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The Document Foundation, which operates the popular open source productivity suite LibreOffice, is positioning the suite's newest release, v25.8, as a strategic asset for digital sovereignty, targeting governments and enterprises seeking independence from foreign software vendors and cloud infrastructure. The Document Foundation released the update last week with zero telemetry architecture, full offline capability, and OpenPGP encryption for documents, directly addressing national security concerns about extraterritorial surveillance and software backdoors. The suite requires no internet access for any features and maintains complete transparency through open source code that governments can audit. Government bodies in Germany, Denmark, and France, alongside national ministries in Italy and Brazil, have deployed LibreOffice to meet GDPR compliance, national procurement laws, and IT localization mandates while eliminating unpredictable licensing costs from proprietary vendors. "It's time to own your documents, own your infrastructure, and own your future," the foundation wrote in a blog post.

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Criminals already abusing its latest zero-days

Citrix has pushed out fixes for three fresh NetScaler holes – and yes, they've already been used in the wild before the vendor got around to patching.…

French prosecutors have opened an investigation into the Australian video platform Kick over the death of a content creator during a live stream. From a report: Raphael Graven -- also known as Jean Pormanove -- was found dead in a residence near the city of Nice last week. He was known for videos in which he endured apparent violence and humiliation. The Paris prosecutor said the investigation would look into whether Kick knowingly broadcast "videos of deliberate attacks on personal integrity." The BBC has approached Kick for comment. A spokesperson for the platform previously said the company was "urgently reviewing" the circumstances around Mr Graven's death. The prosecutor's investigation will also seek to determine whether Kick complied with the European Union's Digital Services Act, and the obligation on platforms to notify the authorities if the life or safety of individuals is in question. In a separate announcement, France's minister for digital affairs, Clara Chappaz, said the government would sue the platform for "negligence" over its failure to block "dangerous content", according to the AFP news agency.

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Timer fail blamed for probe going quiet as Venus looms

The European Space Agency (ESA) is breathing easier after communications with Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) were restored – the spacecraft is currently barreling toward Venus for a gravity-assist flyby on August 31.…

Sideloaders face ID checks, fees, and paperwork as Chocolate Factory tightens gates

Google will extend developer verification to all Android apps, not just those installed from the Play Store, beginning with Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand in September 2026, and followed by global rollout in 2027 and beyond.…

AT&T said Tuesday it would buy wireless licenses from EchoStar for $23 billion, after a years-long saga over what the latter would do with its vast spectrum holdings. From a report: EchoStar was reportedly under pressure from regulators and the White House to either start selling its spectrum or potentially lose it. The cash payment is almost three times the size of EchoStar's entire market capitalization. AT&T said the acquired spectrum covers "virtually every" U.S. market, and will let it speed up and expand the deployment of its home wireless Internet service, as well as continue the phase-out of traditional copper phone line service.

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Tokyo filing adds to mounting actions against startup

AI search outfit Perplexity has been hit with yet another copyright lawsuit, this time courtesy of Japan's Nikkei and Asahi media companies.…

Entry-level workers in AI-exposed occupations have seen employment drop 13% since late 2022, according to Stanford University research analyzing millions of payroll records. The decline affects software developers, customer service representatives, and administrative assistants aged 22 to 25, while employment for older workers in the same roles continued growing. The study [PDF], based on ADP payroll data covering tens of thousands of firms, found the steepest drops in occupations where AI automates tasks rather than augments human capabilities. Among software developers aged 22-25, employment fell nearly 20% from its late 2022 peak. Workers in less AI-exposed fields like nursing saw employment growth across all age groups. The research controlled for firm-level effects and other economic factors, isolating AI's impact from broader trends like interest rate changes and pandemic-era hiring patterns.

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Remy Ra St Felix led a vicious international crime ring

A violent home invader and gunpoint cryptocurrency thief will now spend more than 50 years behind bars after being found guilty of assaulting a witness.…

We've going to Mars! Oh no – anvil clouds!

