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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The release of a new album by Taylor Swift might be a cause for celebration among her fans, but such events have also been linked to a more sombre phenomenon: an increase in fatal car crashes. The team behind a new study say it sheds light on the impact of distracted driving. Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, [Vishal Patel, first author of the study based at Harvard Medical School] and colleagues report how they focused on the release of 10 major albums, launched between 2017 and 2022, selected for having the highest number of Spotify streams over a single day. [...] The team found streaming volume for the top 200 songs in the US was 43% higher on the date of major album releases compared with the days surrounding the releases -- although such data does not reveal whether the music was being streamed in a car. [...] The researchers used data from a population-based registry of fatal US motor vehicle crashes to look at the number of traffic fatalities on the dates these albums were released, as well as for the 10 days either side. After taking into account the day of the week upon which the album was released, as well as federal holidays, and time of year, the researchers found the number of US traffic fatalities showed a relative increase of 15.1% on the date of major album releases, compared with similar days either side. "This is equivalent to approximately 182 fatalities in the US attributable to the release days of the 10 included albums," the team writes. Patel said the release of a new album could distract drivers because accessing music is a search task, not a single button press. "You unlock the phone, open the app, find the release, read down a tracklist, tap the right song. That's several seconds of looking at a screen," he said, adding unfamiliar music also demands more attention, while research has suggested listening to new, high-energy music measurably degrades driving performance. The researchers add the rise in traffic fatalities was greater among certain groups -- such as younger drivers, male drivers, people who were driving alone, and people driving cars with a built-in infotainment platform. The authors say the results suggest that "online music streaming through smartphones may significantly contribute to distracted driving and traffic fatalities."

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Cursor has launched Origin, a GitHub-style code hosting platform built directly into its AI coding environment. The company is initially positioning Origin as a low-risk layer on top of GitHub, keeping GitHub as the "source of truth," but the launch landed just as a major GitHub outage highlighted growing concerns about reliability in the age of AI-generated code. VentureBeat reports: Cursor began rolling out Origin, its own code hosting platform, to paid users on Monday morning. Roughly three and a half hours later, GitHub's status page lit up with what became a six-hour-and-forty-two-minute global degradation -- error rates near 20% across pull requests, issues and the API, and near 50% on archive and raw file downloads, according to GitHub's incident log. Enterprise single sign-on went down with it: SAML, OIDC, SCIM provisioning and Team Sync all failed. So did Copilot. The developer internet did what the developer internet does. "You can now host your repos in Cursor Origin and deploy to Vercel via Cursor Origin which is itself hosted on Vercel," Vercel chief executive Guillermo Rauch posted on X. "And unlike GitHub, it's online [smile emoji]" Asked why he was smiling, Rauch replied: "trying to make light of the situation. We ourselves are stuck because of github rn!" Matt Palmer, who works at Cursor, quote-tweeted his own company's launch with the day's best line: "We were going to ship this earlier, but GitHub was down." A GitHub outage, in other words, delayed the launch of a GitHub competitor. Product launches get locked weeks in advance, and no evidence suggests Cursor timed this one. But the coincidence did the company an enormous favor, because it dramatized the argument Origin exists to make. For eighteen years, choosing where to host your team's source code has been the least interesting decision an engineering organization makes. Cursor is betting that AI agents have made it interesting again -- and for technical decision makers, that is the real news here. Not a new product, but a new procurement question with a governance problem attached.

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Comcast is activating Wi-Fi motion sensing on millions of compatible Xfinity gateways, allowing the routers to detect movement by measuring disruptions in signals between the gateway and connected devices. The free feature, part of Xfinity Shield, can send activity alerts through the Xfinity app and offers Home, Away, and nighttime monitoring modes without requiring separate motion sensors. The Verge reports: Wi-Fi motion sensing is a technology that has been around for a while, but it's only recently that it's become accurate and reliable enough to catch on. Linksys launched a similar service in 2021, but discontinued it a few years later. Lighting company Wiz launched a line of Wi-Fi-sensing smart bulbs in 2023, and more recently Philips Hue deployed a similar radio-frequency sensing technology in its products (using Zigbee rather than Wi-Fi). Comcast's motion sensing pairs with new modes in the Xfinity app -- Home Watch, Away Watch, and Dark Watch (a night/sleep mode) -- allowing you to turn sensing on or off based on your activities.

