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India is weighing a proposal to mandate always-on satellite tracking in smartphones for precise government surveillance -- an idea strongly opposed by Apple, Google, Samsung, and industry groups. Reuters reports: For years, the [Prime Minister Narendra Modi's] administration has been concerned its agencies do not get precise locations when legal requests are made to telecom firms during investigations. Under the current system, the firms are limited to using cellular tower data that can only provide an estimated area location, which can be off by several meters. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), which represents Reliance's Jio and Bharti Airtel, has proposed that precise user locations should only be provided if the government orders smartphone makers to activate A-GPS technology -- which uses satellite signals and cellular data -- according to a June internal federal IT ministry email. That would require location services to always be activated in smartphones with no option for users to disable them. Apple, Samsung, and Alphabet's Google have told New Delhi that should not be mandated, said three of the sources who have direct knowledge of the deliberations. A measure to track device-level location has no precedent anywhere else in the world, lobbying group India Cellular & Electronics Association (ICEA), which represents both Apple and Google, wrote in a confidential July letter to the government, which was viewed by Reuters. "The A-GPS network service ... (is) not deployed or supported for location surveillance," said the letter, which added that the measure "would be a regulatory overreach." Earlier this week, Modi's government was forced to rescind an order requiring smartphone makers to preload a state-run cyber safety app on all devices after public backlash and privacy concerns.

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The New York Times is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement, accusing the AI startup of repackaging its paywalled reporting without permission. TechCrunch reports: The Times joins several media outlets suing Perplexity, including the Chicago Tribune, which also filed suit this week. The Times' suit claims that "Perplexity provides commercial products to its own users that substitute" for the outlet, "without permission or remuneration." [...] "While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, we firmly object to Perplexity's unlicensed use of our content to develop and promote their products," Graham James, a spokesperson for The Times, said in a statement. "We will continue to work to hold companies accountable that refuse to recognize the value of our work." Similar to the Tribune's suit, the Times takes issue with Perplexity's method for answering user queries by gathering information from websites and databases to generate responses via its retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) products, like its chatbots and Comet browser AI assistant. "Perplexity then repackages the original content in written responses to users," the suit reads. "Those responses, or outputs, often are verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions, summaries, or abridgments of the original content, including The Times's copyrighted works." Or, as James put it in his statement, "RAG allows Perplexity to crawl the internet and steal content from behind our paywall and deliver it to its customers in real time. That content should only be accessible to our paying subscribers." The Times also claims Perplexity's search engine has hallucinated information and falsely attributed it to the outlet, which damages its brand. "Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media, and now AI," Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity's head of communications, told TechCrunch. "Fortunately it's never worked, or we'd all be talking about this by telegraph."

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Cloudflare says it blocked 416 billion AI scraping attempts in five months and warns that AI is reshaping the internet's economic model -- with Google's combined crawler creating a monopoly-style dilemma where opting out of AI means disappearing from search altogether. Tom's Hardware reports: "The business model of the internet has always been to generate content that drive traffic and then sell either things, subscriptions, or ads, [Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince] told Wired. "What I think people don't realize, though, is that AI is a platform shift. The business model of the internet is about to change dramatically. I don't know what it's going to change to, but it's what I'm spending almost every waking hour thinking about." While Cloudflare blocks almost all AI crawlers, there's one particular bot it cannot block without affecting its customers' online presence -- Google. The search giant combined its search and AI crawler into one, meaning users who opt out of Google's AI crawler won't be indexed in Google search results. "You can't opt out of one without opting out of both, which is a real challenge -- it's crazy," Prince continued. "It shouldn't be that you can use your monopoly position of yesterday in order to leverage and have a monopoly position in the market of tomorrow."

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Netflix is buying Warner Bros. Discovery in an $82.7 billion deal that gives it HBO, iconic franchises, and major studio infrastructure. "Warner Bros. shareholders will receive $27.75 a share in cash and stock in Netflix," notes Bloomberg. "The total equity value of the deal is $72 billion, while the enterprise value of the deal is about $82.7 billion." From the report: Prior to the closing of the sale, Warner Bros. will complete the planned spinoff of its networks division, which includes cable channels such as CNN, TBS and TNT. That transaction is now expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2026, Netflix said in a statement. With the purchase, Netflix becomes owner of the HBO network, along with its library of hit shows like The Sopranos and The White Lotus. Warner Bros. assets also include its sprawling studios in Burbank, California, along with a vast film and TV archive that includes Harry Potter and Friends. Netflix said it expects to maintain Warner Bros.' current operations and build on its strengths, including theatrical releases for films, a point that had been a cause of concern in Hollywood. Netflix said the deal will allow it to "significantly expand" US production capacity and invest in original content, which will create jobs and strengthen the entertainment industry. Still, the combination is also expected to create "at least $2 billion to $3 billion" in cost savings per year by the third year, according to the statement. U.S. Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah who leads the Senate antitrust committee, said the acquisition "should send alarm to antitrust enforcers around the world." "Netflix built a great service, but increasing Netflix's dominance this way would mean the end of the Golden Age of streaming for content creators and consumers," Lee wrote in a post on X. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren called it an antitrust "nightmare" that would harm workers and consumers. "A Netflix-Warner Bros would create one massive media giant with control of close to half of the streaming market -- threatening to force Americans into higher subscription prices and fewer choices over what and how they watch, while putting American workers at risk," Warren said on Friday. "It would mean more price hikes, ads, & cookie cutter content, less creative control for artists, and lower pay for workers," she said in a post on X. "The media industry is already controlled by a few corporations with too much power to censor free speech. The gov't must step in."

