news aggregator

404 Media: A data broker owned by the country's major airlines, including American Airlines, United and Delta, is selling access to five billion plane ticketing records to the government for warrantless searching and monitoring of peoples' movements, including by the FBI, Secret Service, ICE, and many other agencies, according to a new contract and other records reviewed by 404 Media. The contract provides new insight into the scale of the sale of passengers' data by the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), the airlines-owned data broker. The contract shows ARC's data includes information related to more than 270 carriers and is sourced through more than 12,800 travel agencies. ARC has previously told the government to not reveal to the public where this passenger data came from, which includes peoples' names, full flight itineraries, and financial details. "Americans' privacy rights shouldn't depend on whether they bought their tickets directly from the airline or via a travel agency. ARC's sale of data to U.S. government agencies is yet another example of why Congress needs to close the data broker loophole by passing my bipartisan bill, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act," Senator Ron Wyden told 404 Media in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the U.S. and China have reached a tentative "framework" agreement on TikTok's U.S. operations, with Presidents Trump and Xi set to finalize details Friday. "It's between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon," he said. The update comes two days before TikTok parent company ByteDance faces a Sept. 17 deadline to divest the platform's U.S. business or potentially be shut down in the country. The deadline may need to be pushed back yet again to get the deal signed. CNBC reports: Both President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Friday to discuss the terms. Trump also said in a Truth Social post Monday that a deal was reached "on a 'certain' company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save." Bessent indicated the framework could pivot the platform to U.S.-controlled ownership. China's lead trade negotiator, Li Chenggang, confirmed the framework deal was in place and said the U.S. should not continue to suppress Chinese companies, according to Reuters.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is adding the free Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and agents to Office apps for all Microsoft 365 business users today. From a report: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote are all being updated with a Copilot Chat sidebar that will help draft documents, analyze spreadsheets, and more without needing an additional Microsoft 365 Copilot license. "Copilot Chat is secure AI chat grounded in the web -- and now, it's available in the Microsoft 365 apps," explains Seth Patton, general Manager of Microsoft 365 Copilot product marketing. "It's content aware, meaning it quickly understands what you're working on, tailoring answers to the file you have open. And it's included at no additional cost for Microsoft 365 users." While this free version of Copilot will rewrite documents, provide summaries, and help create slides in PowerPoint, the $30 per month, per user Microsoft 365 Copilot license will still have the best integration in Office apps. The Microsoft 365 Copilot license is also not limited to a single document, and can reason over entire work data.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Secretive app + unreliable tech + Trump administration policies = ANGRY LETTER

A group of senators has penned a sternly-worded letter to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) saying that they're very worried about the agency's use of facial recognition in its mission to cleanse the nation of immigrants with improper documents. …

Lead times for high-capacity hard drives have exceeded 52 weeks as AI workloads drive unprecedented demand for warm storage that sits between fast SSDs and offline tape archives, according to TrendForce. Western Digital notified customers of price increases across its entire hard drive portfolio citing demand for "every capacity" in its product line. The shortage stems from AI infrastructure requirements including training datasets, model checkpoints and inference logs that consume petabytes of storage space. These files are too large for primary SSD storage but must remain accessible for quick retrieval. Hard drive manufacturers have not significantly expanded production capacity in approximately a decade. Cloud service providers are evaluating QLC SSDs for cold data storage despite costs remaining four to five times higher per gigabyte than mechanical drives. Memory suppliers are developing SSD products specifically for this intermediate storage tier.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cautionary tale from the recent SonicWall attacks

Failing to encrypt sensitive data leaves you wide open to attack. During the recent SonicWall attack spree, intruders bypassed multi-factor authentication (MFA) in at least one case, because a user's recovery codes were left sitting in a plaintext file on their desktop.…