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Disney and ABC are suing the FCC to block an early review of eight station licenses, arguing the Trump administration is using the agency's regulatory power to punish the network over programming and editorial decisions it dislikes. Reuters reports: In a lawsuit (PDF) filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Disney said the FCC was seeking to coerce and retaliate against "a network that refuses to bow to the administration's demands," calling the agency's actions an "extraordinary assault on free speech." Trump has waged an aggressive series of attacks on the news media and the latest move follows a two-year-long battle between Trump and Disney. Last month, Trump again called for ABC stations to lose their licenses because the network refused to air a prime-time speech on elections. The court case will pose a key test of the free speech rights of media outlets. Disney and ABC asked the court (PDF) to quickly issue a temporary restraining order halting the license renewal proceedings and preventing the FCC from scheduling a hearing. The company said the public comment period ended earlier this month and the FCC could act at any time. The lawsuit alleges that the administration is violating the company's First Amendment free speech rights, saying that the FCC "is using its regulatory power to retaliate against (Disney and ABC) for programming and editorial decisions the administration dislikes." The FCC said the move stemmed from a year-long investigation into whether Disney's diversity policies amounted to unlawful discrimination, an allegation the company denies. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan issued an order on Tuesday directing the company and the FCC to propose a schedule for considering the request for a temporary restraining order and told the agency to notify her if it moves to start the process of revoking the ABC licenses.

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RAM prices have exploded over the past year, with some DDR5 kits approaching 500% year-over-year increases and a 128GB kit now selling for $3,399, which is more than 10 times its previous low. Tom's Hardware reports: Things improve as you step down the memory capacities and speed tiers, but not as much as we'd like. You're still looking at $392 for a memory kit that was just $72 last year. To reinforce the point, I pulled the latest average price data from PCPartPicker, comparing where we are today (August 2026) to exactly one year ago. This data is somewhat approximate, but it should be broadly accurate. [...] A standard 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5-5600 kit that would have cost you under $200 last summer is now demanding over $1,100. It is a 5x multiplier on a component that used to be a fairly boring and predictable line item in a PC build budget. If you plan to just wait it out on an older AM4 or LGA1700 motherboard with DDR4, you'd better hope your memory holds out too, because DDR4 isn't safe from the fallout. With DDR5 entirely out of reach for most builders, the resulting scramble for older platforms running DDR4 memory has created a massive knock-on effect, and as a result, DDR4 kits are up anywhere from 120% to nearly 180% across the board. Nowhere near as bad as DDR5 pricing, but it still stings when a kit that was $105 last year is $281 this year. This phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the US, either. German tech site ComputerBase have also been tracking this global trend, reporting just this week that average RAM prices in Europe have skyrocketed by 345% compared to September 2025. Their data shows the squeeze is bleeding into other components too, with hard drive and SSD prices both climbing over 125% in that same timeframe. In fact, the situation is so severe that hyperscale buyers have reportedly already locked in almost all of the global DRAM production capacity for 2027, handing over advance deposits to guarantee their supply of precious DRAM, which is now among the highest-value commodities in the world by weight; mainstream DRAM chips are worth over half as much per kilogram as solid gold.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Your iPhone, SamsungGalaxy, andGoogle Pixel have a 1-year warranty. Unless you cough up extra dough for an extended service plan, you'll pay a hefty fee if you damage the screen and need a replacement (around $329 for an iPhone 17 done directly from Apple). But it doesn't have to be this way. What if you could order the part from the manufacturer and do the repair yourself? That dream is finally being realized for American consumers, thanks to Fairphone. The Dutch company is bringing its repairable and sustainably built Android smartphone -- the Fairphone (Gen 6+) -- to the US. Each one comes with a screwdriver. A replacement screen from Fairphone costs just $90. A new USB-C port is $20. A fresh battery is $40. In all, there are 12 modular elements you can swap yourself. It remains the only smartphone series with a 10/10 repairability scorefrom iFixit, not to mention an unmatched 5-year warranty and software updates through 2033. The new Fairphone (Gen 6+) is a small upgrade over the Gen 6 that the company launched last year. It has a newer Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 processor and double the RAM at 12 GB, but is otherwise largely the same device (hence the "plus" in the name). It now comes in Cobalt Blue, a nod to the miners who extract the cobalt used to make phone batteries, and the company's efforts to improve working conditions in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The new Fairphone is available on Amazon and at Fairphone.com for $650, and it's officially certified to work on T-Mobile and AT&T's networks. While this will mark the U.S. debut of its flagship smartphone, the company first entered the stateside market last year with its repairable earbuds and headphones. It also plans to launch its next-generation Fairbuds 2 wireless earbuds later this year.

