Tech

A recently elected mayor has brought to light a costly computer systems deal, which was signed, sealed, and delivered by their predecessor. On her Facebook page, Mayor Sally A. Lopez shares photos and documents confirming that her predecessor acquired a “10 million System Server Package.” Assuming we are talking Philippine pesos, that’s equivalent to about USD $175,000. However, the 16 systems look bargain-basement – at best – being based on old Intel 11th Generation processors, with generic case and power choices. According to our calculations, someone appears to have enjoyed a 1,300% markup.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36635080

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• Lemmy, 1.

Roadmap.

• European banks freeze PayPal transactions after fraud system failure sparks disruption
• Merchants face delayed payments as billions in PayPal direct debits halted
• Suspicious surge forces lenders to suspend PayPal activity across Germany and Europe

Fast food companies have been experimenting with integrating artificial intelligence into their restaurants, from Flippy the burger-flipping robot at White Castle to dynamic pricing at Wendy's. One arena where AI seems to really be struggling, though, is at the drive-thru -- and Taco Bell is the latest to experience AI mishaps at the order box. After taking 2 million orders with AI, Taco Bell has reached one conclusion: we still need humans.

This vulnerability was discovered by security researchers from The Hacker News. The following password managers have affected browser extensions that are based on DOM (Document Object Model):

• 1Password
• Bitwarden
• Dashlane
• Enpass
• iCloud Passwords
• Keeper
• LastPass
• LogMeOnce
• NordPass
• ProtonPass
• RoboForm

The Trump administration has accused Google of discriminating against Republicans' emails and warned that the tech giant could be in line for a crackdown.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson wrote [PDF] to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday, citing a recent New York Post report that alleged Gmail was routinely flagging Republican fundraisers' emails as spam, while not doing the same to missives from their Democratic counterparts.

Several Republicans have criticized President Donald Trump’s recent corporate deals, with the 10% equity stake in Intel being the latest in a series of moves that Washington has made to acquire ownership or generate revenue from private companies. According to The Hill, several conservative senators and even former staffers from the first Trump administration are calling these moves a step towards socialism.

“If I was [sic] speaking to the president, I’d encourage him: It’s time to think twice,” former Vice President Mike Pence said to the publication. “State-owned enterprise is not the American way. Free enterprise is the American way.”

Intel has been struggling since 2024, having released a disastrous financial report in August of last year. Although the American chip maker has already received $2.2 billion in CHIPS Act funds, its financial situation suggests that it may struggle to meet the targets required to receive the balance of the nearly $ 8 billion grant awarded during the Biden administration. Things were made worse when the company’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, was dragged into a row over Cadence, which admitted to selling its products to banned Chinese entities while he was its chief executive.

Google is increasing security measures around sideloading apps by removing anonymity for Android developers who distribute outside of the Play Store. Starting in September next year, Google will require developers in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand to verify their identities in order for their apps to be installed on certified Android devices via direct downloads or third-party app stores. This requirement will then roll out globally in “2027 and beyond.”

Under the new requirements, Android developers will need to provide Google with personal details like their legal name, address, email, and phone number, and may need to upload an official government ID. Identity verification is already a requirement for Google Play, so this change mostly impacts developers who solely distribute their apps outside of the Play Store.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36316138

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• Hackernews;
• Lobsters.

• Coinbase CEO mandated AI onboarding for engineers, and he fired some who didn't comply.
• Armstrong emphasized AI's importance at work, aiming for 50% AI-written code by the end of the quarter.
• AI adoption pressure is growing across industries, with leaders at Google telling employees they expect them to use the tools.

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Nearly 70 percent of popular Japanese smartphone games have introduced external payment systems for items and services to avoid hefty commission fees from U.S. tech giants Google LLC and Apple Inc., a Kyodo News tally showed.

The move comes ahead of a new Japanese law tightening regulations on Google and Apple, which dominate smartphone platforms, set to take full effect in December. The legislation requires the two companies to open their payment systems.

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Last month, award-winning singer Emily Portman got a message from a fan praising her new album and saying "English folk music is in good hands".

That would normally be a compliment, but the Sheffield-based artist was puzzled.

So she followed a link the fan had posted and was taken to what appeared to be her latest release. "But I didn't recognise it because I hadn't released a new album," Portman says.

"I clicked through and discovered an album online everywhere - on Spotify and iTunes and all the online platforms.

"It was called Orca, and it was music that was evidently AI-generated, but it had been cleverly trained, I think, on me."

