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150k accounts nuked, 21 suspects arrested

Not every scam starts with malware or a compromised account. Sometimes all it takes is a friend request or a link shared via chat.…

YouTube is expanding its AI deepfake detection tools to a pilot group of politicians, government officials, and journalists, allowing them to identify and request removal of unauthorized AI-generated videos impersonating them. TechCrunch reports: The technology itself launched last year to roughly 4 million YouTube creators in the YouTube Partner Program, following earlier tests. Similar to YouTube's existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users' uploaded videos, the likeness detection feature looks for simulated faces made with AI tools. These tools are sometimes used to try to spread misinformation and manipulate people's perception of reality, as they leverage the deepfaked personas of notable figures -- like politicians or other government officials -- to say and do things in these AI videos that they didn't in real life. With the new pilot program, YouTube aims to balance users' free expression with the risks associated with AI technology that can generate a convincing likeness of a public figure. [...] [Leslie Miller, YouTube's vice president of Government Affairs and Public Policy] explained that not all of the detected matches would be removed when requested. Instead, YouTube would evaluate each request under its existing privacy policy guidelines to determine whether the content is parody or political critique, which are protected forms of free expression. The company noted it's advocating for these protections at a federal level, too, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in D.C., which would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized recreations of an individual's voice and visual likeness. To use the new tool, eligible pilot testers must first prove their identity by uploading a selfie and a government ID. They can then create a profile, view the matches that show up, and optionally request their removal. YouTube says it plans to eventually give people the ability to prevent uploads of violating content before they go live or, possibly, allow them to monetize those videos, similar to how its Content ID system works. The company would not confirm which politicians or officials would be among its initial testers, but said the goal is to make the technology broadly available over time.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Chinese authorities moved to restrict state-run enterprises and government agencies from running OpenClaw AI apps on office computers, acting swiftly to defuse potential security risks after companies and consumers across China began experimenting with the agentic AI phenomenon. Government agencies and state-owned enterprises, including the largest banks, have received notices in recent days warning them against installing OpenClaw software on office devices for security reasons [...]. Several of them were instructed to notify superiors if they had already installed related apps for security checks and possible removal, some of the people said. Certain employees, including those at state-run banks and some government agencies, were banned from installing OpenClaw on office computers and also personal phones using the company's network, some of the people said. One person said the ban was also extended to the families of military personnel. Other notices stopped short of calling for an outright ban on OpenClaw software, saying only that prior approval is needed before use, the people said. The warning underscores Beijing's growing concern about OpenClaw, an agentic AI platform that requires unusually broad access to private data and can communicate externally, potentially exposing computers to external attack. [...] Despite the potential security risks, companies from Tencent to JD.com Inc. have been rolling out OpenClaw apps to try and capitalize on the groundswell of enthusiasm, while several local government agencies have declared millions of yuan in subsidies for companies that develop atop the platform. [...] Tech giants like Tencent and Alibaba, along with AI upstarts ranging from Moonshot to MiniMax, have rolled out their own tweaks of the software touting simple, one-click adoption. A slew of government agencies, in cities from Shenzhen to Wuxi, have issued notices offering multimillion-yuan subsidies to startups leveraging OpenClaw to make advances. The frenzy has helped drive up shares of AI model developer MiniMax nearly 640% since its listing just two months ago. It's now worth about $49 billion, surpassing Baidu -- once viewed as the frontrunner in Chinese AI development -- in market value. The company launched MaxClaw, an agent built on OpenClaw, in late February.

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Inspector general flags Starship risks and gaps in testing

The NASA Office of Inspector General has published a report on the agency's management of the lunar Human Landing System (HLS) contracts, highlighting the risks and arguments behind the scenes.…

ASUS says the MacBook Neo is a "shock" to the Windows PC ecosystem. "In the past, Apple's pricing situation has always been high, so for them to release a very budget-friendly product, this is obviously a shock to the entire industry," said ASUS co-CEO S.Y. Hsu in a Tuesday earnings call. While he expects PC makers to respond, rising AI-driven memory shortages could push hardware prices higher across the industry. PCMag reports: Hsu said he believes all the PC players -- including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD -- take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. "In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product," he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year. Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop's 8GB of "unified memory," or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can't upgrade it. He also described the MacBook Neo as a "content consumption" device, similar to an iPad. "This is different from the use case of a mainstream notebook," which can handle more compute-intensive tasks, Hsu said. "How big of an impact [the MacBook Neo] will have on the PC industry will still require some time for us to observe," Hsu said while suggesting it might not gain traction among Windows PC users due to software differences. "Of course, the entire Windows PC ecosystem will push out products to compete against Apple," he added.

