TechCrunch●Covered by 2 sources
The EU politician investigating Pegasus got hacked with Pegasus
Citizen Lab found that a government customer of NSO Group used Pegasus to break into the phone of a European politician who was sitting on the EU committee investigating the spyware industry. One Parliament member calls it a direct attack on the rule of law, which is a hard framing to argue with when the tool you're probing turns up in your own pocket.
So what? ↓When the person whose literal job is holding spyware to account can't keep it off his own phone, the pitch that this stuff only targets criminals and terrorists collapses, and so does any comfort you had about your own device.
Source: TechCrunch
404 Media●Covered by 2 sources
Apple's 'Hide My Email' has one job, and it can be tricked into un-hiding your email
The person who reported the flaw in Apple's Hide My Email, the feature that generates a throwaway address to shield your real one, says it could let attackers uncover the actual email it's supposed to conceal, and that users deserve to know their hidden addresses may be discoverable.
So what? ↓You reach for a feature whose entire purpose is one thing, keeping your real email private, so a bug that defeats exactly that thing isn't a footnote, it's the product quietly not working.
Source: 404 Media
Amazon●Covered by 2 sources
Amazon quietly gave the 2023 Fire HD 10 an extra gig of RAM and a $15 tax
The 32GB Fire HD 10 now ships with 4GB of RAM (up from 3GB) and a bumped price of $154.99, from $139.99. Everything else is untouched, the same 10.1-inch 1,920 x 1,200 screen, 2GHz eight-core chip, and 13-hour battery, and the 64GB model is still stuck on 3GB.
So what? ↓This is the rare gadget update where you pay 15 more dollars for one specific spec on one specific configuration, so if you buy the wrong storage size you get zero of the upgrade you paid attention for.
Source: Amazon
Engadget●Covered by 2 sources
Midjourney to the studios suing it: cool, now show the court YOUR AI use
Midjourney is asking the court to force Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal to disclose how they use AI across their companies, a year after the three studios sued the image lab in 2025 for enabling massive infringement of their copyrighted characters.
So what? ↓If the studios torching AI in court turn out to be quietly running it in-house, the movies and shows you watch are already partly machine-made by the same companies telling you machines are the enemy.
Source: Engadget
Mistral●Covered by 2 sources
Mistral's new math model found 5 real bugs while it was busy acing benchmarks
Mistral released Leanstral 1.5, an open-source model built for formal verification in Lean 4, and while proving math theorems it scanned 57 open-source repositories and turned up five previously unknown bugs. The Hacker News crowd noticed too, parking it at 313 points.
So what? ↓Formal verification is the tedious, expensive work of mathematically proving code actually does what it claims, so a free model that catches real bugs in real repos is the kind of unglamorous tool that quietly makes the software you rely on less broken.
Source: Mistral
404media.co●Covered by 2 sources
eBay, Amazon, and Etsy are flooded with seeds for AI flowers that don't exist
404 Media reports scammers are listing seeds for exotic, impossibly vivid flowers across eBay, Amazon, and Etsy, using AI-generated images of plants that were never real, and the platforms can't keep up with the flood.
So what? ↓You pay real money, wait a growing season, and get nothing (or a weed), which is the analog cost of a marketplace that can't tell an AI picture from a product.
Source: 404media.co
the-decoder.com●1 source · panel-picked
AI-using students scored up to 24% worse on exams, and it took about two years to show
A study of more than 26,000 Chinese students found that AI users finished homework faster and got higher marks, but scored up to 24 percent worse on actual exams, according to The Decoder. The full hit to entrance-exam results took roughly two years to surface, which means shorter studies keep undercounting the damage.
So what? ↓The homework gets easier and the grades look fine right up until the test that actually counts, so the kid outsourcing the thinking today pays the bill on a timeline nobody's measuring.
Source: the-decoder.com
techmeme.com●1 source · panel-picked
Meta might rent out its AI compute, and it's reportedly circling an Anthropic deal
Per a SemiAnalysis report, Meta is weighing turning its massive AI buildout into a cloud business: renting compute SpaceX-style, hosting third-party models Bedrock-style, and possibly striking a deal with Anthropic. The subtext, per Spyglass, is a company that needs to earn money from something other than ads.
So what? ↓When an ad giant starts hunting for a Plan B revenue stream, it's admitting the AI spending spree has to pay for itself somehow, and that pressure eventually lands in your feed as more ads, not fewer.
Source: techmeme.com