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Google has agreed to pay $10 million for a massive trove of anonymized Spirit Airlines data following the carrier's shutdown, including internal communications, spreadsheets, booking and frequent-flyer records, transactions, and employee information. CNN reports: Did you ever fly on Spirit Airlines? Or work there? Or send an email to someone who worked there? Then your information will soon be feeding Google's artificial intelligence model. The discount airline halted all operations in May, and it's been selling off its remaining assets through the bankruptcy process ever since. While most of that is planes, equipment, and real estate, there's other things that are valuable, too. It was disclosed late Monday that the company agreed to sell its data to Google for $10 million. That includes emails and internal communications, spreadsheets, transactions with the public including bookings and frequent flyer information as well as human resources information on its employees. The data has been stripped of anything that would allow individuals to be identified, according to the court filing. But it is still a massive amount of useful intelligence.

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Apple is overhauling its EU App Store fees to settle its Digital Markets Act dispute, simplifying the fee structure and "[resolving] Apple's disagreements with the Commission over business terms and alternative distribution." Developers can sign the new terms starting today, and the changes go into effect on October 1. MacRumors reports: The initial acquisition fee and store services fee are being removed for apps distributed outside of the App Store, and Apple will now charge a 5% Core Technology Commission on digital purchases that replaces the prior per-install Core Technology Fee. Commission rates are changing for App Store apps, alternative payments, and apps distributed through alternative app marketplaces or the web. Developers can offer in-app purchase options alongside alternative payment options in the EU, which is something Apple did not allow before. Apple says there will be presentation requirements so users have a consistent, transparent experience. Developers distributing apps in the EU must select their payment options and maintain those options for 12 months before making changes to "provide consistency and clarity for users." Apple will still use a Notarization process for apps downloadable through the web and through alternative app marketplaces. Apps in the Kids category or being used by children under 13 will not include links to websites to complete transactions. All apps that use alternative payment processing or link to a website for transactions have to include a parental gate if the user is under 18. Apple is relaxing the rules for operating an alternative app marketplace.