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TikTok, by contrast, satisfied DSA concerns over its ad repository transparency

The European Union has issued its first-ever Digital Services Act fine, slapping Elon Musk's X with a €120 million penalty for breaching the bloc's rules on ad transparency, data access for researchers, and its revamped blue-checkmark system.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A few years ago, Paul Wieland, a 44-year-old information technology professional living in New York's Adirondack Mountains, was wrapping up a home renovation when he ran into a hiccup. He wanted to be able to control his new garage door with his smartphone. But the options available, including a product called MyQ, required connecting to a company's internet servers. He believed a "smart" garage door should operate only over a local Wi-Fi network to protect a home's privacy, so he started building his own system to plug into his garage door. By 2022, he had developed a prototype, which he named RATGDO, for Rage Against the Garage Door Opener. He had hoped to sell 100 of his new gadgets just to recoup expenses, but he ended up selling tens of thousands. That's because MyQ's maker did what a number of other consumer device manufacturers have done over the last few years, much to the frustration of their customers: It changed the device, making it both less useful and more expensive to operate. Chamberlain Group, a company that makes garage door openers, had created the MyQ hubs so that virtually any garage door opener could be controlled with home automation software from Apple, Google, Nest and others. Chamberlain also offered a free MyQ smartphone app. Two years ago, Chamberlain started shutting down support for most third-party access to its MyQ servers. The company said it was trying to improve the reliability of its products. But this effectively broke connections that people had set up to work with Apple's Home app or Google's Home app, among others. Chamberlain also started working with partners that charge subscriptions for their services, though a basic app to control garage doors was still free. While Mr. Wieland said RATGDO sales spiked after Chamberlain made those changes, he believes the popularity of his device is about more than just opening and closing a garage. It stems from widespread frustration with companies that sell internet-connected hardware that they eventually change or use to nickel-and-dime customers with subscription fees. "You should own the hardware, and there is a line there that a lot of companies are experimenting with," Mr. Wieland said in a recent interview. "I'm really afraid for the future that consumers are going to swallow this and that's going to become the norm." [...] For Mr. Wieland, the fight isn't over. He started a company named RATCLOUD, for Rage Against the Cloud. He said he was developing similar products that were not yet for sale.

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All those new features won’t fund themselves

Microsoft 365 customers have gotten an early Christmas present from Santa Satya: price rises. All that AI goodness isn't going to pay for itself.…

On Dec. 2, QuickTime turned 34, and despite its origins in Apple's chaotic 1990s (1991 to be exact), "it's still the backbone of video on our devices," writes Macworld's Jason Snell. That includes MP4 and Apple's immersive video formats for Vision Pro. From the report: By the late '80s and early '90s, digital audio had been thoroughly integrated into Macs. (PCs needed add-on cards to do much more than issue beeps.) The next frontier was video, and even better, synchronized video and audio. There were a whole lot of challenges: the Macs of the day were not really powerful to decode and display more than a few frames per second, which was more of a slideshow than a proper video. Also, the software written to decode and encode such video (called codecs) was complex and expensive, and there were lots of different formats, making file exchange unreliable. Apple's solution wasn't to invent entirely new software to cover every contingency, but to build a framework for multimedia creation and playback that could use different codecs as needed. At its heart was a file that was a container for other streams of audio and video in various formats: the QuickTime Movie, or MOV. [...] QuickTime's legacy lives on. At a recent event I attended at Apple Park, Apple's experts in immersive video for the Vision Pro pointed out that the standard format for immersive videos is, at its heart, a QuickTime container. And perhaps the most ubiquitous video container format on the internet, the MP4 file? That standard file format is actually a container format that can encompass different kinds of audio, video, and other information, all in one place. If that sounds familiar, that's because MPEG-4 is based on the QuickTime format. Thirty-four years later, QuickTime may seem like a quaint product of a long-lost era of Apple. But the truth is, it's become an integral part of the computing world, so pervasive that it's almost invisible. I'd like to forget most of what happened at Apple in the early 1990s, but QuickTime definitely deserves our appreciation.

