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iiNet breach blamed on single stolen login, with emails, phone numbers, and addresses exposed

Aussie telco giant TPG Telecom has opened an investigation after confirming a cyberattack at subsidiary iiNet.…

Sony will increase PlayStation 5 console prices by $50 across all models in the United States starting August 21. The standard PS5 rises to $550, the Digital Edition to $500, and the PS5 Pro to $750. The company cited navigating a challenging economic environment for the increases.

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No word yet on when any homegrown hardware production begins

Texas fabless chip firm Cirrus Logic has announced a new partnership with GlobalFoundries on next-generation bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) and gallium nitride (GaN) parts.…

In a pair of class actions filed this week, passengers from each coast quibbled with United Airlines and Delta Air Lines' policies charging extra for window seats that are not actually beside windows, instead offering a view of a blank aircraft wall. From a report: "Delta indicated to the plaintiff and class members that the particular seats they chose had a 'window'; even though Delta knew full well they did not," the plaintiffs taking on Delta said in an 18-page complaint filed in federal court in New York, accusing the airline of false advertising and deceptive business practices. Half of Delta's fleet of nearly 1,000 aircraft comprises Boeing 737s, Boeing 757s and Airbus A321s -- all of which have at least one wall-adjacent seat with no window, according to the plaintiffs. It's where vertical air conditioning riser ducts are located, making putting a window there impossible, the competing Alaska Airlines explains on its website. But unlike Alaska and others, the plaintiffs complain, Delta advertises the seats as having a window, offering them as a "window seat" option on its seat map during checkout.

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Epic boss brands the changes 'malicious compliance'

Google has announced changes to its Play Store rules in an effort to appease the European Commission and dodge Digital Markets Act (DMA) fines.…

An analysis of Rotten Tomatoes data reveals average Tomatometer scores have climbed steadily since Fandango's 2016 acquisition of the review aggregation platform. The average number of reviewers per mainstream film release increased by 40 to 70 critics following the purchase. New additions to the critic pool include smaller outlets such as Denerstein Unleashed and KKFI-FM Kansas City. Prior to 2016, critic and audience scores demonstrated stable correlation year-over-year. Post-acquisition data shows the two metrics diverged sharply as Tomatometer ratings rose. Fandango, America's largest movie-ticketing platform, is partially owned by NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. In 2023 Vulture reported PR firms court reviewers from smaller outlets to secure higher Tomatometer scores before film releases.

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Government says move will cut red tape, but startups fear sector could be sidelined

The UK Space Agency (UKSA) is set to join the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) in an effort to "cut red tape" and, presumably, save some cash.…

Microsoft is testing a COPILOT function in Excel that uses OpenAI's gpt-4.1-mini model to automatically fill spreadsheet cells through natural language prompts. The function can classify feedback, generate summaries, and create tables based on specified cell ranges. Microsoft warns against using the AI function for numerical calculations or scenarios involving legal, regulatory, and compliance implications because COPILOT "can give incorrect responses." The feature processes up to 100 functions every 10 minutes and cannot access information outside the spreadsheet.

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Micron, TSMC, and more have also been awarded billions in subisidies

The US government is considering taking a stake in Intel and other semiconductor companies that benefit from CHIPS Act funding, according to officials from the Trump administration. The move follows SoftBank's $2 billion investment in the faltering chip giant.…

LLMs flop at selling Fair Trade – unless you're a true believer

Interview Large language models stumble when trying to sway buyers with moral arguments, according to research from the SGH Warsaw School of Economics and Sakarya Business School.…

The melting of sea ice in the Arctic has slowed dramatically in the past 20 years, scientists have reported, with no statistically significant decline in its extent since 2005. From a report: The finding is surprising, the researchers say, given that carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning have continued to rise and trap ever more heat over that time. They said natural variations in ocean currents that limit ice melting had probably balanced out the continuing rise in global temperatures. However, they said this was only a temporary reprieve and melting was highly likely to start again at about double the long-term rate at some point in the next five to 10 years. The findings do not mean Arctic sea ice is rebounding. Sea ice area in September, when it reaches its annual minimum, has halved since 1979, when satellite measurements began. The climate crisis remains "unequivocally real," the scientists said, and the need for urgent action to avoid the worst impacts remains unchanged. The natural variation causing the slowdown is probably the multi-decadal fluctuations in currents in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which change the amount of warmed water flowing into the Arctic. The Arctic is still expected to see ice-free conditions later in the century, harming people and wildlife in the region and boosting global heating by exposing the dark, heat-absorbing ocean.

