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Tornado Cash sold crypto “privacy”; the US saw “money laundering.” A jury isn’t sure what to think.

"Crypto mixers" exist because of a peculiar feature of cryptocurrencies—most are fully traceable using their public blockchain ledgers. To provide more privacy to crypto account owners, a mixer will let people toss their crypto into a large pool, where it is "mixed" with other people's crypto. At a later date, each crypto owner can choose to withdraw their money from the pool into a new, anonymous wallet, thus making the movement of the crypto harder to track. Of course, the obfuscation doesn't

OpenAI is giving ChatGPT to the government for $1

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the US Federal Reserve Board of Governors' "Integrated Review of the Capital Framework for Large Banks Conference" at the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2025. OpenAI on Wednesday announced it will offer its ChatGPT Enterprise product to U.S. federal agencies for $1 through the next year, making its technology available to the federal executive branch workforce at "essentially no cost." The company has been working to deepen its ties to lawmak

Grand Canyon ‘Megafire’ Explodes in Size and Is Now Creating Its Own Weather

Despite over a month of firefighting efforts, the Dragon Bravo fire experienced a surge of growth this week, doubling in size within just a few days. The northern Arizona “megafire” is now the largest active blaze in the continental U.S. and the largest of 2025 so far. As of Wednesday, August 6, the Dragon Bravo fire has torched 130,520 acres along the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, according to the national wildfire monitoring database InciWeb. This fire sparked to life when lightning struck the ar

RFK Jr. Yanks $500 Million From Critical mRNA Vaccine Research

Robert F. Kennedy’s ongoing war against vaccines is escalating. Under his authority, the government has just stripped away its funding toward developing several next-generation vaccines reliant on messenger RNA technology. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday that it is ending its development of mRNA vaccines organized through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). The revoked funding will affect nearly two dozen projects worth almost $5

Russia’s Colossal Earthquake May Have Ignited Multiple Volcanoes

The sixth strongest earthquake ever recorded struck Russia’s far east Kamchatka Peninsula on July 29 and has seemingly triggered a string of nearby volcanoes. According to the United States Geological Survey, it’s not uncommon for large earthquakes to cause volcanic activity, though volcanoes will only erupt if they were already close to erupting on their own. Depending on its magnitude, the earthquake must also occur within a certain distance from the volcano. Klyuchevskaya, one of the highes

iOS 26 upgrades the App Store with these three new features

iOS 26 will bring big feature updates to apps like Wallet, Music, Messages, and more. But there are also several new features coming to the App Store, here’s what’s new in iOS 26. #1: Top Played Games chart iOS 26 adds a brand new Games app to your iPhone’s Home Screen, and to complement the new gaming features, Apple is adding a ‘Top Played Games’ chart to the App Store. When viewing the Games tab in the App Store, you’ll find a new chart showing the current top 25 played games. This data i

WhatsApp deletes over 6.8m accounts linked to scams, Meta says

WhatsApp deletes over 6.8m accounts linked to scams, Meta says The crackdown targets an increasingly common tactic in which criminals hijack WhatsApp accounts or add users to group chats promoting fake investment schemes and other scams. Meta made the announcement as WhatsApp rolled out new anti-scam measures to alert users to potential fraudulent activity, such as a user being added to a group chat by someone not in their contacts list. Many were tied to scam centres run by organised crimina

Google is rolling out a fix for Pixel back button issues

The issues appear to have started popping up shortly after the official release of Android 16 in June. Ever since that update, the user said that navigation has been “a complete mess” and that they ran into issues with buttons being “completely unresponsive” or delays of “over 30 seconds” on their Pixel 8 Pro. Another user said they had to occasionally press the back button “a few times” on their Pixel 9 to get the phone to register it. The swipe gesture to navigate back also occasionally stoppe

HHS Winds Down mRNA Vaccine Development Under BARDA

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced the beginning of a coordinated wind-down of its mRNA vaccine development activities under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), including the cancellation and de-scoping of various contracts and solicitations. The decision follows a comprehensive review of mRNA-related investments initiated during the COVID-19 public health emergency. “We reviewed the science, listened to the

