Google has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a judge’s order requiring major changes to its Play Store after losing an antitrust case to Epic Games. The injunction would force Google to allow rival app stores, external billing links, and broader competition — changes Google says could harm users and developers. Epic argues they’re necessary to break Google’s monopoly. Reuters reports: Google said it has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to halt key parts of a judge’s order that would force major changes to its app store Play, as it prepares to appeal a decision in a lawsuit brought by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games. Google called the judge’s order unprecedented, and said it would cause reputational harm, safety and security risks and put the company at a competitive disadvantage if allowed to take effect, according to a filing, opens new tab provided late on Wednesday by Google, which said it had submitted it to the court. […]

Google in its Supreme Court filing said that the changes will have enormous consequences for more than 100 million U.S. Android users and 500,000 developers. It asked the court to decide by October 17 whether to put the order on hold. Google said it plans to file its appeal to the Supreme Court by October 27, which could allow the justices to take up the case during their nine-month term that begins on October 6.

Epic in a statement said Google is relying on what it called “flawed security claims” to justify its control over Android devices. “The court’s injunction should go into effect as ordered so consumers and developers can benefit from competition, choices and lower prices,” Epic said. The jury, siding with Epic in the trial, found that Google illegally stifled competition. Donato subsequently issued the order directing Google to make changes to its app store.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Neon is an call-recording app that pays users for access to the audio, which the app in turn sells to AI companies for training their models. Since its launch last week, it quickly rose in popularity, but the service was taken offline today. TechCrunch reported that it found a security flaw that allowed any logged-in user to access other accounts’ phone numbers, the phone numbers called, call recordings and transcripts. 

TechCrunch said that it contacted Neon founder Alex Kiam about the issue. “Kiam told TechCrunch later Thursday that he took down the app’s servers and began notifying users about pausing the app, but fell short of informing his users about the security lapse,” the publication reported. The app went dark “soon after” TC contacted Kiam. Neon does not appear to have a timeline about if or when the service will resume or what additional security protections it may add.

The full report from TechCrunch is here and certainly worth reading if you’ve used Neon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/call-recording-app-neon-goes-offline-after-security-flaw-uncovered-223425297.html?src=rss

Multiple whistleblowers alleged that DOGE uploaded a highly sensitive Social Security Administration (SSA) database to an unmonitored cloud environment, according to a report by Senate Democratic staff. The staff report describes an investigation into DOGE activities at three agencies, including a site visit at the General Services Administration (GSA) in which DOGE officials appeared to be hiding certain areas from view.

As we reported last month, then-SSA Chief Data Officer Chuck Borges alleged that DOGE officials created “a live copy of the country’s Social Security information in a cloud environment that circumvents oversight.” At least one other whistleblower has apparently made the same allegation.

Whistleblowers, including Borges, alleged “that Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old DOGE staffer who was previously fired from a job for leaking company data to a competitor, and other DOGE personnel had been granted permission to move highly sensitive SSA data into an unmonitored cloud environment,” the Senate Democratic report said. “The whistleblowers said that DOGE has uploaded a live copy of NUMIDENT, which contains highly sensitive personal data on anyone who has held a social security number, including every American. This includes social security numbers (SSNs), place and date of birth, work permit status, and parents’ names, among other sensitive personal information, for all Americans, to a cloud environment.”

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Doug Bowser, Nintendo of America’s President and Chief Operating Officer, is stepping down on December 31, 2025, according to Nintendo. Bowser’s leadership responsibilities will now be split between two executives: Devon Pritchard, NoA’s Executive Vice President of Revenue, Marketing and Consumer Experience, will take over as President, and Satoru Shibata, the current Corporate Director and Managing Executive Director, will act as the company’s CEO.

Bowser first joined Nintendo in 2015 as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, before replacing long-time President Reggie Fils-Aimé in 2019. In comparison to some of the company’s other leaders, Bowser was much less of a public-facing presence, but he still guided Nintendo of America through a transformative portion of the company’s history. Nintendo not only opened a theme park while Bowser was in charge, but also had a major Hollywood release in The Super Mario Bros. Movie and a successful console launch with the release of the Switch 2 earlier this year. Bowser also weathered his fair share of controversies, including reports that Nintendo of America was failing to address issues of gender discrimination among its employees.

“Leading Nintendo of America has been the honor of a lifetime, and I am proud of what our team has accomplished in both business results and the experiences we’ve created for consumers,” Bowser said in a statement. “Now, it’s time for the next generation of leadership and Devon’s track record speaks for itself,” Bowser continued. “She is an exceptional leader, and her promotion is a testament to her strong performance and strategic contributions to the company’s growth.”