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Microsoft MVP Loryan Strant has created the Microsoft Rebrand Registry, cataloging 72 Microsoft products and the 158 names they've had over the years. His analysis finds that Microsoft product names survive an average of two years and eleven months. The site even predicts which products are most likely to get renamed next, "by considering the amount of time the current name has applied, prior names, and the frequency with which Microsoft changes names of products in the same family," reports The Register. "That methodology led him to suggest an 'elevated' likelihood of name changes for the Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database, Azure DevOps, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service." From the report: Readers may remember that Strant has also created the site Let Me Correct That For You, which lists the exact names of Microsoft products -- an effort he told The Register he thinks is useful because Microsoft in its wisdom uses Camel Case for names like PowerPoint but went with conventional capitalization for Copilot. Another of his sites immortalizes Microsoft cloud product logos. He's also created HumbledandHonored.com, a site that generates social media posts MVPs can use to announce they have earned or retained Microsoft's awards. Strant told The Register that the Rebrand Registry came about after some banter between himself and other MVPs, during which the topic of Microsoft's many product name changes came up. He decided to do something about it.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: For most Indians, paying by Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has become almost absurdly routine. Scan a QR code, tap a few buttons and the money moves instantly. There is no card machine, no cash, and -- most importantly -- for the user, no visible fee. That may be about to change. India has paved the way for banks and payment companies to charge merchants a fee on UPI transactions, potentially ending a decade-long experiment in free digital payments. The government has yet to decide the rate or exactly where it will apply, but proposals under discussion include a merchant discount rate (MDR) of 0.3-0.5% -- a small fee paid by a business to the banks and payment companies that process its UPI payments -- on larger transactions at big businesses. The government says consumers and person-to-person UPI payments will remain free. If merchant fees are introduced, they will apply only to some transactions above a set threshold, at a nominal rate, meaning most UPI payments will remain free. The question is whether putting a price on UPI could weaken the network that made it such a success. The stakes are enormous. Launched in 2016, UPI has grown into one of the world's biggest real-time payment networks. According to official data, in July alone, there were 23.6 billion UPI transactions worth 29.87 trillion rupees ($313.5 billion). Fintech apps such as PhonePe and Google Pay account for most UPI payments. In the financial year just ended, the figure was about 241.6 billion transactions -- almost 12,000 times the volume in UPI's first full year. More than 550 million people now use it, and the system is now available in some form for payments in 11 countries outside India. India's UPI became ubiquitous partly because it made digital payments almost frictionless for merchants, including small vendors who can accept payments with little more than a QR code. New research suggests that merchant acceptance was "not just a result of UPI growth, but one of its key drivers." As RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra put it, "Someone will have to pay the cost." The challenge will be making UPI sustainable without weakening the merchant network that helped it take off.

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Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Sainsbury's has paused the use of AI face scanning in one of its stores after a customer was wrongly identified as a shoplifter and ejected from the shop. "I was embarrassed, mortified even, and felt quite humiliated and powerless," Matt Arnold, 46, said of his ordeal. The comedy promoter was buying supplies in the store in East Dulwich, in south-east London, for a standup event at Dulwich Hamlet football club when, after scanning his items and a Nectar card, he was approached by two managers who told him he could not be served owing to an earlier incident. He was then asked to leave and they tried to escort him from the store. As he left, he saw an overhead CCTV monitor alert with a red circle surrounding his face. He asked the shop staff to keep his shopping in the trolley so his friend could come and pick up the supplies for the comedy night happening soon next door. "I think they were quite confused by this, understandably, but agreed and my colleague Dave went in to pay for and pick up the shop about five minutes later. There was no pause for thought from the staff, no suggestion that they understood this is not how a shoplifter would behave. Just blindly following the machine's orders." Sainsbury's head office apologised to Arnold the next day and has paused use of its AI-assisted Facewatch technology in the store while an investigation takes place. Arnold says the facial recognition tech should be paused in all stores. "Anyone could be falsely accused and at some point that will be someone vulnerable, someone with mental health issues like anxiety. It's inevitable," said Arnold. "Also, I would worry about the confidence-destroying effect of it happening to a younger person or someone less willing or able to stand up for themselves as I have done." A Sainsbury's spokesperson said: "We have contacted Mr Arnold to apologise for his experience at our Dulwich superstore. The incident was caused by human error, not the facial recognition technology. Customers can be reassured that the Facewatch system has a 99.98% accuracy rate, and every match is reviewed by a trained manager." A Facewatch spokesperson said their technology was not at fault in this case. "A correct alert was sent to the retailer, but was subsequently subject to human error in the way it was handled in store," they said.