Elon Musk's monster rocket, Starship, remains firmly on the launchpad after two scrubs in a row, first due to an oxygen leak and then some clouds.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: AbbVie will buy an experimental depression drug from partner Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals for up to $1.2 billion, the companies said on Monday, seeking to access a fast-growing market for psychedelic-based treatments. The deal is the latest in the more than $20 billion AbbVie has spent on acquisitions since 2023 for drugs that can drive growth as its flagship rheumatoid arthritis treatment, Humira, lost patent protection. The companies had signed a partnership last year to develop therapies for psychiatric disorders, with privately held Gilgamesh set to receive up to $1.95 billion in option fees and milestone payments. The deals with Gilgamesh, which is also developing treatments for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, also launch AbbVie into the race to develop psychedelic compounds for psychiatric conditions -- a potential $50 billion market, according to Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Josh Schimmer. The deal, which includes an upfront payment and development milestones, could also bolster AbbVie's neurological conditions portfolio after its experimental schizophrenia drug, which it gained access to through an $8.7 billion purchase of Cerevel Therapeutics, failed in two mid-stage studies last year. Gilgamesh's lead candidate for depression, bretisilocin, activates the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor -- also targeted by classic psychedelics such as psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, and LSD. The companies said bretisilocin has been shown to exert a shorter duration of psychoactive experience while retaining an extended therapeutic benefit in early and mid-stage studies. AbbVie will advance the drug into late-stage studies. "Large Pharma has been less active exploring psychedelic compounds due to potential regulatory concerns ... making today's deal more significant," said BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman.

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Isolation? We've heard of it

Docker has patched a critical hole in Docker Desktop that let a container break out and take control of the host machine with laughable ease.…

Crims raided third-party systems and lifted personal data, including license numbers and partial SSNs

US insurance giant Farmers Insurance says more than a million customers had personal data nicked after a third-party vendor was compromised.…

Amazon is facing a proposed class action lawsuit alleging it misleads customers by advertising digital movies and TV shows as "purchases," when in reality buyers only receive revocable licenses that can disappear if Amazon loses distribution rights. From the Hollywood Reporter: On Friday, a proposed class action was filed in Washington federal court against Amazon over a "bait and switch" in which the company allegedly misleads consumers into believing they've purchased content when they're only getting a license to watch, which can be revoked at any time. [...] The lawsuit accuses Amazon, which didn't respond to a request for comment, of misrepresenting the nature of movie and TV transactions during the purchase process. On its website and platform, the company tells consumers they can "buy" a movie. But hidden in a footnote on the confirmation page is fine print that says, "You receive a license to the video and you agree to our terms," the complaint says. The issue is already before a court. In a 2020 lawsuit alleging unfair competition and false advertising over the practice, Amazon maintained that its use of the word "buy" for digital content isn't deceptive because consumers understand their purchases are subject to licenses. Quoting Webster's Dictionary, it said that the term means "rights to the use or services of payment" rather than perpetual ownership and that its disclosures properly warn people that they may lose access. The court ultimately rebuffed Amazon's bid to dismiss the lawsuit outside of a claim alleging a violation of Washington's unjust enrichment law.

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Phone lines also down as officials rely on social media to issue updates

The state of Nevada is now two days into a cyberattack that has brought down many of its digital services.…

Chatbots ignore their guardrails when your grammar sucks, researchers find

Security researchers from Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 have discovered the key to getting large language model (LLM) chatbots to ignore their guardrails, and it's quite simple.…

Everything's fine, the ad slinger assures us

Cloud security vendor Zscaler says customers of Google’s Play Store have downloaded more than 19 million instances of malware-laden apps that evaded the web giant’s security scans.…

Russia's new Soyuz-5 rocket is set for a December debut as Moscow seeks to end reliance on Ukrainian technology and replace its aging Proton-M fleet. Ars Technica reports: According to the report, translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell, the debut launch of Soyuz-5 will mark the first of several demonstration flights, with full operational service not expected to begin until 2028. It will launch from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan. From an innovation standpoint, the Soyuz-5 vehicle does not stand out. It has been a decade in the making and is fully expendable, unlike a lot of newer medium-lift rockets coming online in the next several years. However, for Russia, this is an important advancement because it seeks to break some of the country's dependency on Ukraine for launch technology.

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What the Dickens is going on in Germany?

Opinion Let’s talk law and let’s talk donkey. Or. in the British vernacular, ass. In particular, let’s go back to Charles Dickens, a pungent critic of the law, who had one of his characters in Oliver Twist say of a legal assumption that “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass - a idiot.”…

Two of Japan's largest media groups are suing AI search engine Perplexity over alleged copyright infringement, joining a growing list of news publishers taking legal action against AI companies using their content. FT: Japanese media group Nikkei, which owns the Financial Times, and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said in statements on Tuesday that they had jointly filed a lawsuit in Tokyo. The groups join a number of Western media companies taking legal action against Perplexity, which provides answers to questions with sources and citations, using large language models (LLMs) from platforms such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The Japanese news providers claim Perplexity has, without permission, "copied and stored article content from the servers of Nikkei and Asahi" and ignored a "technical measure" designed to prevent this from happening. They claim that Perplexity's answers have given incorrect information attributed to the newspapers' articles, which "severely damages the credibility of newspaper companies."

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