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Project claims legal clarity and zero legacy code, but offers binaries only

DR-DOS is back, and there is already a test version you can download. But as of yet, it's not finished, not FOSS – and not based on the original code.…

Blue-on-blue internal investigation lands force £66k fine

The UK's data protection watchdog has fined Police Scotland £66,000 ($88,000) for what it calls a "serious failure" in handling an alleged victim's sensitive data.…

Meta will begin charging advertisers a 2-5% "location fee" to offset digital services taxes imposed by several European countries, including the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Turkey. Reuters reports: The fee, for image or video ads delivered on Meta platforms including WhatsApp click-to-message campaigns and marketing messages together with ads, will apply from July 1 and will also cover other government-imposed levies. "Until now, Meta has covered these additional costs. These changes are part of Meta's ongoing effort to respond to the evolving regulatory landscape and align with industry standards," the company said in the blog. The location fees are determined by where the audience is located and not the advertisers' business location. Meta listed six countries where the fees will apply, ranging from 2% in the United Kingdom to 3% in France, Italy and Spain and 5% in Austria and Turkey.

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This is not satire, but we wish it was

The Ig Nobel Prize, which satirizes its more noble namesake, is moving its award ceremony to Europe following concerns about the safety of those attending the US event.…

Let them eat cores

Intel has a new strategy for shoring up its eroding market share: Offering PC buyers more cores per dollar than arch-rival AMD in a refresh of its Arrow Lake range.…

Reference design to stitch more than a thousand accelerators into a single enormous server.

Exclusive If you thought Nvidia or AMD's 72-GPU rack systems were enormous, silicon Ayar Labs has something much bigger in the works.…

Latest optical engine may not be CPO, but it's still better than pluggables

Photonics startup LightMatter says that its latest optical engine can cut the amount of fiber used by modern datacenters in half, and perhaps more importantly, it doesn't rely on co-packaging to do it.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a new Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Monday it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models. LeCun argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary to develop true human-level intelligence. "The idea that you're going to extend the capabilities of LLMs [large language models] to the point that they're going to have human-level intelligence is complete nonsense," he said in an interview with WIRED. The financing, which values the startup at $3.5 billion, was co-led by investors such as Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. Other notable backers include Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and French billionaire and telecommunications executive Xavier Niel. AMI (pronounced like the French word for friend) aims to build "a new breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe," the company says in a press release. The startup says it will be global from day one, with offices in Paris, Montreal, Singapore, and New York, where LeCun will continue working as a New York University professor in addition to leading the startup. AMI will be the first commercial endeavor for LeCun since his departure from Meta in November 2025. [...] LeCun says AMI aims to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries that have lots of data. For example, he says AMI could build a realistic world model of an aircraft engine and work with the manufacturer to help them optimize for efficiency, minimize emissions, or ensure reliability. LeCun says AMI will release its first AI models quickly, but he's not expecting most people to take notice. The company will first work with partners such as Toyota and Samsung, and then will learn how to apply its technology more broadly. Eventually, he says, AMI intends to develop a "universal world model," which would be the basis for a generally intelligent system that could help companies regardless of what industry they work in. "It's very ambitious," he says with a smile.

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Google also enables auto-approval of AI agents while their documentation warns against it

Microsoft's Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is moving to a weekly release cycle, as well as joining Google in encouraging agentic AI development without manual approval with a new Autopilot feature.…

Officials suspend Basel-Stadt trial and launch probe

A Swiss canton has suspended its pilot of electronic voting after failing to count 2,048 votes cast in national referendums held on March 8.…

17-year-old allegedly withdrew large sums of cash from ATMs

Dutch police have arrested a 17-year-old boy who detectives suspect was responsible for 16 bank card frauds across the Netherlands.…

Subscribers north of the border suffer the most long-running failures per £100 spent

Broadband subscribers in Scotland suffer the most outages in the UK, according to Broadband Genie, with customers of BT typically experiencing the fewest.…

Microsoft insists rebootless updates are 'the quickest way to get secure'

From the department of "what could possibly go wrong?" comes news that Windows Autopatch is enabling hotpatch security updates by default.…

Advocate General urges rethink of PSD2 to speed compensation after scams

Analysis One of the European Union's top legal advisors is trying to change how banks treat cybercrime victims – meaning they could enjoy greater financial protections sooner than expected.…

AI factories demand 800 volts because physics doesn't care about your upgrade budget

Feature Hyperscale computing was built on a foundation of certainty. For years, 12V and 48V rack architectures – implemented at a steady 50–54 VDC (Volts of Direct Current) - ruled the datacenter floor, engineered to perfection for power densities of 10–15 kW per rack. These systems were finely tuned machines, optimized around the predictable, steady-state demands of general-purpose CPUs and storage servers. The infrastructure was stable. The math was settled.…