President Donald Trump called Monday for companies to report earnings every six months instead of quarterly. Trump posted on social media that semi-annual reporting would save money and let managers focus on running companies. The SEC mandated quarterly reports in 1970. Trump made similar comments in 2018 that prompted SEC public comment but no regulatory changes. Critics argue quarterly reporting increases costs and encourages short-term thinking. Supporters say frequent disclosures maintain investor trust and reduce market manipulation risks. Further reading: The Renewed Bid To End Quarterly Earnings Reports.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Breathe deep on internet fumes

Discarded vapes are becoming the new cigarette butts in pollution terms, but a hacker has found a novel way to repurpose the chips they contain to build a web server.…

Toxic fumes from jet engines are leaking into aircraft cabins at an accelerating rate, reaching 108 incidents per million departures in 2024 compared to 12 in 2014, a Wall Street Journal investigation found. The fumes contain neurotoxins and carbon monoxide that have caused brain injuries in crew members. JetBlue flight attendant Florence Chesson suffered permanent neurological damage after inhaling engine oil vapors in 2018, diagnosed by neurologists as equivalent to an NFL linebacker's concussion. The surge is driven by Airbus A320 aircraft, particularly the A320neo model introduced in 2016. WSJ reports Airbus loosened maintenance requirements under airline pressure despite knowing the changes would increase incidents. The FAA received over 700 fume event reports from major U.S. airlines in 2024. Most commercial jets except Boeing's 787 use a "bleed air" system that pulls cabin air through engines.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A third of UK employers are using "bossware" technology to track workers' activity with the most common methods including monitoring emails and web browsing. From a report: Private companies are most likely to deploy in-work surveillance and one in seven employers are recording or reviewing screen activity, according to a UK-wide survey that estimates the extent of office snooping. The findings, shared with the Guardian by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), are based on responses from hundreds of UK managers and suggest there has been a recent growth in computerised work surveillance. In 2023, less than a fifth of people thought they were being monitored by an employer, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) found. The finding that about a third of managers report their organisations are monitoring workers' online activities on employer-owned devices is probably an underestimate, as roughly the same proportion said they don't know what tracking their organisations do. Many monitoring systems are aimed at preventing insider threats and safeguarding sensitive information as well as detecting productivity dips. But the trend appears to be causing unease. A large minority of managers are opposed to the practice, saying it undermines trust with staff and invades their personal privacy, the CMI found.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Study also finds M&A and changes to operating model on the way for sector

More than half of tech companies are considering a complete restructure or changing their operating model in response to AI, according to research from the consulting sector.…

Apple released iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26 today, introducing Liquid Glass, a translucent design language that represents the biggest visual redesign since iOS 7 in 2013. The new interface elements dynamically refract and reflect background content across all three platforms. iOS 26 requires iPhone 11 or later and second-generation iPhone SE or newer. iPadOS 26 runs on the same hardware as iPadOS 18 except the 7th-generation iPad. macOS Tahoe 26 supports all Apple silicon Macs, the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro, 2020 and later iMac, and 2019 and later Mac Pro. The transparent menu bar on macOS increases perceived display size. iOS 26's adaptive Lock Screen time display resizes around notifications and Live Activities. Desktop icons, folders, app icons and widgets support light, dark, tinted, and clear appearances across all systems. iOS 26 adds Visual Intelligence for on-screen content analysis through screenshot button combinations. Live Translation operates across Messages, FaceTime and Phone on all platforms, translating text and audio in real-time on-device. The Camera app received streamlined navigation and lens cleaning hints for iPhone 15 and later models. iPadOS 26 brings Mac-style windowing and multitasking. Apps support free-form placement and menu bars. The Phone app and new Apple Games app arrived on iPad. macOS gained the Phone app through Continuity, including Call Screening and Hold Assist features. Spotlight executes hundreds of actions without opening applications and automatically assigns quick keys to frequent actions. Apple Intelligence expands across all systems. The Shortcuts app gained intelligent actions for text summarization and image generation. The Wallet app tracks orders across platforms, while Apple Music introduced AutoMix for song transitions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI is transforming corporate America, yet the boom remains understated in government growth statistics, according to Goldman Sachs. From a report: Analysts at Goldman pointed to the scale of the boom in a Saturday note: "Revenue at US companies providing AI infrastructure has risen by $400 billion since 2022, which at first glance seems to suggest that AI has been a meaningful driver of economic growth recently." But official numbers tell a different story. AI technology has lifted real US economic activity by about $160 billion since 2022, or 0.7% of GDP, the analysts calculated. Yet only around $45 billion, or 0.2% of GDP, of AI-spurred growth has been recorded in official statistics. That leaves roughly $115 billion uncounted, according to the analysts. That gap highlights the difference between what companies report and what the government measures due to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis method for calculating growth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We remind the world yet again that science fiction is usually a warning, not an aspiration

