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Scania confirms insurance claim data breach in extortion attempt

Automotive giant Scania confirmed it suffered a cybersecurity incident where threat actors used compromised credentials to breach its Financial Services systems and steal insurance claim documents. Scania told BleepingComputer that the attackers emailed several Scania employees, threatening to leak the data online unless their demands were met. Scania is a major Swedish manufacturer of heavy trucks, buses, and industrial and marine engines and is a member of the Volkswagen Group. The company,

Best early Prime Day TV deals: My 17 favorite sales live now

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

Iranian state television on Tuesday afternoon urged the country’s public to remove the messaging platform WhatsApp from their smartphones, alleging the app — without offering specific evidence — gathered user information to send to Israel. In a statement, WhatsApp said it was “concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most.” WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can’t read a message.

Latest Covid Variant Now Driving Over a Third of U.S. Cases

The newest concerning variant of covid-19 is rapidly advancing across the U.S. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that NB.1.8.1 has started to supplant other circulating strains of the coronavirus. According to the CDC’s latest Nowcast, covering the last two weeks through June 7, NB.1.8.1 is likely causing 37% of all covid-19 cases in the U.S., just barely behind the current dominant variant, LP.8.1 (38%). It’s an estimate, but the CDC’s numbers indicate a large surg

Topics: 19 cases covid nb variant

Starlink's Residential Lite Plan Can Save You $40 a Month, but There's a Big Catch

Starlink internet service has become a powerful option for frequent travelers and people looking to connect from less-populated areas, but the cost has generally been prohibitive for many customers. To address that gap, the satellite internet service provider recently released a new budget-friendly internet plan called Residential Lite. Residential Lite reduces the monthly cost of Starlink from $120 to $80 in select areas. That's a $40 discount for customers in 30 US states, making it one of th

OpenAI Signed a $200M Deal With the Defense Department: Why You Should Pay Attention

The US Department of Defense has awarded ChatGPT maker OpenAI a $200 million contract to develop "prototype frontier AI capabilities," the government and company announced on Monday. The deal is through the Defense Department's chief digital and artificial intelligence office and is expected to be completed in one year. OpenAI said in its statement that its AI could help the department perform tasks ranging from "transform[ing] its administrative operations ... to streamlining how they look at

Max will show autoplaying video previews suggested by AI

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. Max — soon to be called HBO Max again — is rolling out an update that automatically plays video previews when you hover over shows and movies. The video previews are launching to users in the US now, but Max is still working on an “AI-assisted” tool to pick the clips that go in them. In the “coming weeks,” Max says its AI tool will automatically id

Applied Intuition raises $600M as it pushes further into defense

Buzzy autonomous vehicle software company Applied Intuition has closed a $600 million Series F and tender offer, pushing its valuation up to $15 billion. The round was co-led by BlackRock-managed funds and Kleiner Perkins, and included new investments from the Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi Investment Council, Greycroft, and more. Existing investors General Catalyst, Lux, Elad Gil, and Mary Meeker’s growth fund Bond also participated. Applied Intuition’s raise comes just one year after

Tumblr’s content filtering systems have been falsely flagging posts as ‘mature,’ users blame AI

Tumblr is the latest tech company to grapple with automated flagging and takedowns that have gone haywire and raised the ire of users. In recent days, Tumblr users have complained their content is being flagged as “mature,” even when that’s not the case. The problem has reduced the visibility of users’ posts because many people on the platform have configured their settings to hide mature content by default. According to numerous posts from impacted Tumblr users, posts have been falsely flagge

Nintendo is already banning Switch 2 flashcart users

Facepalm: Besides offering a substantial hardware upgrade and exciting new features, the Switch 2 is also shaping up to be a decidedly anti-modding platform. The new console includes robust anti-piracy measures, and users are already starting to feel the effects on their accounts. Multiple reports confirm what many suspected from the start: Nintendo is actively working to block "easy" modding attempts and prevent potential piracy on its new console. Nintendo certainly isn't losing money on Swi

OpenAI lands $200 million US defense contract

What just happened? The Department of Defense has awarded a one-year, $200 million contract to OpenAI to develop advanced artificial intelligence tools aimed at addressing critical national security challenges "in both warfighting and enterprise domains." The deal was announced Monday in the DoD's daily list of newly awarded contracts. The Department of Defense said OpenAI will receive $2 million immediately for research and development purposes. The company will also use the funds to test and

Are Amazon Basics tools any good? I bought a bunch to find out, and you'd be surprised

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

The 13 best early Prime Day 2025 deals under $25

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Best early Prime Day phone deals: My 17 favorite sales live now

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Building Effective AI Agents

Over the past year, we've worked with dozens of teams building large language model (LLM) agents across industries. Consistently, the most successful implementations weren't using complex frameworks or specialized libraries. Instead, they were building with simple, composable patterns. In this post, we share what we’ve learned from working with our customers and building agents ourselves, and give practical advice for developers on building effective agents. What are agents? "Agent" can be de

Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

So I was uh, downloading some linux isos, like usual. It was going slowly, so I opened up the Trackers tab in qBittorrent and saw the following: Most of the trackers were totally dead. Either the hosts were down or the domains weren’t being used. That got me thinking. What if I picked up one of these dead domains? How many clients would try to connect? What are trackers for, anyways? A tracker is a core component of the BitTorrent protocol. Trackers are the services that point you to other p

