Petlibro accused of “gaslighting” users over smart pet feeder outage

Petlibro founder and CEO York Wu provided more information about an outage that left users unable to control their smart pet feeders through the companion app and, in some reported cases, left them with hungry pets. Petlibro, a company owned by Shenzhen, China-headquartered firm Shenzhen Libro Technology Co., first acknowledged the outage on Tuesday at 5 am PT. At 7 pm PT on Wednesday, Petlibro said the outage was resolved….

August 17, 2026
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Nvidia discloses $21B stake in SpaceX

Nvidia has disclosed that it owns nearly 123 million shares in SpaceX, further highlighting the chipmaker’s entangled financial relationships with some of its biggest customers. The $5.5 trillion company owned SpaceX stock worth nearly $21 billion at the end of June, according to an SEC filing on Friday. Elon Musk’s rocket conglomerate’s shares have fallen sharply since its June initial public offering, meaning Nvidia’s stake would now be worth $17 billion. The…

August 17, 2026
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Vulnerability giving attackers full control of Macs is under active exploitation

Dutch officials have warned that a high-severity macOS vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code is under active exploitation. “The NCSC has received a notification indicating that active abuse of this vulnerability has been observed on multiple systems on which port 5900 was accessible from the Internet,” the Netherlands National Cyber Security Centrum warned earlier this week. “In all these cases, root had been accessed on the affected system…

August 14, 2026
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First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity

The first flight of the largest battery-electric aircraft to take to the skies lasted nearly half an hour while costing just $5 of electricity. That aviation feat comes at a time when jet fuel prices have skyrocketed because of the US war with Iran. The test flight of Heart Aerospace’s X1 demonstrator aircraft took place at Plattsburgh International Airport in upstate New York on August 12. The X1 aircraft is…

August 14, 2026
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PBS station fears losing 50TB of data after being ghosted by cloud storage provider

After its cloud storage provider went defunct, a PBS affiliate decided to sue a data center provider to regain access to 50TB of TV shows, videos, and other data dating back 70 years. As reported this week by Current, a trade newspaper covering public broadcasting, St. Louis affiliate Nine PBS filed a lawsuit against Iron Mountain Data Centers on July 28, seeking access to the data. In the litigation filed…

August 14, 2026
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Judge gives Google one week to fix “anticompetitive” app store download in Google Play

Google began offering third-party app store downloads in the Play Store earlier this week, but US District Judge James Donato says the company isn’t doing enough. After reviewing the process for accessing the first non-Google store, Donato ruled that Google has added unnecessary “anticompetitive friction,” ordering the company to rectify the issues. While Epic and Google are patching things up with a global partnership agreement, the two are still on…

August 14, 2026
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Private security firms will soon be allowed to hack overseas cybercriminals

The Trump administration is recruiting private security firms to conduct federal government-authorized operations, including cyberattacks, against overseas-based criminal organizations that commit hacks on US persons, organizations, or government entities. In a National Security Presidential Memorandum issued Thursday, US President Donald Trump directed the National Coordination Center (NCC), which operates under the Homeland Security Task Force, to develop a program for conducting specific cyber operations that combat foreign transnational criminal organizations…

August 13, 2026
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Ukrainian drones wipe out entire US tank brigade in live war game

Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience. The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise…

August 13, 2026
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Pet owners say smart pet feeder outage led to furry ones going unfed

Smart pet-feeder company Petlibro suffered an outage on Tuesday, giving users a harsh reminder of the risks of relying on smart devices. Petlibro makes pet feeders that connect to Wi-Fi and, for setup with Petlibro’s mobile companion app, Bluetooth. Users can set the feeders to automatically dispense food at scheduled times, which is handy for pet care when the owner is out of the home. In a statement to The…

August 13, 2026
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DEF CON crowd suspected in fake-hotspot attack on Delta flight

On Monday, passengers aboard Delta flight 591 going from Las Vegas to Atlanta allegedly spoofed the onboard Wi-Fi, raising the attention of federal law enforcement. The incident came one day after the DEF CON security conference concluded in Las Vegas and was first described on social media accounts that follow publicly available air-to-ground messages, known as ACARS. According to the “ACARS Drama” account, a message sent by pilots from the…

August 13, 2026
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