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AleRunner writes: "Solar has been doing the 'heavy lifting' to help Europe meet its energy needs amid a string of blistering heatwaves," Euronews tells us. Meanwhile, as Europe's energy demands rise with the heat, jellyfish have been causing shutdowns and reduced power output at multiple reactors at French nuclear plants, as we already discussed. Euronews reports: A new analysis from energy think-tank Ember found that solar output in European countries rose by up to 17 percent on heatwave days in June and July. Researchers say that this helped power the grid as electricity demand increased by as much as a quarter on hot days. Heatwaves often trigger a spike in electricity consumption due to the sudden need for cooling, mainly from energy-intensive air conditioning (A/C) units. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that space cooling, which is mostly A/C units and fans, consumed around seven percent of the world's electricity in 2022. Even in countries where A/C ownership is low, countries experience energy demand spikes when scorching temperatures hit. During the early summer heatwaves of 2025, France, for example, recorded an evening electricity peak that was 25 percent above the off-season average due to air conditioning. Ember's analysis found that during the late-June heatwave this summer, daily electricity demand rose byup to 28 percent in Italy, 23 percent in Hungary, 14 percent in France and 13 percent in Spain compared with pre-heatwave days. It says as heatwave-driven demand increased, solar was the only major power source to perform "better than usual." Compared with other days in June and July, average daily solar generation during the heatwaves was 17 percent higher in France and Hungary, five percent higher in Spain and the same in Italy.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Buy now, pay later" loans took off during the pandemic as a way for online shoppers to go on retail splurges without using a credit card. Now, lenders are offering the loans as a means for people to finance basic households needs. The lending apps Flex and Zip allow customers to take out loans to pay for their broadband, electricity, health insurance, mobile phone service, mortgage and water bills. Affirm, one of the most popular pay-later apps, has started providing some tenants loans to extend their monthly rent payment for a few weeks. Many dentists, veterinarians and medical clinics now often offer instant pay-later financing, and Intuit this year started promoting "File Now, Pay Later" loans to TurboTax users who owe money in their tax return. Pay-later loans are becoming the "working capital for the modern middle class," said Karen Webster, the chief executive of Pymnts, a news and market research company for the payments industry. "Consumers are using it more for essential, everyday things." Americans spent $160 billion last year through pay-later loans, according to research released recently by Federal Reserve economists -- nearly twice what consumers spent two years earlier, in 2023. That's still a fraction of the more than $3 trillion U.S. shoppers spend annually on consumer credit cards. But the industry continues to expand by double-digit rates each year. How much of that growth reflects consumer preferences, versus desperation, is a question economists and industry analysts are trying to unravel. The rise in pay-later financing comes as many households are leaning more on debt to keep up with their daily expenses. Paying interest -- to afford basic needs -- adds to the overall cost of living, which has already been rising amid higher medical, housing and fuel costs. For many borrowers, the loans have become their only option: Half of those using them said they could not make ends meet otherwise, according to the latest edition of a survey that LendingTree, a loan marketplace, has compiled for years.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court today rejected Verizon's attempt to get a $47 million refund from the Federal Communications Commission. In a list of orders (PDF) issued by the court, Verizon's petition was denied without explanation. The denial apparently ends any possibility of Verizon asking a lower court to review the fine and order the FCC to issue a refund. However, AT&T and T-Mobile are continuing to challenge similar fines on grounds that selling device-location data did not violate US telecom law. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon were fined a total of $196 million in 2024 for selling mobile users' real-time location data without their customers' consent. The carriers sold device-location information to data aggregators, who resold it to other firms. The carriers paid the fines and sought to have them overturned in courts, claiming their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial was violated. Challenges by AT&T and Verizon were combined into a single case, and the Supreme Court ruled against the carriers in June of this year. The court ruled that the FCC penalty process does not violate the Seventh Amendment because the carriers could have obtained jury trials if they refused to pay the fines and waited for the government to try to collect. The ruling (PDF) against the carriers was 8-1, with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting.

