Connexion
Android-powered foldable phones have been available for years, but most people never paid attention to them. As predicted, that could be changing now that Apple has entered the folding phone market with the iPhone Duo. Analysts have speculated that Samsung's Z8 foldables were seeing a boost from the iPhone announcement, and now Samsung has seemingly confirmed that.
In a new blog post, Samsung UK crows that the company's 2026 foldable lineup is moving much faster than last year's models. Compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 7, combined European sales for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra are up 45 percent. Samsung isn't talking about Z Flip 8 sales, but it previously noted that its larger foldables made up about 80 percent of foldable purchases. We can assume any increase there is not impressive enough to mention.
The reason for flat Z Flip sales may simply be that Apple didn't release a flip phone. Unsurprisingly, Samsung doesn't mention Apple or the iPhone Duo in its press release. However, it does say that search volume for the Z8 series across Europe spiked 460 percent the week of September 6 to 12. And guess what was announced on September 9? Yep, the iPhone Duo. Z Fold 8 search volume across the entire month of September (when the phones launched) was up 260 percent.
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.
Safety researchers continue to warn that a large volume of AI-generated explicit content is spreading unchecked, while regulators do little to meaningfully stop it.
This non-consensual content is commonly shared in text and direct messages or stored in private clouds where it’s less likely to be detected or reported, a Google co-authored study of Internet users across the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom found this July. That’s why the “most critical intervention point” remains at the source: the harmful AI tools used to make the fake sexual images, Google researchers concluded.
Yet red-teaming in recent months suggests that as some of the leading AI image generators from Google and OpenAI become more capable, they may be getting worse at blocking explicit outputs.
What makes a display a Mini LED display?
It's a question that sounds like it should have a simple answer. But it's now at the center of a lawsuit between two of the biggest names in TVs, with TCL accusing its longtime competitor Samsung of falsely advertising budget LCD-LED TVs as Mini LED sets.
TCL may have a point. Samsung's M-series TVs, which range from $300 for a 43-inch model to $2,300 for a 100-inch model, do raise some legitimate questions about what should qualify as Mini LED. More broadly, though, the dispute highlights a problem for shoppers: Without agreed-upon standards for what "Mini LED" actually means, manufacturers have plenty of room to define the technology for themselves.
Amid escalating AI security incidents causing OpenAI to halt training and pause releases, Donald Trump continues to advocate for the AI industry to regulate itself as the best path to combat emerging risks when developing frontier AI.
In an agreement Tuesday, two dozen tech firms voluntarily committed to implementing controls recommended by the White House, including undergoing independent safety audits that will test whether firms’ internal controls, monitoring, and detecting are actually working. Key focuses for external reviews included “risks related to cybersecurity, biosecurity, chemical threats, and unintended actions by AI models.”
Firms also agreed to regularly meet to discuss best practices and set common AI safety standards and benchmarks. Among signers were leaders like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Alphabet/Google’s Sundar Pichai.
Some Samsung smart fridges stopped working on Tuesday due to a firmware update.
Korean outlets were the first to report the problems, which affect Samsung’s Bespoke AI line of fridges. Star News Korea, per a Google-provided translation, said that most of the affected devices were four-door fridges from 2024 or later.
Affected fridges “suddenly lost power and stopped functioning immediately after” trying to issue a firmware update through SmartThings, Samsung’s smart home platform, per Star News Korea. The SmartThings app then showed the devices as offline. Some users said that their fridge’s internal display was stuck showing the message "Checking SmartThings app during update.”
On Tuesday, two survivors of child sex abuse accused the Justice Department of failing to notify dozens of victims found in Jeffrey Epstein’s massive collection of child sex images.
In a proposed class action, survivors explained that Epstein apparently started collecting child sex images in the 1990s, many of which the DOJ recovered after his arrest. In 2025, the FBI started reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” containing illegal child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and issued a memo confirming that “a large volume of images” seized depicted likely minors.
Some of these victims may have had contact with Epstein, as the disgraced financier kept a "modelbook" of nude photos of young girls roped into his ring. However, the FBI also identified hundreds of CSAM images in cache, which include approximately 15–20 images of known CSAM dating back to the 1990s. And so far, the DOJ has largely ignored those victims, who likely never met Epstein and have no way of knowing if he possessed, transported, or traded their images, survivors alleged.
Senators are renewing calls for anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy to step down or be ousted—and at least one is calling for a criminal investigation—amid the release of documents they say prove Kennedy lied to them during his confirmation hearings last year.