According to Nintendo, “Pritchard plans to build on the many experiences that allow consumers to connect with Nintendo’s characters and worlds, from video games to entertainment to retail experiences.” The company might be too big and successful now to feature someone with as much personality as Fils-Aimé, but if Pritchard plans to stick with business-as-usual, maybe Shibata could become the public face Nintendo has been missing.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/bowser-is-leaving-nintendo-of-america-221650389.html?src=rss

The Dream Chaser spaceplane, which has been under development for two decades, now seems like it might be further than ever from taking flight.

On Thursday, NASA, confirming an earlier Ars Technica report, said the first flight of the winged spacecraft will no longer berth with the International Space Station. Rather, the space agency said, the Dream Chaser program would be “best served” by a free flight demonstration.

“Development of new space transportation systems is difficult and can take longer than what’s originally planned,” said Dana Weigel, manager of NASA’s International Space Station Program, in a news release. “As NASA and its partners look toward space station deorbit in 2030, this mutually agreed to decision enables testing and verification to continue on Dream Chaser, as well as demonstrating the capabilities of the spaceplane for future resupply missions in low Earth orbit.”

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OpenAI introduced Pulse, a new ChatGPT feature that generates five to ten personalized daily reports overnight for Pro users on its $200/month plan. The goal is to eventually expand beyond summaries to agent-like tasks. TechCrunch reports: Pulse offers users five to 10 briefs that can get them up to speed on their day and is aimed at encouraging users to check ChatGPT first thing in the morning — much like they would check social media or a news app. “We’re building AI that lets us take the level of support that only the wealthiest have been able to afford and make it available to everyone over time,” said OpenAI’s new CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, in a blog post. “And ChatGPT Pulse is the first step in that direction — starting with Pro users today, but with the goal of rolling out this intelligence to all.”

Starting Thursday, OpenAI will roll out Pulse for subscribers to its $200-a-month Pro plan, for whom it will appear as a new tab in the ChatGPT app. The company says it would like to launch Pulse to all ChatGPT users in the future, with Plus subscribers to get access soon, but it first needs to make the product more efficient. Pulse’s reports can be roundups of news articles on a specific topic — like updates on a specific sports team — as well as more personalized briefs based on a user’s context.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As a boy, I once owned a whoopee cushion. I thought it hilarious; my aging and extremely “proper” great aunt—God rest her soul—did not, and at one Thanksgiving dinner, she let me know. Chastened, I never used a whoopee cushion again. Nor, as the decades passed, did I think much more about the possible humor value of fake farts.

Until this week, when I came across the strange case of Alexander Paul Robertson Lewis, who has been charged with a felony in South Carolina for—and let me quote from the official police press release here—using “an Internet-acquired spray designed to imitate fecal odor.”

The nanny state run amok? The criminalization of fun? Authorities who Just Can’t Take A Joke?

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I’d be willing to bet the one thing most of us want from our iPhones is quite simple: more battery life. Apple can keep adding new features and designs with each new smartphone iteration, but if the company just announced a new iPhone with record-breaking battery life, customers would be thrilled.

While we may have to wait for a time when the iPhone can go a couple days in between charges, Apple has added a new option to iOS 26 in an effort to help extend your iPhone’s battery life. The feature, Adaptive Power, uses on-device AI to analyze your iPhone usage and guess the times you’ll need additional battery life. This is exactly how I want to see AI being used—not for generating hyper-realistic videos or musical slop.

How Adaptive Power tries to boost your battery

When Adaptive Power decides it’s time to engage, the feature can adjust your iPhone’s performance level. This will make some tasks take longer than they normally would, but that slower speed supposedly saves on battery life. In addition, Adaptive Power lowers screen brightness by 3%, limits background activity, and, when your iPhone reaches 20%, kicks on Low Power Mode without asking you first.

Apple isn’t totally clear here about the difference between Low Power Mode and Adaptive Power in general. From what we know, it seems that Adaptive Power simply reduces processing speeds at select intervals, and only slightly lowers brightness, while Low Power Mode slows speeds and display refresh rate, and limits brightness, 5G, iCloud syncing, and mail fetch, among other tasks.

Adaptive Power is enabled by default on Apple’s newest iPhones, including the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air—the latter of which could most likely benefit from such a feature. For all other compatible iPhones, which includes iPhone 15 Pro and newer, the feature is turned off by default. That means, unless you have an iPhone 17 device, you’ll need to turn this on yourself.

How to turn Adaptive Power on or off

Whether you have an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPhone 17, you’ll find the controls for Adaptive Power in the same place. Open Settings, then head to Battery > Power Mode. Here, you can tap the toggle next to “Adaptive Power” to turn the setting on or off.

Since Adaptive Power turns on and off throughout the day, Apple also offers you the option to receive alerts whenever the feature is active. You can adjust this setting from the “Adaptive Power Notifications” toggle.

