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Rising subscription costs, shrinking content libraries, and regional restrictions are pushing viewers back toward piracy. Once seen as nearly dead, piracy has resurged through illicit streaming platforms as the fractured, ad-laden streaming market struggles to deliver convenience and value. The Guardian reports: According to London-based piracy monitoring and content-protection firm MUSO, unlicensed streaming is the predominant source of TV and film piracy, accounting for 96% in 2023 (PDF). Piracy reached a low in 2020, with 130bn website visits. But by 2024 that number had risen to 216bn (PDF). In Sweden, 25% of people surveyed (PDF) reported pirating in 2024, a trend mostly driven by those aged 15 to 24. Piracy is back, just sailing under a different flag. "Piracy is not a pricing issue," Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve, the company behind the world's largest PC gaming platform, Steam, observed in 2011. "It's a service issue." Today, the crisis in streaming makes this clearer than ever. With titles scattered, prices on the rise, and bitrates throttled depending on your browser, it is little wonder some viewers are raising the jolly roger again. Studios carve out fiefdoms, build walls and levy tolls for those who wish to visit. The result is artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance. Whether piracy today is rebellion or resignation is almost irrelevant; the sails are hoisted either way. As the streaming landscape fractures into feudal territories, more viewers are turning to the high seas. The Medici understood the value linked to access. [The 2016 historical drama series tells of the rise of the powerful Florentine banking dynasty, and with it, the story of the Renaissance.] A client could travel from Rome to London and still draw on their credit, thanks to a network built on trust and interoperability. If today's studios want to survive the storm, they may need to rediscover that truth.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google has announced a tiny version of its Gemma open model designed to run on local devices. Google says the new Gemma 3 270M can be tuned in a snap and maintains robust performance despite its small footprint. [...] Running an AI model locally has numerous benefits, including enhanced privacy and lower latency. Gemma 3 270M was designed with these kinds of use cases in mind. In testing with a Pixel 9 Pro, the new Gemma was able to run 25 conversations on the Tensor G4 chip and use just 0.75 percent of the device's battery. That makes it by far the most efficient Gemma model. Developers shouldn't expect the same performance level of a multi-billion-parameter model, but Gemma 3 270M has its uses. Google used the IFEval benchmark, which tests a model's ability to follow instructions, to show that its new model punches above its weight. Gemma 3 270M hits a score of 51.2 percent in this test, which is higher than other lightweight models that have more parameters. The new Gemma falls predictably short of 1 billion-plus models like Llama 3.2, but it gets closer than you might think for having just a fraction of the parameters. Google claims Gemma 3 270M is good at following instructions out of the box, but it expects developers to fine-tune the model for their specific use cases. Due to the small parameter count, that process is fast and low-cost, too. Google sees the new Gemma being used for tasks like text classification and data analysis, which it can accomplish quickly and without heavy computing requirements. You can download the new Gemma for free, and the model weights are available. There's no separate commercial licensing agreement, so developers can modify, publish, and deploy Gemma 3 270M derivatives in their tools. You can download Gemma 3 270M from Hugging Face and Kaggle in both pre-trained and instruction-tuned versions.

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Some custom malware, some legit software tools

At least a dozen ransomware gangs have incorporated kernel-level EDR killers into their malware arsenal, allowing them to bypass almost every major endpoint security tool on the market, escalate privileges, and ultimately steal and encrypt data before extorting victims into paying a ransom.…

Apple has reintroduced blood oxygen monitoring to certain Apple Watch models in the U.S. by shifting the feature's calculations to the paired iPhone, sidestepping an ITC import ban stemming from its legal dispute with medical device maker Masimo. TechCrunch reports: Blood oxygen data will be measured and calculated on the user's paired iPhone, and results can be viewed in the Respiratory section of the Health app. This means users won't be able to view the data on their Apple Watch, as they'll need to do so on their iPhone. Apple says the update announced today is enabled by a recent U.S. Customs ruling, which means that the tech giant is allowed to import Apple Watches with the redesigned Blood Oxygen feature. The change doesn't affect previously sold models with the original version of the feature or units bought outside the U.S. The redesigned feature only applies to Apple Watches that were sold after the ITC import ban took effect in early 2024. These users can access the redesigned Blood Oxygen feature through an iPhone and Apple Watch software update coming on Thursday.

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PayPal payment processing has been unavailable for Steam purchases in most countries since early July 2025, Valve has confirmed, with functionality limited to transactions in U.S. dollars, Euros, British Pounds, Japanese Yen, Australian dollars, and Canadian dollars. In a statement to RockPaperShotgun, the company said one of PayPal's acquiring banks terminated all Steam transaction processing. Valve linked the bank's decision to previous Mastercard-related content restrictions. The disruption began in early July 2025 when PayPal notified Valve of the immediate termination, leaving millions of users in affected regions without PayPal access and no certain timeline for resolution.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Astronomers have observed the calamitous result of a star that picked the wrong dance partner. They have documented what appears to be a new type of supernova, as stellar explosions are known, that occurred when a massive star tried to swallow a black hole with which it had engaged in a lengthy pas de deux. The star, which was at least 10 times as massive as our sun, and the black hole, which had a similar mass, were gravitationally bound to one another in what is called a binary system. But as the distance separating them gradually narrowed, the black hole's immense gravitational pull appears to have distorted the star -- stretching it out from its spherical shape -- and siphoned off material before causing it to explode. An AI algorithm detected the event in real time, enabling astronomers to conduct comprehensive observations. Data from four years before the supernova showed bright emissions as the black hole consumed its companion's outer hydrogen layer. The exact mechanism remains uncertain -- either gravitational distortion triggered the star's collapse or the black hole completely tore it apart first. Following the explosion, the black hole consumed residual stellar debris, growing more massive.

