-Estonian citizen who was trying to board a flight to Japan from Helsinki, when law enforcement caught up with him. [T]he main criminal complaint against Stokes stems from a May 2025 attack on a luxury jewelry dealer based in the United States. The attackers apparently called the company's IT helpdesk using Google Voice, posing as employees. They were able to convince the help desk into resetting their credentials, which allowed them to infiltrate three accounts, two of which had admin privileges. From there, the group, allegedly including Stokes, stole important data and held the jeweler at ransom, demanding an $8 million payment in crypto. The company ultimately regained access to their infrastructure and avoided paying the ransom, but the operational disruption still caused a purported $2 million in losses. This served as the spark that led to Stokes' eventual arrest in Helsinki, as the prosecutors slowly followed the paper and digital trail laid by the attackers.

Microsoft played a key role in the process by providing GDID [Global Device Identifier] data to the FBI to help them apprehend the alleged criminal... [I]t's a unique identifier assigned to every Windows install that tracks device-specific telemetry. It's the reason why sometimes changing a major component in your PC can revoke your Windows license... [T]he court documents from the case reveal that Stokes used Windows, from which investigators were able to link his physical hardware to specific internet activity and locations... Stokes' web activity, videogame history, IP addresses, tool usage (including Ngrok), Azure status, and more were logged with timestamps, and were provided to the investigators by Microsoft...

Stokes was carrying two hard drives full of incriminating evidence with him when boarding his flight to Japan... His real identity has actually been known since 2024, but since he was a minor living across Estonia and the UAE at the time, he could only be monitored until the time was right.
The official criminal complaint even includes a selfie photo that Stokes posted on Snapchat (hiding his face behind dozens of hundred dollar bills). It then notes that behind Stokes the wallpaper, carpet, and furniture match New York's Empire Hotel — and that Stokes had visited the hotel's web site in Germany before then flying to New York...

"Following the arrest, Stokes was extradited to the U.S., where he appeared in front of a federal court in Chicago for the first time on June 30, 2026, and he remains in custody," adds Tom's Hardware.

"The accused is now awaiting trial, having been charged with conspiracy, cyber intrusion, and fraud..."

"The internet is filled with fakes," writes Gizmodo. "A court in India is setting out to address the problem by requiring more transparency from domain registrars to make it easier to crack down on fraud. And while the intentions might be good, Reuters is reporting that major American domain registrar GoDaddy is sounding the warning bells that the court's decision could fundamentally reshape the internet well beyond India's borders."

GoDaddy argues the move would even make the internet less safe, reports Reuters : [Online fraud] is a key challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, which last year received 2.4 million complaints of alleged cyber fraud amounting to $2.4 billion. Starting in 2019, lawsuits were brought by dozens of Indian and global firms — Amazon against fake shopping sites trading on its name and McDonald's complaining against bogus sites offering franchises. [More than 20 companies filed a complaint, the article notes, including Microsoft.] In December, an Indian court blocked more than 1,100 such websites. The New Delhi judge however went further, ordering sweeping new measures that tech experts say have rewritten rules of internet governance: Domain sellers should not offer buyers free privacy protection by default, the buyer's details should be released to anyone with a "legitimate interest" within 72 hours, and website addresses that are variations of protected brand names must be prohibited.

U.S.-based GoDaddy has challenged the directives before a larger bench of judges at the Delhi High Court, according to a Reuters review of non-public filings. It says the ruling will affect legitimate businesses that have names similar to big brands. Stopping privacy-by-default features, GoDaddy said, will result in public disclosure of name, address, telephone and email of legitimate website owners, exposing them to "foreseeable privacy and security risks" such as stalking and harassment.

As domain names operate globally, not locally, the order could force GoDaddy to regulate website addresses across the world, it said. On the court's order imposing a 72-hour deadline on companies to provide registration details to anyone with "legitimate interest", GoDaddy argues it has no wherewithal to assess who has legitimate interest or not. The "commercially destabilising" directives may force domain name companies to "exit India", said one of GoDaddy's appeal documents that ran into 5,121 pages... GoDaddy rivals, Arizona-based Namecheap and Netherlands-based Hosting Concepts, have also challenged the New Delhi ruling, court records show, although Reuters could not ascertain details of their appeals...