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Apple Wallet's driver's license and state ID feature is set to expand to North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia, bringing the total to 18 states plus Puerto Rico. The digital IDs can be used at participating TSA checkpoints and businesses without handing over or unlocking an iPhone, though users are still generally advised to carry a physical ID because acceptance remains limited. MacRumors reports: A few days ago, North Carolina's DMV announced that it plans to launch a mobile ID program later this year. As reported by WRAL, North Carolina residents will be able to set up a digital ID through a new NC Wallet app starting in December, with Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, and Samsung Wallet support to follow in "early 2027." As mentioned, you do not need to unlock, show, or hand over your device to present an Apple Wallet ID in person, ensuring user privacy. Apple Wallet IDs are generally not accepted by law enforcement, so carrying a physical ID is still legally required for traffic stops. In addition, the number of businesses that accept Apple Wallet IDs is still quite small. At least for now, Apple Wallet IDs are designed to be a convenient alternative where they are accepted. "Your mobile ID is a valid form of identification in North Carolina," the DMV said, in a FAQ on its website. "However, as retailers, restaurants and other businesses transition to mobile IDs, some may not be set up to accept them right away. For now, carrying your physical card gives you a backup when needed." According to code seen by MacRumors, Apple Wallet IDs are also coming to Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia, but there is no timeframe for availability.

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District Court Judge Eric Elliff has ordered Iron Mountain to cooperate with Nine PBS in recovering roughly 50TB of archival material stored through now-defunct vendor OSS. "He found that the station is the rightful owner of the materials and entitled to recover them from OSS' storage systems," reports Current.org. Nine PBS must identify a third party to help retrieve the files, pay outstanding storage fees, and ensure that data belonging to other OSS customers isn't disturbed or accidentally recovered. From the report: Under his order, Nine PBS is to identify a third-party vendor, such as a former OSS employee, who can assist in accessing and retrieving the data from the infrastructure that's housed in Iron Mountain's center within 30 days. Elliff acknowledged the complexities of Iron Mountain's position as a vendor to OSS, which, according to Nine PBS' complaint, is in delinquency. Iron Mountain is the "custodian" of Nine PBS' data, but it isn't the vendor that contracted with the station to store and preserve its data. That obligation remains with OSS. Under the order, Nine PBS will pay Iron Mountain current and past-due fees for data storage, starting from when OSS stopped paying Iron Mountain for use of its data storage facility. During the hearing, Gregory Rich, an attorney representing Nine PBS, said the station seeks access to a physical cage where the data is housed within Iron Mountain's facility. The station is in contact with a former OSS employee who is willing to help obtain the data. The attorney noted that the data could potentially be stored in physical form, such as tapes that could be easily retrieved. But if the materials are on a server, Nine PBS could lose the materials forever if Iron Mountain shuts it down. William Cravens, the attorney representing Iron Mountain, told the judge his client doesn't know the format of Nine PBS' materials that were stored by OSS. He expressed concern about whether Nine PBS' archival material is lumped together with data from other OSS clients. Iron Mountain wants to avoid potentially corrupting the other data, Cravens added. Elliff ordered the immediate return of any physical devices that hold Nine PBS' data once access to OSS' storage system is granted. If data retrieval turns out to be more complicated -- if it is encrypted, for example -- he will schedule another hearing to determine how to proceed. Once Nine PBS retrieves its data, the station must work with a third party to ensure that no data from other OSS customers is among those materials.