Look to science fiction and you'll find plenty of pathways to create super soldiers. There's cloning or genetic engineering. If that fails, you could try in-utero enhancements, or maybe some cybernetic augmentation. DARPA has a different idea for the real world: inject 'em up with super blood.…

Businesses are overwhelmingly relying on Anthropic's AI software to automate rather than collaborate on work, according to a new report from the OpenAI rival, adding to the risk that AI will upend livelihoods. From a report: More than three quarters (77%) of companies' usage of Anthropic's Claude AI software involved automation patterns, often including "full task delegation," according to a research report the startup released on Monday. The finding was based on an analysis of traffic from Anthropic's application programming interface, which is used by developers and businesses. [...] On the whole, Anthropic found businesses primarily use Claude for administrative tasks and coding, the latter of which has been a key focus for the company and much of the AI industry. Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI developers have released more sophisticated AI tools that can write and debug code on a user's behalf.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a column: After nearly 30 years of USB-A connectivity, the market is now transitioning to the convenient USB-C standard, which makes sense given that it supports higher speeds, display data, and power delivery. The symmetrical connection is also smaller and more user-friendly, as it's reversible and works with smartphones and tablets. I get that USB-C is inevitable, but tech brands should realize that the ubiquitous USB-A isn't going anywhere soon and stop removing the ports we need to run our devices. [...] It's premature for brands to phase out USB-A when peripheral brands are still making compatible products in 2025. For example, Logitech's current wireless pro gaming mice connect using a USB-A Lightspeed dongle, and most Seagate external drives still use USB-A as their connection method. The same can be said for other memory sticks, keyboards, wireless headsets, and other new devices that are still manufactured with a USB-A connection. I have a gaming laptop with two USB-A and USB-C ports, and it's a constant struggle to connect all my devices simultaneously without needing a hub. I use the two USB-A ports for my mouse and wireless headset dongles, while a phone charging cable and portable monitor take up the USB-Cs. This setup stresses me out because there's no extra space to connect anything else without losing functionality.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'Wow this is dangerous' says Django co-creator, while others call feature a 'game-changer'

OpenAI has added a beta of Developer mode to ChatGPT, enabling full read and write support for MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools, though the documentation describes the feature as dangerous.…

Google has restructured Android's decade-old monthly security update process into a "Risk-Based Update System" that separates high-priority patches from routine fixes. Monthly bulletins now contain only vulnerabilities under active exploitation or in known exploit chains -- explaining July 2025's unprecedented zero-CVE bulletin -- while most patches accumulate for quarterly releases. The September 2025 bulletin contained 119 vulnerabilities compared to zero in July and six in August. The change reduces OEM workload for monthly updates but extends the private bulletin lead time from 30 days to several months for quarterly releases. The company no longer releases monthly security update source code, limiting custom ROM development to quarterly cycles.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft removes safeguard hold thanks to updated drivers

Microsoft has resolved a Windows 11 24H2 problem with devices using Dirac audio as the 25H2 update waits in the wings.…

As doubts grow over who will pay to stuff Oracle's cloud pipeline, the octogenarian spreads his wings

Opinion When does imaginary money come before real? If you had bought Oracle shares on Tuesday last week and sold them on Friday, you might have some real cash. But everything else lives in a gray area.…