GoDaddy argues that diluting the privacy feature will run contrary to India's data protection law and the European Union GDPR law which mandates a "privacy by default" approach. Farzaneh Badii, a New York-based researcher on internet governance, criticised the New Delhi ruling, noting that Europe redacted such details because publishing them had been abused by harassment and targeted phishing. "The people exposed will be journalists, activists, small business owners, and private individuals. The brand impersonators will not," she said...

While the sweeping December directives were issued by a court, they followed government's submissions, documents showed... The judges will hear the appeals on July 16.
GoDaddy manages 80 million domains and serves over 20 million users, the article points out, with annual revenue over $5 billion.

247,000 miles on an EV battery? So says the owner of a U.K.-based used-car sales company that specializes in Evs, who tells the Wall Street Journal EV batteries keep performing well even after several hundred thousand miles. "They are proving themselves to be exceptionally reliable." After five years on the road, the average EV will still be able to drive up to 95% of its original range, according to Recurrent, a data-science company that provides a battery-monitoring tool for EVs — better than many in the auto industry expected...

Potential new car buyers' fear of having to pay for a battery replacement is the number one reason they choose to steer clear of EVs, according to a 2025 survey from industry research firm AutoPacific. When early EVs hit the market, buyers' concerns were well-founded. Roughly one in 12 EVs built from 2011 to 2016 have had to have battery replacements. But new data shows that more modern EVs are doing better so far. Among EVs built from 2022 on, 0.3% have had battery replacements, according to a 2025 study from Recurrent. As battery technology has advanced, EVs have avoided problems like the ones that plagued the original Nissan Leaf when it hit the market in 2010, for example. Those cars lacked the battery-cooling technology that is in newer EVs, and they made headlines for wearing down quickly. Buyer perception hasn't quite caught up, according to Scott Case, co-founder and chief executive of Recurrent...

The newest battery-powered EVs have lifespans comparable to internal-combustion-engine vehicles, even when driven more miles, according to Viet Nguyen-Tien, a research officer at the London School of Economics who focuses on Evs. Improvements in car batteries' chemical contents, battery-management systems and thermal regulation have been the difference in making batteries last longer and cost less, Nguyen-Tien said. Battery prices have fallen more than 90% since 2010, according to a BloombergNEF report from late last year. Industry analysts say battery-replacement costs are also improving as more EVs are designed for repairability in the long-haul. An out-of-warranty battery replacement can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $16,000, depending on the manufacturer, according to Recurrent. But many EV manufacturers have shifted to allow smaller components of their battery packs to be repaired, which can allow owners to avoid the full costs of a battery replacement, Case said.

EV batteries aren't without their challenges, though. A battery that is frequently fast-charged with high power loses its range, on average, at twice the rate of a battery charged at a lower power, according to telematics company Geotab. Frequently charging a battery to 100%, or letting it rest at 0% for extended periods, can also reduce range long-term. And EVs regularly deliver less range in extreme cold or heat.
The article also includes two new projections on EV adoption:

• "The share of new EVs sold is expected to nearly double to 11% of new-car sales in the U.S. by 2030, according to industry consulting firm AlixPartners."

• "Globally, EVs already make up 15% of new-car sales and are expected to form nearly a quarter of the global market by 2030, according to AlixPartners."

An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch: Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial from Google asks: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?

With the tagline "Group project, but make it 1776," the ad depicts a largely unseen Thomas Jefferson mid-draft when he gets a nagging text from Ben Franklin, leading to a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting gets scheduled in Google Calendar and conducted remotely via Google Meet (with every single attendee apparently turning their camera off?), then the whole thing is finalized with e-signatures; cue the fireworks.

Of course, since this is an ad from a tech company in the year 2026, AI has a role to play. The fictionalized founders use Google's "help me visualize" AI tool to try out different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes on the meeting, and the founders also ask the chatbot for advice before declining King George III's document access request.
TechCrunch call it "very tongue-in-cheek," noting that at one point Samuel Adams even asks, "Can we settle this over beers?" And they argue that "the AI evangelism is relatively discreet when compared to many other recent ads."

Subsea cables. Ukrainian power stations. Russian oil refineries. Even airports, water-desalination plants and Amazon data centers.