Some Sonos Speakers Are Getting So Hot That the USB-C Port Melts

If you’re in the business of selling audio gear with a Sonos logo on it, you may be feeling a little more heat than usual. And if you’re a person who owns a Sonos speaker, you may be equally as hot, though potentially not in a figurative sense. According to a report from Bloomberg, Sonos has admitted that a small number of customers who bought its Roam Bluetooth speakers have experienced overheating problems that caused the speaker to partially melt (specifically the USB-C port). Per Bloomberg,

FCC abandons efforts to make U.S. broadband fast and affordable

Trump FCC Abandons Efforts To Make U.S. Broadband Fast And Affordable from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept Section 706 of the Telecom Act requires the FCC to determine whether broadband is being deployed “on a reasonable and timely basis” to everyone. If the answer is no, the law says the FCC must “take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market.” Fo

Voice phishers strike again, this time hitting Cisco

Cisco said that one of its representatives fell victim to a voice phishing attack that allowed threat actors to download profile information belonging to users of a third-party customer relationship management system. “Our investigation has determined that the exported data primarily consisted of basic account profile information of individuals who registered for a user account on Cisco.com,” the company disclosed. Information included names, organization names, addresses, Cisco assigned user I

Linda Yaccarino joins health tech platform eMed as CEO after leaving X

Linda Yaccarino’s next role after departing X as CEO will be another chief executive role at eMed Population Health, an AI startup building a tech platform for patients using GLP-1s. Yaccarino was a longtime advertising executive at NBCUniversal but left to join X as CEO for two years, where she managed to have a positive impact on the social network’s troubled ad revenue model, despite her and Elon Musk’s shared approach to minimizing content moderation. Though Yaccarino does not have experie

FCC Abandons Efforts to Make U.S. Broadband Fast and Affordable

Trump FCC Abandons Efforts To Make U.S. Broadband Fast And Affordable from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept Section 706 of the Telecom Act requires the FCC to determine whether broadband is being deployed “on a reasonable and timely basis” to everyone. If the answer is no, the law says the FCC must “take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market.” Fo

GitHub pull requests are down

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EPA Moves to Cancel $7B in Grants for Solar Energy

The Trump administration is preparing to terminate $7 billion in federal grants intended to help low- and moderate-income families install solar panels on their homes, according to two people briefed on the matter. The Environmental Protection Agency is drafting termination letters to the 60 nonprofit groups and state agencies that received the grants under the “Solar for All” program, with the goal of sending the letters by the end of this week, according to the two people, who spoke on the co

Former X CEO Linda Yaccarino takes helm at digital health company eMed

Linda Yaccarino, the former chief executive of Elon Musk's social media platform X, is pivoting into health care. The digital health company eMed Population Health on Tuesday announced it has appointed Yaccarino as its new CEO. EMed is developing a population health management platform for the blockbuster weight loss and diabetes drugs called GLP-1s, the company said. It had raised a total $22 million as of 2022, according to PitchBook. Yaccarino, who rose rose to the top of NBCUniversal's glo

Spotify expands audiobooks access to family plan members in the US for the first time

Spotify is expanding access to its audiobooks to more U.S. subscribers. The company on Tuesday announced the launch of its $11.99 per month Audiobooks+ plan in the market, which allows subscribers or their household members on a Family or Duo plan to add 15 hours of audiobook listening during the month on top of the base plan. Though Spotify launched its audiobooks service in the U.S. back in 2022, household members on Duo and Family plans have long been left out. The offering makes audiobooks

Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

President Donald Trump’s administration has dramatically expanded its work with Palantir, elevating the company cofounded by Trump ally Peter Thiel as the government’s go-to software developer. Following massive contract terminations for consulting giants and government contractors like Accenture, Booz Allen, and Deloitte, Palantir has emerged ahead. Now the data analytics firm is partnering with those companies—offering them a lifeline while consolidating its own power. Palantir has become one