Investigative tech journalism site 404 Media published an in-depth report on the development Thursday morning. The story highlights how hackers are abusing the $199 Flipper Zero—a device defined by its creators as “a versatile tool for hardware exploration, firmware flashing, debugging, and fuzzing”—to unlock vehicles without a key fob.

404 Media spoke with a Russia-based hacker named Daniel, who says he developed the “Unleashed” firmware that enables devices to execute more RFID and USB attacks. “Maybe someone is using it to steal from cars or steal cars,” Daniel said, after alleging that the firmware is “in demand” with locksmiths and car shop owners. He sells the Flipper Zero patches for either $600 or $1,000, depending on whether customers simply want the latest version or updates with further support.

a reddit user shared their story

Just woke up to an Email from PayPal stating that my account was permanently limited, thinking it's a scam I check and lo and behold: I was limited.

But what had I done? Well my only purchases using PayPal were through Itch.io, that's the only thing I use it for.

It seems I was limited for breaking "the policies of our partners" mentioned in the first paragraph of the notice. It's no secret that PayPal are quite close with Mastercard and Visa, who have been pushing hardest for this porn ban (sorry, specifically the NSFW Games sphere).

So this is a PSA: if you're using your PayPal account for anything else, don't use it for Itch.

A new report into the seismic demands of AI data centers on the power grid claims that electricity rates for individuals and small businesses could increase vastly in the face of data center expansion from the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. The New York Times reports that AI data centers could see their demand on the country's electricity could increase to as much as 12% by 2028, up from just 4% a couple of years ago. Furthermore, high-tech giants are building their own power plants, becoming consumers and producers of electricity in a way that is fundamentally reshaping the U.S. electricity market. According to the report, small businesses and households could see their bills go up disproportionately as a result.

Dozens of Microsoft employees occupied the company’s east campus in Redmond, Washington to protest against what they say is the use of its software by the Israeli military to carry out operations in Gaza and enable the surveillance of Palestinians.

A recent ruling by the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has reopened the possibility that using ad blocking software could violate copyright law in Germany.

In a decision last month, the BGH – the final court of appeals on civil and criminal matters – partially overturned an appeals court decision in an 11-year legal dispute brought by publisher Axel Springer against Adblock Plus maker Eyeo GmbH.

The legal dispute dates back to 2014 when Axel and Springer first started fighting. The initial complaint was a competition lawsuit, resolved by the BGH in 2018. In parallel, Springer sued over copyright.

Codeberg, a Berlin-based code hosting community, is struggling to cope with a deluge of AI bots that can now bypass previously effective defenses.

In a series of posts to the Mastodon social network on Friday, Codeberg volunteer staff said AI crawlers are no longer being kept at bay by Anubis, an AI bot tarpit.

"It seems like the AI crawlers learned how to solve the Anubis challenges," the Codeberg account said. "Anubis is a tool hosted on our infrastructure that requires browsers to do some heavy computation before accessing Codeberg again. It really saved us tons of nerves over the past months, because it saved us from manually maintaining blocklists to having a working detection for 'real browsers' and 'AI crawlers.'"

The AI bot traffic has functioned as a denial of service attack, resulting in what Codeberg staff describe as "a period of extreme slowness today."

Codeberg says that some of the bots appear to be running on networks controlled by China-based telecom biz Huawei.

• The issue is reportedly caused after installation of KB5063878 or KB5062660.
• KB5063878 is the final security update for Windows 11, version 24H2 that Microsoft released on this month's Patch Day.
• KB5062660 is the preview update of the update, which Microsoft released at the end of July 2025
• The issue may affect systems with solid state drives (SSD) if a) a large number of files or b) a large single file are written to the drives.
• The drive becomes inaccessible in worst case.

When Meta embedded AI bots in its apps, even students in the most remote corners of Colombia gained access. But rather than boosting learning, it’s getting in the way.

Starting in July 2024, AI was suddenly everywhere all at once in Latin America after Meta Platforms started incorporating chatbots in its apps across the region. Whether users wanted them or not, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram became homes for a variety of AI bots.

The students of José Gregorio Salas Rural High School put them to work on their homework. This small community of farming and cattle-ranching families was no longer shielded from the AI revolution, which was disrupting education worldwide. It could no longer escape because the new bots were embedded in the apps everyone was already using. Meta had fine-tuned the apps for the emerging-market consumer, making them cheaper to use and designing them to work with less sophisticated phones and patchy connectivity.

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