They've all become targets in wartime, notes the Wall Street Journal, and around the world now arguments "are already brewing between companies and governments over new regulations and potential costs." In Germany, powerful associations representing private companies and municipal utilities have pushed back against new standards for physical protection, warning they could spell financial ruin. New Zealand's government has faced resistance from industry groups over a proposal to fine critical-infrastructure companies and their directors for cybersecurity breaches... A sign of how lines are blurring: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 32 countries last year agreed that as part of a pact to spend 5% of economic output on defense and security, 1.5% would go to military-adjacent needs including protecting critical infrastructure and networks. Spending targets range from cybersecurity and industrial capacity to railroads, bridges and ports needed for military logistics... "We need a wide concept of defense — defense is no longer just military," said Italian Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, NATO's top military adviser.

Adding to the complexity, companies now need to protect the data networks that serve as gateways to critical infrastructure. Hackers increasingly target not just computer files to steal information but also systems managing vital functions like building access and factory control, remotely causing physical damage or enabling espionage. U.S. authorities in April warned that Iranian hackers were trying to disrupt American drinking-water systems by targeting computer equipment that connects hardware with software. A year earlier, suspected Russian hackers remotely manipulated valves on a Norwegian hydroelectric dam...

Another challenge will be parsing jurisdictions and liability for assets that cross international waters or are damaged in combat — such as subsea data cables or energy pipelines. Turf battles between law enforcement and militaries are already complicating efforts... "The private owner can invest in redundancy, monitoring, and repair capacity, but only governments and militaries can really deter, patrol, attribute, or respond to hostile state activity," said Marc Glasser, who worked on cybersecurity and infrastructure security for three decades at the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security.... Companies say they need greater clarity from governments on what protections they will provide and subsidies to help them defend privately owned assets that provide a public good. Most governments don't provide incentives for companies to invest more than the minimum legal resilience requirements.
The article notes that in May the chief executive of California's Port of Long Beach "launched a cyber-defense operations center to thwart tens of thousands of cyberattacks daily, which jeopardize computer systems and all equipment connected to them."

The article also points out that the EU adopted new regulations requiring countries to reduce vulnerabilities, and new laws proposed in the U.K. now "seek to increase penalties for subsea sabotage, updating codes that date to when telegraph cables were first laid in the 19th century."

EchoStar's satellite pay-TV unit Dish DBS has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, reports Reuters. The move also applies to its wireless subsidiaries, according to the article, and "facilitates the wind-down of Dish Wireless's 5G network operations following an unexpected delay in a spectrum license sale to AT&T... under which EchoStar agreed to sell about 50 megahertz of its nationwide spectrum for $23 billion."

Some context from Deadline.com: Charlie Ergen, who co-founded EchoStar and Dish, recently returned as chairman and CEO to steer the company through its recent challenges... Even prior to the merger, Ergen had been working to pivot from the pay-TV business, where Dish now has just 5 million subscribers and streaming sibling Sling TV has another 2 million, toward wireless telecom. With wireless spectrum hitting the market due to the Sprint-T-Mobile merger and then Elon Musk's Starlink looking to ramp up in the sector, it seemed more attractive than the cord-cutting-ravaged pay-TV business. But it is still entails plenty of risk, especially given how tightly regulated the spectrum is due to security concerns.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Amazon says its Leo satellite network now has enough spacecraft in orbit to begin limited commercial internet service, with 396 satellites providing "continuous service across initial latitudes." Early performance will likely be uneven, however, and well behind Starlink. "It'll be years before Amazon can boast similar performance numbers as it continues to launch a planned 3,232 Leo satellites," reports The Verge. From the report: SpaceX went live with its "Better than nothing beta" back in 2020 when it had almost 900 satellites operating in low-Earth orbit. It initially served a narrow band of users in the upper US and Canada, who complained about frequent service interruptions and high sensitivity to obstructions, with speeds between 50Mbps and 150Mbps, and latency from 20ms to 40ms. By 2022, the service and coverage areas had already dramatically improved. [...]

SpaceX currently has over 10,000 Starlink satellites in operation, providing robust internet connectivity on land, sea, and air in over 160 countries. Performance varies by the dish, service level paid for, time of day, and location of the user, but we're now talking 200Mbps median download speeds, 10Mbps to 40Mbps uploads, and latency hovering around 25ms.