The Pixel 10 could feature Google’s fastest fingerprint scanner yet

TL;DR According to a new report, the Pixel 10 series may feature a faster ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. The upgrade builds on the tech introduced in last year’s Pixel 9 phones. Other rumored features include the Tensor G5 chip, better image stabilization, and the debut of Magic Cue. Amongst other upgrades, the Pixel 9 series was the first range of Google Pixel phones to feature an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. If a new rumor proves accurate, the Pixel 10 series will build on that foundation

Apple’s Journal app is coming to iPad and Mac with big upgrades

Apple’s Journal app is coming to the iPad and Mac as part of iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe, and several brand new features will be included too—even on iPhone. Journal app is included with iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe Journal first debuted in iOS 17.2 as a brand new iPhone app, but many expected it to go cross-platform as early as iOS 18 the following year. It’s taken longer than expected, but soon, Apple’s Journal app will no longer be iPhone-only. iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe both include Journal as

Threads adds new dedicated feed for fediverse content

Meta’s Threads is deepening its integration with the fediverse , a collection of decentralized social media platforms that includes Mastodon . Starting today, users who have enabled sharing to the fediverse in Threads will be able to see posts from federated accounts that they follow. These posts will now appear in a dedicated feed. From this feed, users can now search for federated users from within Threads. These posts will populate in reverse chronological order, ensuring the newest posts fr

Forget AirTags: This KeySmart luggage lock makes location-tracking easy (and it's TSA-compliant)

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Prime Day is coming, and Metro by T-Mobile customers can get Amazon Prime free on this plan

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Ethan Hunt Doesn’t Die in the New ‘Mission Impossible,’ But They Considered It

When the eighth Mission: Impossible film changed its title to “The Final Reckoning,” we all had the same thought: Tom Cruise’s character, Ethan Hunt, was going to die. It would have been the most obvious way to add some real finality to the franchise, but we now know that doesn’t happen. Instead, Ethan lives, as does his sworn enemy, the Entity. And, in a new interview, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie discussed those crucial decisions and many more. In an extended, spoiler-filled conversa

Sally celebrates complicated legacy of first US woman in space

"Sally Ride became the first American woman to blast off into space, but beneath her unflappable composure, she carried a secret." On June 18, 1983, NASA astronaut Sally Ride made history as the first American woman in space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. National Geographic is marking the occasion with a new documentary on the astronaut's life: Sally. In addition to revisiting her storied career, the film provides an unprecedented look at the famously private Ride's personal life—notably

Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox has an AMD chip inside and is ‘not locked to a single store’

At Xbox our vision is for you to play the games you want with the people you want, anywhere you want. That’s why we’re investing in our next-generation hardware lineup — across console, handheld, PC, cloud, and accessories. I’m thrilled to share we’ve established a strategic multi-year partnership with AMD to co-engineer silicon across a portfolio of devices — including our next-generation Xbox consoles in your living room and in your hands. Together with AMD we’re advancing the state of art in

Intel to lay off up to 20% of Intel Foundry workers

In Brief Intel will begin a new round of layoffs next month. The semiconductor giant plans to lay off 15% to 20% of workers in its Intel Foundry division starting in July, according to an internal memo originally reported on by The Oregonian. Intel Foundry designs, manufactures, and packages semiconductors for external clients. It’s unclear how many workers this will directly impact. Intel’s total workforce was 108,900 people as of December 2024, according to the company’s annual regulatory f

Applied Intuition raises $600 million as it pushes further into defense

Buzzy autonomous vehicle software company Applied Intuition has closed a $600 million Series F funding round, pushing its valuation up to $15 billion. The round was co-led by BlackRock-managed funds and Kleiner Perkins, and included new investments from the Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi Investment Council, Greycroft, and more. Existing investors General Catalyst, Lux, Elad Gil, and Mary Meeker’s growth fund Bond also participated. Applied Intuition’s raise comes just one year after it

Take Us North Kickstarter campaign launches for game about crossing the U.S.-Mexico border

Anima Interactive has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its game, Take Us North, about the experiences of migrants and asylum seekers on crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Take Us North is an adventure/survival game that follows the journeys of migrants and asylum seekers on their way to cross the US-Mexico border. It’s about the human story behind the politics and headlines, and stories about what the actual crossing is like. The game has raised $12,000 to date and is targeting hitting $30,000

KiCad and Wayland Support

These problems exist because Wayland’s design omits basic functionality that desktop applications for X11, Windows and macOS have relied on for decades—things like being able to position windows or warp the mouse cursor. This functionality was omitted by design, not oversight. The fragmentation doesn’t help either. GNOME interprets protocols one way, KDE another way, and smaller compositors yet another way. As application developers, we can’t depend on a consistent implementation of various Way

OpenAI weighs “nuclear option” of antitrust complaint against Microsoft

OpenAI executives have discussed filing an antitrust complaint with US regulators against Microsoft, the company's largest investor, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, marking a dramatic escalation in tensions between the two long-term AI partners. OpenAI, which develops ChatGPT, has reportedly considered seeking a federal regulatory review of the terms of its contract with Microsoft for potential antitrust law violations, according to people familiar with the matter. The potential antitr