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Meta is heading to trial in a case brought by dozens of states accusing it of deliberately designing addictive features, misleading users about safety, and illegally collecting data from children under 13. Meta says the states are seeking penalties as high as $1.4 trillion, though the judge has already called that figure "unreasonable." The case could, however, influence thousands of similar lawsuits against the company. Engadget reports: The trial kicks off Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, after Meta lost a last-ditch attempt to get the case dismissed last week. It could see testimony from top officials at Meta, including Mark Zuckerberg, and could result in record-breaking penalties for the company. The case stems from a 2023 lawsuit brought against Meta from dozens of states, which accused Meta of intentionally creating addictive features and violating consumer protection laws. The action came after a multi-state investigation into the company's safety practices that officials said revealed serious harms to children and teens. During the trial, federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will hear claims from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey that Meta violated state consumer protection laws by intentionally misleading the public about the safety of its apps. Those four states and 25 others are also suing Meta over alleged violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The states allege Meta broke the law because it knew Instagram and Facebook had users under the age of 13 and collected data about them without permission. [...] For Meta, the stakes are especially high because the company is currently facing thousands of other lawsuits that accuse it of harming users. Juries in Los Angeles and New Mexico have already ruled against Meta in high-profile trials that deal with similar issues. (Meta has said it will appeal in both cases.) Another loss could not only be a financial blow, it could give other lawsuits an easier path forward. And while Meta isn't exactly hurting for money, its legal costs are adding up. The company said it spent $2.4 billion on legal costs in the second quarter of 2026 alone. The jury in the case has already been selected and opening arguments are set to begin Tuesday, August 18. The trial is expected to last about six weeks. Unlike in a standard jury trial, the eight-member jury will serve in an "advisory" role, as Law360 explains. The judge will have full power over the final verdict and penalties. Along the way, the trial could also see testimony from some of Meta's most visible executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri. Both men are likely to testify, according to Reuters. [...] Audio from the trial will be live streamed on the court's YouTube channel. A spokesperson for Meta issued the following statement: "The State AGs may call this a landmark case, but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate. The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification," the spokesperson continued. "Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout. We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: PJM Interconnection, the biggest U.S. grid operator, proposed on Thursday a new framework that would force data centers to use back-up generators when electricity supply on the grid approaches dangerously low levels. The grid operator's proposal dovetails with President Donald Trump's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a non-binding initiative to protect residential customers from getting saddled with costs related to data center power consumption, PJM said. A new emergency procedure would notify utilities to reduce or transfer the electricity demand from data centers and other large power users ahead of any action that would shut off traditional consumers such as households. PJM said it does not, however, currently have the authority to curtail power to those sites and would require the cooperation of individual state governments. PJM manages the electricity for 67 million people in a territory that stretches from Washington, D.C. to Chicago. Its proposal highlights a growing tension between the rapid expansion of data centers and the ability of the nation's power grid to keep up. If PJM cannot close its supply gap, millions of residents and businesses face an increased risk of blackouts, and the cost of new generation could be passed on to other power consumers. At its recent capacity auction, PJM hit its $325-per-megawatt-day price cap but still came up about 6.8 GW short of its projected reliability needs. With rapidly expanding data centers adding pressure to the grid, PJM has also proposed creating a registry to track their locations and power consumption.

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OpenAI has signed a 10-year lease for an enormous Ohio data center that will eventually provide 8 gigawatts of computing capacity and require at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation. According to OpenAI, Nvidia will be supplying the chips and guaranteeing up to $105 billion in lease and power obligations. From the report: The facility -- which will be built and owned by SoftBank's SB Energy -- illustrates the immensity of the computing and power needed to fuel the growth of the AI economy. The data center will have 8 IT-gigawatts of computing capacity, powered by 10 gigawatts of new energy generation, on private land and federal property formerly used for uranium enrichment. Nvidia -- which will be the exclusive provider of chips to the site -- agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion in conditional lease and power payment obligations to SB Energy, according to an SEC filing (PDF). The so-called "land, power and shell" deal structure could allow for multiple upgrade cycles for new generations of Nvidia infrastructure at the site, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on X. A massive 9.2 gigawatts of new gas-fired power is ultimately envisioned for the Ohio project, which U.S. officials say Japan is funding under the 2025 trade and investment deal. SB Energy and SoftBank "will build at least 10 GW of new energy generation," a joint announcement from Nvidia, OpenAI and SB Energy states. Nvidia also said today that it's investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy to back its "continued evolution into a leading AI infrastructure developer."

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alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process. A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon's book buying operation, which hasn't been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination. That final destination was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly. The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands. "Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use," an Amazon spokesperson told 404 Media in a statement.

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