Meta is introducing a subscription for expanded access to advanced smart-glasses features. According to Wired, "[U]sers will need the Meta One Premium Plan to unlock expanded access to some features for their smart glasses, whether it's the Ray-Ban, Oakley, or Meta-branded version." They'll still be usable with a subscription, but "certain features will be limited," the report says. From the report: Specifically, a feature called Conversation Focus, which boosts the audio of the person you're speaking with so you can hear them better in loud environments. You'll get three hours per month without a subscription, but if you want to use it more often, then you'll need to pay up. Though even then, you're still capped at 15 hours. Subscribing also nets you "Premium Device Support," where you'll get faster access to what Meta says are "human experts" trained on the smart glasses' features, should any problems arise. Guess humans are better at some things after all.

A Meta spokesperson tells WIRED that this is "not an AI rate limit." Rate limits are common on other AI platforms -- users get free access to a feature until they hit a certain cap, then they'll need to subscribe to use it more until the limit resets at the end of the month. However, the Conversation Focus feature runs on-device, meaning it doesn't need to head to Meta's servers for AI processing. There's no real-time way to monitor how many hours you've used Conversation Focus, but you'll receive a notification when you get near the limit.

"The subscription supports that ongoing work and gives power users expanded access along with premium device support," the spokesperson says. "We're going to start testing new optional subscription plans that offer more premium features and advanced capabilities for those who want to unlock more from our apps and AI glasses."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: WhatsApp this week started rolling out username reservations ahead of the broader launch planned later this year. The feature -- which lets people find and message each other by handle instead of phone number -- is already raising impersonation concerns, drawing scrutiny from security experts and regulators in India, the app's largest market, with more than 500 million users. The rollout marks a shift in how people identify one another on WhatsApp. Instead of relying on phone numbers as the primary identifier, users will increasingly interact through platform-managed usernames, a change that Meta says improves privacy but that critics argue could create new opportunities for impersonation.

[...] Asked about how it protects against impersonation, Meta told TechCrunch it reserves usernames for public figures, government entities, and "some variations" of those names so only the legitimate owner can claim them. The company did not explain, however, how it decides which lookalike usernames get proactively reserved and which don't. The concerns have already reached regulators in India, where cyber fraud schemes frequently exploit messaging platforms to impersonate police, banks, and government officials. [...] Rachel Tobac, chief executive of SocialProof Security, called usernames a net privacy gain because they reduce the need to share phone numbers, which can expose users to SIM-swap attacks, phishing, and account takeovers. Still, she said, lookalike usernames still create opportunities for impersonation. "Ultimately, usernames are a great idea to avoid leaking your phone number to folks you don't know, but it's important to verify identity with the username function too," Tobac told TechCrunch. Her advice for most users: Pick a username that isn't easily guessable, so it's harder for attackers to find you, message you cold, or harass and spam you.

[...] The Mozilla Foundation said the introduction of usernames is likely to bring new tradeoffs. "Increased scams and impersonation from fake handles are potentially a big one," it told TechCrunch. "Checking a phone number can be a useful verification tool, but these harms are also permitted by the platform's fundamental design choices." Mozilla also flagged a broader interoperability question -- one worth logging if you're building on top of, or competing with, Meta's ecosystem. While letting users claim their existing Facebook and Instagram usernames may cut down on impersonation, it also shows how easily Meta can stitch identity together across its own apps, even as users still can't take that identity, or their contacts, to a rival platform. For now, WhatsApp says it is taking a gradual approach to the rollout. "We're taking our time and listening to feedback so that when it rolls out later this year we get it right," the company said in its FAQ.

BrianFagioli writes: Cloudflare announced new controls that give publishers more say over how AI companies access and use their content. Beginning September 15, new Cloudflare sites will allow traditional search indexing while blocking AI training and AI agent access on ad supported pages by default. The company is also expanding its monetization efforts with a Pay-Per-Use model that aims to compensate publishers when their content contributes to AI generated answers rather than simply being crawled. Cloudflare argues that publishers should not have to choose between being discoverable online and giving away their work for free to AI systems.