Battlefield 6 Open Beta Start Time, Maps, Modes and Pre-Load

EA's DICE studio has blown the lid off the multiplayer for its upcoming military shooter Battlefield 6, and players will soon get to join the fray. A Battlefield 6 public beta is coming on two consecutive weekends starting Aug. 9 -- and if you're lucky enough to get Early Access, to play starting Aug. 7 -- and here's how to join. The Battlefield 6 open betas will be the first chances for players to experience the game's multiplayer before its full release on Oct. 10. The first open beta weekend

Dental Floss Could Deliver Next-Gen Vaccines, No Needles Required

Flu shot season is around the corner, and while injections remain the most common form of vaccination, scientists are working hard to find other ways to deliver inoculations that don’t involve shoving a needle into your flesh. And in a new study, researchers think they might have found another novel approach: dental floss. In the new work, a team of scientists based in the U.S. demonstrated how this might work on lab mice, finding that vaccine delivery via dental floss was more effective at sti

Palantir Is Extending Its Reach Even Further into Government

President Donald Trump’s administration has dramatically expanded its work with Palantir, elevating the company cofounded by Trump ally Peter Thiel as the government’s go-to software developer. Following massive contract terminations for consulting giants and government contractors like Accenture, Booz Allen, and Deloitte, Palantir has emerged ahead. Now the data analytics firm is partnering with those companies—offering them a lifeline while consolidating its own power. Palantir has become one

Mozilla warns of phishing attacks targeting add-on developers

Mozilla has warned browser extension developers of an active phishing campaign targeting accounts on its official AMO (addons.mozilla.org) repository. Mozilla's add-on platform hosts over 60,000 browser extensions and more than 500,000 themes used by tens of millions of users worldwide. According to Mozilla's advisory, these phishing emails are impersonating the AMO team and claim that the targeted developer accounts require updates to maintain access to development features. "The developer c

Apple might be building its own AI ‘answer engine’

In Brief Apple has formed a new team to build a ChatGPT-like app, according to according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. This team — reportedly called Answers, Knowledge, and Information — is working to build an “answer engine” that can respond to questions using information from across the web. This could be a standalone app or provide search capabilities in Siri, Safari, and other Apple products. Gurman also notes that Apple is advertising for jobs with this team, specifically looking for appli

How to get another 15GB of Gmail storage for free (and without losing old files)

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Every new Google email account comes with 15GB of free storage -- a solid offer at no cost. However, that space can fill up fast, especially since it also covers files in Google Drive and Google Photos. If your inbox is cluttered with unread newsletters and sneaky spam, there's a way to clean house without losing important messages. With the right approach, you can preserve what matters while giving yourself a fresh start. Also: Gmail is making it a whole lot easi

Twenty Eighth International Obfuscated C Code Contest

Twenty Eighth International Obfuscated C Code Contest Where to start See below for links to the 2024 winning IOCCC entries. Check out the index.html web pages for each winning entry. They have most of the information you need to compile and run the winning program. Take a look at the winning source code and try to figure out how it works. You might also want to check out the author’s remarks for even more details. You may download all winning entries in the form of a compressed tarball, for

Instagram public accounts with less than 1,000 followers can no longer go live

Instagram is no longer allowing public accounts to go live if they have less than 1,000 followers. Users have been reporting over the past few days that their accounts aren't eligible for Live broadcast on the app anymore. "We changed the requirements to use this feature," reads the notice that pops up when people try to host a livestream broadcast to their followers. "Only public accounts with 1,000 followers or more will be able to create live videos." Now Meta has confirmed the new eligibilit

Anthropic cuts off OpenAI’s access to its Claude models

In Brief Anthropic has revoked OpenAI’s access to its Claude family of AI models, according to a report in Wired. Sources told Wired that OpenAI was connecting Claude to internal tools that allowed the company to compare Claude’s performance to its own models in categories like coding, writing, and safety. TechCrunch has reached out to Anthropic and OpenAI for comment. In a statement to Wired, an Anthropic spokesperson said, “OpenAI’s own technical staff were also using our coding tools ahead