US Rep proposes bill to give video game buyers “ownership,” not “a license”

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A new bill proposed by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) aims to establish new regulations that would ensure that “buying a video game would give the consumer ownership of the game rather than a license to play it,” including assurances that they can continue to access the games for years after they are released.

The announcement names NBA 2K25 as an example of the problem the bill aims to solve; that game launched on September 6, 2025, but is scheduled to become unplayable on December 31 due to server shutdowns. The bill, which is called the Power to Players Act, directs the FTC to take action to prevent outcomes like that in the future.

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Bug turns one of the biggest fears about Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses into reality

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Some Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses were recording people’s conversations without the wearer knowing. The recordings occurred without users saying the prompt phrase (“Hey, Meta”), in a bug that Meta says has been fixed.

This week, some users reported online that their Ray-Ban Metas were recording without their consent. A person going by Kindly-Audience-137 on Reddit, for example, said this happened to them across three Meta Ray-Bans and that they had the “Respond without Hey Meta” setting turned off. The person said the Meta AI app “saves audio recordings and text transcripts of these conversations in my conversation history.”

“I believe this deserves a serious technical investigation. Customers should not have to wonder whether their private conversations are being captured when they have not intentionally activated their glasses’ AI assistant,” the Reddit user said.

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“thegentlemanpervert” producing AI CSAM is a NJ prosecutor, say cops

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New Jersey’s deputy attorney general, Brian Richard Fitzgerald, was arrested on “felony charges related to AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM),” Bucks County Detectives said in a press release Thursday.

In the US, cops have vowed to crack down on AI CSAM since at least 2024, when the Department of Justice made one of the earliest arrests. After charging a Wisconsin man with spreading “thousands of realistic images of prepubescent minors” across Telegram and Instagram, the DOJ clarified to law enforcement that “CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM.”


New Jersey’s deputy attorney general, Brian Richard Fitzgerald, was arrested at his home Thursday.
Credit:
via Bucks County Detectives

On Thursday, New Jersey officials accused 51-year-old Fitzgerald of using AI to make photos from social media of real minors into sexualized images that he then distributed on social media.

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Barebones Mini PC from Shuttle Houses Intel N150 and Supports Three Storage Drives

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The XPC nano NC50N by Shuttle is an upcoming barebone mini PC based on Intel’s N150 processor. The system supports up to 16GB of DDR5 memory, dual M.2 NVMe SSDs, and 2.5GbE networking, targeting digital signage, point-of-sale terminals, office environments, and multimedia applications. The NC50N uses Intel’s Twin Lake N150 processor, manufactured using the Intel […]

Introducing GNOME OS Preview

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The GNOME Project has provided GNOME OS for some time; until now, the
project only provided a “Nightly” edition that was built from the latest commits
and was aimed solely at GNOME developers. Adrian Vovk has now announced
the release of GNOME OS Preview, which is intended for a non-developer
audience:

GNOME OS Preview is the current GNOME OS Nightly, but without the “nightly”
aspect. Instead, it’s built from the latest stable GNOME release (GNOME 51.1, at
the time of writing). GNOME OS Preview lives in the same branches on GitLab as
the stable org.gnome.Platform Flatpak runtimes.

GNOME OS Preview is only a few weeks old, so it has only seen limited
real-life testing so far. We therefore expect people will uncover some issues
initially. That said, Preview is significantly more stable than Nightly, which
dozens of people have been daily driving without major issues for over a
year. Thus, we’re feeling confident that Preview is going to be reliable enough
for daily use by non-developer enthusiasts.

While Preview is meant for non-developers, it is not considered complete or
stable for the broader public. There are a number of features, listed in Vovk’s
post, that need to be implemented before the project is ready to declare
GNOME OS “ready for prime time“. Adventurous users, who might not
mind having to reinstall the OS once a stable version is declared, can
download and start using GNOME OS Preview today.

RFK Jr. proposes FDA look the other way on unproven peptides, report says

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Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration is moving forward with plans to ease access to unproven peptide drugs that are popular among members of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement—despite FDA staff scientists finding that the drugs have not been sufficiently studied to establish safety and efficacy and may cause harms.

The FDA submitted an “Interim Access Policy” on peptides for review by the White House, according to a filing notice posted on an Office of Management and Budget website. The posting does not provide information on the proposed policy. But people familiar with the proposal told The Associated Press that it would give the FDA “enforcement discretion” on certain peptide drugs. This would allow the agency to choose not to enforce current restrictions on peptides and provide an assurance to specialty pharmacies eager to start making them that they will not be targeted by the agency.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, did not respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.

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CoreWeave’s Debt Stress Tests Private Credit’s AI Financing Boom

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Private credit’s expanding role in financing AI infrastructure faced one of its clearest market tests this week as CoreWeave’s bonds fell to distressed levels, raising questions about how lenders are pricing a boom built on chips, data centers and customer contracts. CoreWeave has about $50 billion of debt, according to LSEG data, making it one of the largest borrowers linking private credit to the AI buildout. The cost of insuring its debt against default climbed to about 1,200 basis points this week, while yields on some of its bonds rose to roughly 15% to 16%, signaling sharply increased investor concern over its credit risk. “There is still a price. Investors are still comfortable financing it, but they’re demanding more compensation for it,” said James Martin, senior US credit strategist at SMBC, referring to projects further from completion.

Carlyle estimates that private credit could finance roughly $1 trillion of the AI infrastructure buildout but warns that aggressive lending could create concentration risks similar to those seen in software lending. “The clearest lesson is not to avoid AI compute exposure, but to set concentration limits before the buildout accelerates further, not after,” Carlyle said.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[$] Safe self-referential data structures in kernel Rust

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Self-referential structures that can be used without unsafe code
have posed a problem for Rust for years.
There are many cases where a self-referential data structure is the elegant
algorithmic choice, but implementing it in accordance with Rust’s lifetime rules
is all but impossible. At Kangrejos 2026, Gary Guo presented a clever solution
to the problem in the context of the kernel’s

pin_init crate, which helps with the creation of immovable data structures,
typically for interoperability with C. Guo’s changes could help remove most of
the unsafe code related to lifetimes in the

Nova driver and, eventually, other Rust components.