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Even as enterprises defer spending and analysts spot dotcom-era warning signs

Tech execs are adamant the AI craze is not a bubble, despite the vast sums of money being invested, overinflated valuations given to AI startups, and reports that many projects fail to make it past the pilot stage.…

Two Virginia brothers Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, previously convicted of hacking the U.S. State Department, were rehired as federal contractors and are now charged with conspiring to steal sensitive data and destroy government databases after being fired. "Following the termination of their employment, the brothers allegedly sought to harm the company and its U.S. government customers by accessing computers without authorization, issuing commands to prevent others from modifying the databases before deletion, deleting databases, stealing information, and destroying evidence of their unlawful activities," the Justice Department said in a Wednesday press release. BleepingComputer reports: According to court documents, Muneeb Akhter deleted roughly 96 databases containing U.S. government information in February 2025, including Freedom of Information Act records and sensitive investigative documents from multiple federal agencies. One minute after deleting a Department of Homeland Security database, Muneeb Akhter also allegedly asked an artificial intelligence tool for instructions on clearing system logs after deleting a database. The two defendants also allegedly ran commands to prevent others from modifying the targeted databases before deletion, and destroyed evidence of their activities. The prosecutors added that both men wiped company laptops before returning them to the contractor and discussed cleaning out their house in anticipation of a law enforcement search. The complaint also claims that Muneeb Akhter stole IRS information from a virtual machine, including federal tax data and identifying information for at least 450 individuals, and stole Equal Employment Opportunity Commission information after being fired by the government contractor. Muneeb Akhter has been charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and destroy records, two counts of computer fraud, theft of U.S. government records, and two counts of aggravated identity theft. If found guilty, he faces a minimum of two years in prison for each aggravated identity theft count, with a maximum of 45 years on other charges. His brother, Sohaib, is charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and password trafficking, facing a maximum penalty of six years if convicted.

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Laptop maker says a vendor breach exposed some phone camera code, but not its own systems

Asus has admitted that a third-party supplier was popped by cybercrims after the Everest ransomware gang claimed it had rifled through the tech titan's internal files.…

Netflix says its open AV1 video codec now powers about 30% of all streaming on the platform and is rapidly becoming its primary delivery format thanks to major gains in compression, bandwidth efficiency, HDR support, and film-grain rendering. TVTechnology reports: The blog by Liwei Guo, Zhi Li, Sheldon Radford and Jeff Watts comes at a time when AV2 is on the horizon. [...] The blog revisits Netflix's AV1 journey to date, highlights emerging use cases, and shares adoption trends across the device ecosystem. It noted that since entering the streaming business in 2007, Netflix has primarily relied on H.264/AVC as its streaming format. "Looking ahead, we are excited about the forthcoming release of AV2, announced by the Alliance for Open Media for the end of 2025," said the authors. "AV2 is poised to set a new benchmark for compression efficiency and streaming capabilities, building on the solid foundation laid by AV1. At Netflix, we remain committed to adopting the best open technologies to delight our members around the globe. While AV2 represents the future of streaming, AV1 is very much the present -- serving as the backbone of our platform and powering exceptional entertainment experiences across a vast and ever-expanding ecosystem of devices."

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State-backed attackers started poking flaw as soon as it dropped – anyone still unpatched is on borrowed time

Amazon has warned that China-nexus hacking crews began hammering the critical React "React2Shell" vulnerability within hours of disclosure, turning a theoretical CVSS-10 hole into a live-fire incident almost immediately.…

With seat and usage-based deals back on the table, CRM giant tells investors agent prices are going up

Salesforce has told investors it is upping prices for AI agent platforms, claiming customers will get between three and ten times the value from investment as it introduces new AI charging models.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: New research reveals that AI chatbots can shift voters' opinions in a single conversation -- and they're surprisingly good at it. A multi-university team of researchers has found that chatting with a politically biased AI model was more effective than political advertisements at nudging both Democrats and Republicans to support presidential candidates of the opposing party. The chatbots swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate -- in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive models said the most untrue things. The findings, detailed in a pair of studies published in the journals Nature and Science, are the latest in an emerging body of research demonstrating the persuasive power of LLMs. They raise profound questions about how generative AI could reshape elections.

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Umpteen other distros just put out new versions, but this one is our favorite

Kernel 6.18 has already been designated the new LTS release – just as we predicted – and Alpine Linux 3.23 has arrived carrying it ahead of a flurry of other year-end distro updates.…

Diarmuid Early takes world title after outpacing 11 rivals

Ireland's Diarmuid Early has won the Excel World Championship. Readers of a certain age may be disappointed to learn he has never used Lotus 1-2-3.…

Plan would create statutory powers for police use of biometrics, prompting warnings of mass surveillance

The UK government has kicked off plans to ramp up police use of facial recognition, undeterred by a mounting civil liberties backlash and fresh warnings that any expansion risks turning public spaces into biometric dragnets.…

Project retires 32-bit ports, embraces pkgbase, and modernizes build process

The latest release of FreeBSD contains a lot of crucial under-the-hood changes – and drops 32-bit support on both x86 and POWER, although ARM-v7 survives.…

Union fields member complaints as it presses outsourcer over botched rollout

Capita has sought Microsoft's help after the launch of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) left users facing a malfunctioning website designed to process important financial information.…