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Negotiations on a global treaty to end plastic pollution are drawing to a close Thursday, as nations remain deadlocked over whether to tackle the exponential growth of plastic production. From a report: A draft of the treaty released Wednesday wouldn't limit plastic production or address chemicals used in plastic products. Instead, it's centered on proposals where there's broad agreement -- such as reducing the number of problematic plastic products that often enter the environment and are difficult to recycle, promoting the redesign of plastic products so they can be recycled and reused, and improving waste management. It asks nations to make commitments to ending plastic pollution, rather than imposing global, legally-binding rules. French President Emmanuel Macron said the "lack of ambition" in the draft treaty was unacceptable, and that agreeing to a global treaty against plastic pollution "is our opportunity to make a difference."

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Chinese AI model dev still plans to use homegrown silicon for inferencing

Unhelpful Huawei AI chips are reportedly why Chinese model dev DeepSeek's next-gen LLMs are taking so long.…

Former Sony Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden criticized subscription gaming services like Xbox Game Pass, arguing that developers working under such models become "wage slaves." Speaking in a recent industry discussion, Layden contended that subscription services prevent developers from traditional profit-sharing arrangements. "They're not creating value, putting it in the marketplace, hoping it explodes, and profit sharing, and overages, and all that nice stuff," Layden said. "It's just, 'You pay me X dollars an hour, I built you a game, here, go put it on your servers.'" He called the model uninspiring for game developers.

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Pilots may soon have to compete against frakking toasters for the title of Top Gun

That autonomous fighter jet from DARPA is so 2023 that the agency is already well into a bid to give future combat jets autonomy for multi-ship missions over the horizon.…

Government and police employee credentials sold at bargain-basement prices on underground forums

Criminals are selling access to FBI and other law enforcement and government email accounts to other criminals via dark web marketplaces for as little as $40.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is considering ways to bring in additional revenue, and bringing ads to ChatGPT is one option on the table. While being interviewed on Decoder, ChatGPT head Nick Turley said he's "humble enough not to rule it out categorically," but hedged that OpenAI would need to "be very thoughtful and tasteful" about how ads could be integrated into ChatGPT. "We will build other products, and those other products can have different dimensions to them, and maybe ChatGPT just isn't an ads-y product because it's just so deeply accountable to your goals. But it doesn't mean that we wouldn't build other things in the future, too," Turley said. "I think it's good to preserve optionality, but I also really do want to emphasize how incredible the subscription model is, how fast it's growing, and how untapped a lot of the opportunities are."

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Datacenter giant looks for energy sources outside the grid

Equinix is doing deals with alternative energy providers to support the needs of its datacenters globally, including nuclear options and fuel cell deployments, as the AI fad continues to push a bit barn build boom.…

Meta's internal policy document permitted the company's AI chatbots to engage children in "romantic or sensual" conversations and generate content arguing that "Black people are dumber than white people," according to a Reuters review of the 200-page "GenAI: Content Risk Standards" guide. The document, approved by Meta's legal, public policy and engineering staff including its chief ethicist, allowed chatbots to describe children as attractive and create false medical information. Meta confirmed the document's authenticity but removed child-related provisions after Reuters inquiries, calling them "erroneous and inconsistent with our policies."

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Researchers had to notify over 100 vendors of flaw that builds on 2023's Rapid Reset with neat twist past usual mitigations

Security researchers Gal Bar Nahum, Anat Bremler-Barr, and Yaniv Harel have published details of a "common design flaw" in implementations of the HyperText Transfer Protocol 2 (HTTP/2) allowing those with ill intent to create "massive Denial of Service attacks".…

Twenty years after Michelin introduced the Tweel in 2005, airless tires remain absent from passenger vehicles despite their promise to "eliminate nearly 200 million scrap tires a year caused by flats and underinflation," according to Michelin's internal testing cited in a Jalopnik report. Current prototypes "tend to transfer more road noise and vibration into the cabin than traditional radials -- making the ride harsher, especially at highway speeds." Heat dissipation poses additional challenges as "airless designs -- particularly those with internal webbing or solid cores -- have fewer ways to shed thermal load." The added structural mass "can affect fuel economy and increase unsprung weight -- bad news for handling and suspension tuning." Federal regulations compound these technical barriers since vehicle tires are subject to rigorous performance standards, many of which assume air pressure as a baseline.

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The agency offered some tips for operational technology environments, where attacks are rising

CISA is urging companies with operational technology environments to set a better cybersecurity posture, and not just by adopting some new best practices and purchasing some new software.…

Electricity rates for individuals and small businesses could rise sharply as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies build data centers and expand into the energy business. Residential electricity bills increased at least $15 monthly for Ohio households starting in June due to data center demands, according to utility data and an independent grid monitor. A Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University analysis projects average U.S. electricity bills will rise 8% by 2030 from data center growth, with Virginia facing potential 25% increases. Virginia regulators estimate residents could pay an additional $276 annually by 2030. National residential electricity rates have already risen more than 30% since 2020. Tech companies' AI push requires data centers that consumed over 4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, with government analysts projecting consumption reaching 12% within three years. American Electric Power warned Ohio regulators that without new rate structures requiring data centers to pay more upfront costs, residents and small businesses would bear much of the expense for grid upgrades.

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Lessons of Windows 8 unlearned as software giant gives users what it thinks they need

COMMENT Microsoft Windows and Devices boss, Pavan Davuluri, has shed light on plans for the flagship OS. Voice, touch, and pen control will all be part of a multimodal future, alongside a raft of inevitable AI features.…

Turkish exchange is the latest victim of a recent spate of major crypto thefts

Turkish cryptocurrency exchange BtcTurk is halting all deposits and withdrawals amid fears that blockchain bandits succeeded in significantly compromising its hot wallets.…