Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) A coalition of law-enforcement agencies said it shut down a service that facilitated the unlocking of more than 1.2 million stolen or lost mobile phones so they could be used by someone other than their rightful owner. The service was part of iServer, a phishing-as-a-service platform that has been operating since 2018. The Argentina-based iServer sold access to a platform that offered a host of phishing-related…

Enlarge (credit: gremlin via Getty Images) For the past few years, a conspiracy theory called “Dead Internet theory” has picked up speed as large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT increasingly generate text and even social media interactions found online. The theory says that most social Internet activity today is artificial and designed to manipulate humans for engagement. On Monday, software developer Michael Sayman launched a new AI-populated social network app…

Enlarge / An image from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where in 1874, the newest thing was not software or genetic compositions, but shutter fastenings from H.L. Norton. (credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images) The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider two bills Thursday that would effectively nullify the Supreme Court’s rulings against patents on broad software processes and human genes. Open source and Internet freedom advocates are…

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards / Malte Mueller via Getty Images) On Wednesday, AI video synthesis firm Runway and entertainment company Lionsgate announced a partnership to create a new AI model trained on Lionsgate’s vast film and TV library. The deal will feed Runway legally clear training data and will also reportedly provide Lionsgate with tools to enhance content creation while potentially reducing production costs. Lionsgate, known for franchises like John…

Enlarge / A promotional image for Amazon’s 4-Series Fire TVs. (credit: Amazon) A lawsuit is seeking to penalize Amazon for allegedly providing “fake list prices and purported discounts” to mislead people into buying Fire TVs. As reported by Seattle news organization KIRO 7, a lawsuit seeking class-action certification and filed in US District Court for the Western District of Washington on September 12 [PDF] claims that Amazon has been listing Fire…

Enlarge / iPads running iPadOS 18. (credit: Apple) Apple has temporarily paused the rollout of the iPadOS 18 update for M4 iPad Pros. The company has stopped signing the update for these iPads, meaning it will no longer be offered to users when they check, and Apple’s servers won’t activate the update if it’s installed some other way. Apple confirmed to Ars that it had “temporarily removed” the update in order…

Enlarge / Under C2PA, this stock image would be labeled as a real photograph if the camera used to take it, and the toolchain for retouching it, supported the C2PA. But even as a real photo, does it actually represent reality, and is there a technological solution to that problem? (credit: Smile via Getty Images) On Tuesday, Google announced plans to implement content authentication technology across its products to help…

Enlarge / TCL’s C655 Pro TV is advertised as a quantum dot Mini LED TV. (credit: TCL) TCL has come under scrutiny this month after testing that claimed to examine three TCL TVs marketed as quantum dot TVs reportedly showed no trace of quantum dots. Quantum dots are semiconductor particles that are several nanometers large and emit different color lights when struck with light of a certain frequency. The color…

Enlarge (credit: Andriy Onufriyenko via Getty Images) OpenAI truly does not want you to know what its latest AI model is “thinking.” Since the company launched its “Strawberry” AI model family last week, touting so-called reasoning abilities with o1-preview and o1-mini, OpenAI has been sending out warning emails and threats of bans to any user who tries to probe into how the model works. Unlike previous AI models from OpenAI,…

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) A supply chain failure that compromises Secure Boot protections on computing devices from across the device-making industry extends to a much larger number of models than previously known, including those used in ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, and voting machines. The debacle was the result of non-production test platform keys used in hundreds of device models for more than a decade. These cryptographic keys form the root-of-trust anchor…