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The U.S. is awash with scam text messages. Officials say it has become a billion-dollar, highly sophisticated business benefiting criminals in China. From a report: Your highway toll payment is now past due, one text warns. You have U.S. Postal Service fees to pay, another threatens. You owe the New York City Department of Finance for unpaid traffic violations. The texts are ploys to get unsuspecting victims to fork over their credit-card details. The gangs behind the scams take advantage of this information to buy iPhones, gift cards, clothing and cosmetics. Criminal organizations operating out of China, which investigators blame for the toll and postage messages, have used them to make more than $1 billion over the last three years, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Behind the con, investigators say, is a black market connecting foreign criminal networks to server farms that blast scam texts to victims. The scammers use phishing websites to collect credit-card information. They then find gig workers in the U.S. who will max out the stolen cards for a small fee. Making the fraud possible: an ingenious trick allowing criminals to install stolen card numbers in Google and Apple Wallets in Asia, then share the cards with the people in the U.S. making purchases half a world away.

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The 83-year-old was being asked a question by a reporter when he lost his footing inside the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building on Thursday.

Datacenter hopefuls looking to cash in on AI craze are setting up shop in Lone Star State in search of cheap power

Everything is bigger in Texas and that includes the GPU bit barns at the heart of the AI boom.…

Two young children, a girl, 10 and a nine-year-old boy, have been charged with rape and attempted murder after a five-year-old girl was brutally attacked in an Ohio field last month.

GenAI meets Gen Z – only one gets the job

ai-pocalypse  The UK tech sector is cutting graduate jobs dramatically – down 46 percent in the past year, with another 53 percent drop projected, according to figures from the Institute of Student Employers (ISE).…

EXCLUSIVE: The council previously prided itself on its displays of Palestine banners but used metal poles to rip down England flags during the peak of the 'Operation Raise the Colours' movement.

Oracle slurps your data whether you like it or not... for the good and bad of the planet

Comment  If you're an Oracle customer – throw a pebble into a crowd of 100 CIOs and you're bound to hit one – then Big Red has vectorized you. Or, more accurately, it has vectorized your data, according to Larry Ellison, co-founder and CTO, who lobbed about the terminology in this week's conference keynote as if it conferred some sort of mystical technological incantation.…

We've seen this before and it was called Cortana or Clippy

As if pulling support for Windows 10 was not punishment enough for long-suffering customers, Microsoft has decided to shove Copilot down everyone's throats with a new voice activation feature and even more control over your PC. Soon, a Copilot box may even replace the search box on your taskbar.…

Flaw in Kestrel web server allowed request smuggling, impact depends on hosting setup and application code

Microsoft has patched an ASP.NET Core vulnerability with a CVSS score of 9.9, which security program manager Barry Dorrans said was "our highest ever." The flaw is in the Kestrel web server component and enables security bypass.…

Laptop maker's apolitical endorsement of politically contentious projects meets resistance

Six days ago, upgradeable laptop maker Framework tried to convince its fractious user community to live in a "big tent" after a Debian developer objected to the company's sponsorship of Hyprland and its social media promotion of Omarchy, with both projects associated with politically polarizing viewpoints.…

And they swiped a limited amount of customers' config data

Security shop F5 today said "highly sophisticated nation-state" hackers broke into its network and stole BIG-IP source code, undisclosed vulnerability details, and customer configuration data belonging to a "small percentage" of its users.…

MIKE KEEGAN: Disgraced former referee David Coote - who this week pleaded guilty to making an indecent image of a 15-year-old boy - was investigated and cleared in 2017.

The 25-year-old singer - who has soared to fame with multiple UK Top 10 hits, sold-out world tours, and more than a million followers online - stopped mid-performance to deal with the chaos.

Looking through my wedding photos brings back a flood of happy memories. There's me, slim and pretty, in a gorgeous white fitted gown, carrying a tasteful bouquet of peach roses.

Speaking of the new MacBook Pro, which Apple launched on Wednesday, Bloomberg News reports that the company is preparing to launch a touch-screen version of its Mac computer, reversing course on a stance that dates back to co-founder Steve Jobs. From the report: The company is readying a revamped MacBook Pro with a touch display for late 2026 or early 2027 [non-paywalled link], according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new machines, code-named K114 and K116, will also have thinner and lighter frames and run the M6 line of chips. In making the move, Apple is following the rest of the computing industry, which embraced touch-screen laptops more than a decade ago. The company has taken years to formulate its approach to the market, aiming to improve on current designs. Bloomberg News first reported in January 2023 that Apple was working on a touch-screen MacBook Pro. The new laptops will feature displays with OLED technology, the same standard used in iPhones and iPad Pros, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the products haven't been announced. It will mark the first time that this higher-end, thinner system is used in a Mac.

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The former First Lady, 61, has shared several anecdotes about bringing up Malia, 27, and Sasha, 24, in the White House alongside Barack Obama.

A compact city in the UK is now rivalling some of the nation's top economic powerhouses thanks to big-spending overseas travellers who have poured into its economy. 

CVE and CVSS systems suffer from misaligned incentives and inconsistency

Aram Hovespyan, co-founder and CEO of security biz Codific, says that the rating systems for identifying security vulnerabilities and assessing threat risk need to be overhauled.…

George Abaraonye sparked outrage last month by posting social media messages appearing to approve of the violence against the US influencer.

Fattaneh, 38, told the Daily Mail that, as a woman, she has no choice but to fight back against the regime in Iran , which has clung to power since 1979, even if it aggressively cracks down on dissident action.