A landmark ruling by Judge William Alsup found that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its AI models was lawful under fair use, even though the company was penalized $1.5 billion for obtaining those books through pirated shadow libraries. Attorney Cathy Gellis explains that the judge distinguished between illegally acquiring texts and the act of training an AI on them, comparing the latter to a writer studying literature rather than copying it.
Reports highlight mounting concern among investors about the sustainability of massive AI data-center buildouts, alongside scrutiny of OpenAI's financial position. Analysts point to roughly $3 trillion in AI-related debt that sits off company balance sheets, raising questions about how these commitments are being tracked and financed.
Despite many employers reversing AI-related layoffs over the past year, 53% of Americans still fear AI could cost someone in their household a job, according to new commentary from Gartner's Jackie Swanson. She argues most companies have detailed AI adoption plans but lack honest strategies for addressing the impact on employees, career pacing, and leadership pipelines. Contract software firm Ironclad offers a contrasting approach, framing AI as a tool for skill-building and business growth rather than job cuts, using peer training and upskilling programs to maintain worker confidence.
Mark Gurman reports that Apple insiders who've handled the upcoming foldable iPhone Ultra praise its pocketability, hinge durability, iPad-style app layouts on its roughly 7.8-inch inner screen, and its usefulness as a camera viewfinder. The device, expected to launch soon with a 5.5-inch outer display, is rumored to cost over $2,000 and use Touch ID rather than Face ID, with only a main and ultra-wide camera.
Developers have ported AROS, the open-source Amiga Research Operating System, to run directly on Raspberry Pi hardware without virtualization, in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Previously, running AROS on a Pi required emulating it inside Linux; now it boots bare-metal, targeting the Pi3 with discussions underway for Pi4 and Zero2W support.
Slovakia's national security agency NBU issued an alert stating that NERO R-ONE traffic cameras purchased for a €30 million EU-funded monitoring project contain a hidden backdoor allowing shell and network access via SMS from hardcoded Russian phone numbers. The agency found the devices are rebranded versions of a Russian camera made by St. Petersburg-based Semicon, following opposition claims that the Interior Ministry bought them through a Cyprus shell company using fake certifications.
Canonical is funding a three-year PhD project at the University of Bristol's Programming Languages Research Group aimed at automatically converting large C codebases into Rust. UK Research and Innovation is providing matching funds, and the project will be led by student Alex Wood under Professor Meng Wang, with Dr. Cristina David and Canonical's Jon Seager as co-supervisors.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports Apple is making major layout changes to its retail stores this fall, including reorganizing the Avenues sections and adding new accessory bays. While Apple was expected to release only a refreshed HomePod mini and Apple TV 4K, the scope of these store changes suggests the long-rumored smart home hub with a display may launch at the same time.
Nielsen released streaming and viewership figures revealing that audiences have collectively spent an enormous amount of time watching Spider-Man movies. The data underscores the franchise's enduring popularity across multiple film iterations and platforms.
China's space agency announced it has scrubbed the planned 2025 launch of its Chang'e 7 lunar south pole mission from the Wenchang Space Launch Site, citing that conditions for launch had not been met. The mission, comprising an orbiter, lander, rover and hopper probe atop a Long March 5 rocket, was likely delayed due to Typhoon Narra churning near Hainan island, though officials gave no official cause.
Following the Wi-Fi Alliance's early 2024 rollout of the Wi-Fi 7 standard, routers and devices supporting it have become increasingly widespread. The new standard offers faster speeds and better performance in crowded network environments, while remaining backward compatible so older gadgets still connect without issues, albeit without accessing the newest features like 4K-QAM and Multi-Link Operation.
An owner of a 2021 Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet used it as a always-on smart-home dashboard, but Amazon software kept forcing shutdowns after months of diagnosis with Claude Code hit a wall: three protected Amazon packages held reboot and shutdown permissions that couldn't be disabled without root access, and no public root method existed for this device. Over several months the owner paid $266.15 across four AI coding models—Kimi K3, GLM-5.2, GLM-5.3, and Claude—to find and fix an exploit, with GLM-5.3 finally completing a working root method in a single day.
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