I’ve been using Adaptive Power since iOS 26 dropped on Sept. 15, but it’s tough to say whether the feature has had a noticeable impact on my battery life. I think it would help if Apple added Adaptive Power information to my battery stats, so I could compare the impacts before and after using the feature. For now, I’ll continue using it, if for no other reason than to offer my battery the best possible chance of making it through the day without its charger.

After the posting—and apparent editing—of a job opening spotted this week, it’s expected that Amazon will bring its homegrown operating system to Fire TV devices this year.

Most of Amazon’s Fire-branded devices, which include tablets, currently run some version of Fire OS, which is an Android fork based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). For years, Fire OS’s reliance on AOSP has resulted in Amazon devices coming out with older software, such as 2024’s Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet, which came out with Fire OS 8, which is based on 2020’s Android 11.

Some devices already run Amazon’s proprietary software, reportedly codenamed Vega OS. The current Echo Hub smart home control panel, Echo Show 5 (3rd Gen) smart home display, and Echo Spot smart speaker all run an OS based on the Linux 5.16 kernel, per details in Amazon’s source code notice for Alexa devices. However, Amazon has never publicly acknowledged that the OS exists.

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Ruby Central, a non-profit organization committed to “driving innovation and building community within the Ruby programming ecosystem since 2001,” removed all RubyGems maintainers from the project’s GitHub repository on September 18, granting administrative access exclusively to its employees and contractors following alleged pressure from Shopify, one of its biggest backers, according to Ruby developer Joel Drapper. The nonprofit organization, which operates RubyConf and RailsConf, cited fiduciary responsibility and supply chain security concerns following a recent audit.

The controversy began September 9 when HSBT (Hiroshi Shibata), a Ruby infrastructure maintainer, renamed the RubyGems GitHub enterprise to “Ruby Central” and added Director of Open Source Marty Haught as owner while demoting other maintainers. The action allegedly followed Shopify’s threat to cut funding unless Ruby Central assumed full ownership of RubyGems and Bundler. Ruby Central had reportedly become financially dependent on Shopify after Sidekiq withdrew $250,000 annual sponsorship over the organization platforming Rails creator DHH at RailsConf 2025. Andre Arko, a veteran contributor on-call for RubyGems.org at the time, was among those removed.

Maintainer Ellen Dash has characterized the action as a “hostile takeover” and also resigned. Executive Director Shan Cureton acknowledged poor communication in a YouTube video Monday, stating removals were temporary while finalizing operator agreements. Arko and others are launching Spinel, an alternative Ruby tooling project, though Shopify’s Rafael Franca commented that Spinel admins shouldn’t be trusted to avoid “sabotaging rubygems or bundler.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These are several videos of the years-long dream of Youtuber Brian Brocken to build a flying Delorean time machine from Back To The Future. It’s basically a carbon fiber quadrocopter with a laeser-cut foam Delorean body on top. Still, paint that thing stainless steel and you’ve got yourself the best Halloween prop of all time. I know, because I’ve traveled though time and seen all the Halloween props. Just don’t ask me any questions about your future because I won’t tell you. I mean it. FINE, I ACCIDENTALLY HTI YOU WITH MY TIME MACHINE, OKAY? I’m sorry.

Your iPhone is essentially a computer that fits in your pocket, so it only makes sense for Apple to treat it as such. To that point, with iOS 26, both the iPhone and the iPad get a new app that was a Mac exclusive for over 20 years: Preview.

What can you do with the Preview app?

Like on macOS, the Preview app for iOS and iPadOS is largely made for viewing PDFs and other documents. When you first open the app, you’ll see the options to either create a new document or scan one with your iPhone’s camera.

Most of the time, however, you probably you have an existing document you want to open using Preview. If so, you’ll find those options in the bottom half of this starting page. This is Preview’s integration with the Files app: You can browse your documents from Files and open any with Preview.

Once you have a document loaded up, you’re able to view, annotate, markup, and edit it. If you need to fill out a document with your information, you can use AutoFill to automatically enter contact info and other saved details. You can add your signature, and if you’re on your iPad, you can use your Apple Pencil to draw on the document. Otherwise, you can use your finger to mark up the file.

You can also export documents from the Preview app. You can work with file types including HEIDC, JPEG, PDF, PNG, and TIFF. And as with Preview on macOS, there are a number of controls when exporting, such as resolution, embedding text, and saving images as JPEG.

While there’s a lot you can do here, the biggest strength I see for this mobile Preview app is using it as a tool for legal documents. If you need to sign an important document, you can quickly scan it into the app, add your signature, fill out any information—perhaps automatically with AutoFill—then email the doc out, all without needing to jump to your computer.