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Good start, but you have to keep it up, say key players

Feature It's not easy to grow a national chip industry. Semiconductor startups are a risky investment. They chew through early-stage capital, often with little to show for it, making them a long-term proposition. Those that pay off can deliver big, but success is far from guaranteed.…

Redmond scrambles to undo damage after tools borked by August patch

Microsoft has moved swiftly to remove the bullet it fired into its own foot with the August 2025 Security Update reset and recovery bug.…

Rotten is as Rotten does

Opinion It's 1976, and in the country of the Beatles, another guitar band is giving it some. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols isn't so keen on love and blackbirds. Instead, he sings lustily that he wants to be an anarchist, destroying passers-by and in general promoting anarchy in the UK.…

Chipzilla quietly fixed the problems without responding to the person who found them

Security boffin Eaton Zveare has highlighted some serious holes in the online infrastructure of chip giant Intel – walking through services with coding flaws to gain access to supposedly internal documentation, from non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to the personal details of more than 270,000 Intel staffers.…

US tech stocks sold off as warnings that the hype surrounding AI could be overdone hit some of the year's best-performing shares. From a report: Nvidia, the chips group that has surged to become the world's first $4tn company on the back of AI, fell 3.5 per cent on Tuesday, while software group Palantir dropped 9.4 per cent and chip designer Arm shed 5 per cent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed down 1.4 per cent, the biggest one-day drop for the index since August 1. The blue-chip S&P 500 fell 0.7 per cent. European and Asian markets largely followed Wall Street lower on Wednesday. [...] Japan's Nikkei 225 index fell 1.5 per cent and South Korea's Kospi slipped 0.6 per cent. Futures price indicated moderate declines when Wall Street opens. Traders pinned some of the declines in the US on a critical report on Monday authored by a branch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Researchers said "95 per cent of organisations are getting zero return" from their investments in generative AI, the technology that has sent US stocks soaring to record highs in recent months.

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Burger slinger gets a McRibbing, reacts by firing staffer who helped

A white-hat hacker has discovered a series of critical flaws in McDonald's staff and partner portals that allowed anyone to order free food online, get admin rights to the burger slinger's marketing materials, and could allow an attacker to get a corporate email account with which to conduct a little filet-o-phishing.…

Researchers use LLM in 'AI Space Cortex' to automate robotic extraterrestrial exploration

Businesses may be struggling to find meaningful ways to use artificial intelligence software, but space scientists at least have a few ideas about how to deploy AI models.…

India Dispatch: The strongest case for India is not merely that it is young, but that it still has time, and it may be the only continental-scale economy that still has it in abundance. India won't cross the demographic threshold for an "old" country -- a median age of 41 -- until the late 2050s, while China reaches that point now. India requires 10.4% sustained GDP growth over 35 years to become rich before aging, compared to China's needed 32% annual growth rate. India's working-age population will increase from 67.5% in 2021 to 69.2% by 2031, with the median age remaining at 34.5 in 2036. The report adds: China's compressed dilemma mirrors what is gripping the developed world, where Europe's share of population over 65 is on track to hit 30% by 2050, up from 8% in 1950. Raising retirement ages -- what economists describe as the closest thing to a silver bullet -- faces older voting blocs, who now make up roughly 40% of those who turn up at the polls in European elections. In the U.S., what J.P. Morgan analysts term a "Social Security cliff" looms by 2033, when the system's trust funds are projected to be exhausted, and hopes that productivity miracles (powered by, hopefully AI) will quietly square this circle look optimistic, leaving much of the rich world and North Asia out of time.

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Produces advice in a single day instead of two weeks – without job losses

The Australian arm of consultancy firm KPMG wrote a 100-page prompt to create an agentic system that prepares tax advice far faster than humans.…