Preview on iOS is still a work in progress

If you look at Preview’s App Store page, you’ll notice some mixed reviews. After using the app for a bit, I understand why. Preview for iOS is definitely still a work in progress and in need of some key upgrades.

The biggest quirks I noticed immediately: The main menu page is cluttered, with the Files integration looking more like a glitch than a dedicated window. Speaking of Files, Apple made the decision to have documents in Files open in Preview. At first, that sounds like a good idea, until you experience it in person on both iOS and iPadOS. Being dragged out of the Files app when you’re not expecting it is jarring, especially when you’re used to viewing your docs directly in the app.

The workaround here is to avoid Files for opening, well, files. Use the Files integration within Preview, so you stay in the same app. How intuitive. You could also choose to delete the Preview app, but that’s a bit of a shame when it’s such a major update for iOS and iPadOS 26.

Also, when you choose the Markup option, there’s no clear way to exit without closing the whole app first. As far as I can tell, the only way to do so is to tap the three-dots in the top right, then tap Markup to exit this menu. The Markup button should really stay on screen as it does on macOS, so it’s obvious how to dismiss it.

The Meta AI app — you know, the one where people publicly shared their private conversations with the chatbot by accident — now has a dedicated feed for AI slop. The Vibes feed is a home for AI-generated short-form videos in the Meta AI app and website. Users can scroll the creations of other people, or can make their own clips, either by building from scratch or adapting other videos from the feed. The videos people make can also be shared via DM or cross-posted to Instagram or Facebook.

The company said it plans to add more features for AI-generated creation in the future. According to a Threads post by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Vibes is “an early look at some of the new product directions we’re exploring.” He added that Meta Superintelligence Labs will work with Midjourney and Black Forest Labs on upcoming AI projects.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-now-has-a-feed-for-ai-slop-205751808.html?src=rss

Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, said Thursday that it’s time for his country to consider putting “offensive capabilities” in space after revealing Russian spacecraft are tracking two communications satellites used by the German military.

Speaking at the German industry’s Space Congress event in Berlin, Pistorius said the country must ramp up its investment in space security to counter threats from Russia and China, which he said have rapidly expanded their capacity for space warfare.

“They can jam, blind, manipulate, or kinetically destroy satellites,” Pistorius said. “There are no borders or continents in space. Russia and China are our direct neighbors there.”

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On Thursday, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Pulse, a new “push” feature that generates personalized daily updates for users without having to ask each time. The preview feature, available now for Pro subscribers on mobile, marks OpenAI’s latest attempt to make ChatGPT proactive rather than reactive, with the AI model conducting overnight research to deliver morning updates based on user history and connected apps. OpenAI calls it “personalized research and timely updates that appear regularly to keep you informed.”

ChatGPT Pulse works by analyzing a user’s chat history, saved preferences, and optional connections to Gmail and Google Calendar each night. The next morning, users receive visual “cards” (small illustrated squares with topic summaries that can be expanded for detail) containing updates on topics the model determines are relevant, such as project follow-ups, dinner suggestions, or travel recommendations. Users can provide feedback through thumbs up or down ratings and request specific topics through a “curate” button.

OpenAI says that rather than waiting for users to initiate conversations, ChatGPT now attempts to deliver information preemptively using what OpenAI calls “asynchronous research,” essentially having the model generate queries and responses overnight using traditional methods. Updates appear once daily and disappear after 24 hours unless users save them or ask follow-up questions, which converts them into standard chat conversations.

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The original Beats Studio Buds may not be the brand’s latest or most advanced earbuds, but they are still a crowdpleaser—and a more budget-friendly alternative to newer generations. Currently, they’re an even better buy on Amazon, as they’re 47% off, their lowest price ever according to price tracking tools. 

Beats Studio Buds

$79.95
at Amazon

$149.95
Save $70.00

$79.95
at Amazon

$149.95
Save $70.00

These buds offer decent active noise cancellation (although unlike pricier alternatives, they only use a fixed filter rather than adaptive ANC), easy-to-use on-ear controls, punchy bass, and balanced and crisp highs—strong performance at an $80 price point.

The earbuds also feature iOS integration and one-touch pairing with both Android and iOS. Most users find the fit comfortable, although this PCMag review notes that since they are on the smaller side and have a slick surface, they can be a little tricky to place in your ears. However, once they’re in, they remain secure, and the inclusion of three different eartip sizes lets you customize the experience. 

They carry an IPX4 water-resistance rating, so while they can’t be submerged or held under running water, they can withstand light rain and sweat. The battery life is decent—up to five hours when noise cancellation is on, and eight hours when it’s off, plus up to an extra 16 hours from the charging case.

If you don’t need high-end noise cancellation but still want a pair of reliable earbuds that deliver major bass, decent ANC, and a price point well under $100 price point, the Beats Studio Buds offer a great blend of quality and affordability.