"This is a pattern, not a slip," Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement. "RFK Jr. has lied to the Senate, lied to the American people, and jeopardized the health of children to advance his anti-vaccine agenda."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a social media post Friday that the documents were "Proof we got RFK lying on the record during his confirmation hearing (a crime)." He called for the matter to be referred to the US Department of Justice for a criminal investigation. In a separate statement to The Guardian, Wyden added that "RFK's platform is built on lies and grifts that leave a trail of dead children in their wake. There are consequences for lying to Congress."
xAI has now been accused of training Grok on child sex abuse materials (CSAM), as regulators and courts continue to probe how far the problem goes, and some Grok users have been arrested.
In a complaint filed on Wednesday, a plaintiff known as Jane Doe explained that she was preschool-age in the early 2000s when adult men repeatedly raped her to create CSAM to sell to pedophiles online. Since then, Doe’s images have been hashed by groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP).
For her safety, Doe has opted to receive alerts from the US Department of Justice Victim Notification System any time she may be a victim in a new criminal investigation. Although she has received countless alerts, she was shocked when the CCCP notified her that it had identified AI-generated CSAM on xAI that depicted her. This re-traumatized Doe, whose complaint alleged that messages were found on online forums “between offenders chatting about creating AI generated CSAM of Plaintiff and other similarly situated known, legacy, victims of CSAM.”
Ads and tracking have turned TVs into privacy nightmares. Both are so widespread among smart TVs that I’ve written a guide for avoiding them. One recommendation in that guide is to use a computer monitor. But in recent years, monitors have become more capable of pushing ads and tracking users.
Without more straightforward approaches from vendors, such as easily comprehensible privacy policies and avoiding inappropriate ads, monitors are dangerously encroaching into smart-TV-like territory.
LG lost some trust after a recent report that some of its monitors installed McAfee pop-up ads onto connected computers. Since at least 2024, some of these displays installed an app, LG Monitor App Installer, onto connected computers under the cover of driver updates installed through Windows Update.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on Saturday that his country struck the Progress Rocket Space Center deep within Russia using ground-launched cruise missiles.
"In Russia’s Samara region, one of the key enterprises within Roscosmos—the Progress Center, which was involved, among other things, in electronics production–was hit," Zelenskyy said on the social media site X. "Flamingo missiles were used. A good achievement."
The largest city in the Samara Oblast, about 900 km from the Ukrainian border, Samara is home to Russia's most important manufacturer of rockets. The Progress Center assembles the workhorse vehicle for Russia, the Soyuz-2 vehicle, as well as the newer Soyuz-5 rocket. The facility also builds military satellites.
Anthropic is hiring a "custom silicon team" to design chips on which to run its models, the company has revealed.
Yesterday, Business Insider noticed a job listing for a senior engineer with experience shipping semiconductor designs. (You can see listings for a silicon engineer and a technical program manager, silicon on Anthropic's job board right now.) A spokesperson for Anthropic then confirmed the plans to both Business Insider and TechCrunch.
One of the first schools to shut down after students were found making AI nudes of female classmates is now asking a court to toss a lawsuit filed by victims who claimed that the school stayed silent for months while the emboldened boys targeted many more girls.
In a motion to dismiss this week, Lancaster Country Day School (LCDS)—a private K-12 school in Pennsylvania with fewer than 600 students—argued that it was false to say the school never reported the harm to law enforcement. The tip that the school received came from the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General, which is itself a law enforcement agency, the filing said.
It’s also false to say the school knew that girls were being targeted, the school argued, because the tip did not mention any specific student victims.
Elon Musk’s xAI is trying to sue its way out of a Grok reckoning as arrests of Grok users accused of making child sex abuse materials (CSAM) have triggered lawsuits from kids to sue xAI to force changes to the tool to block harmful outputs.
Earlier this month, xAI started suing users who are allegedly circumventing its safeguards to generate AI CSAM, seemingly hopeful that an early court win will guarantee it’s not liable for supposedly user-generated content.
For its next move, the Grok maker pointed to that lawsuit in a complaint filed Monday, accusing Minnesota of trying to force changes to Grok and Grok Imagine by enforcing a ban on nudification technology that would guarantee that xAI was liable for the harmful outputs, as well as outputs that allegedly weren’t sexualizing people without consent. According to xAI, suing a Grok user is proof that xAI is already doing everything in its power to punish bad actors, and therefore, Grok deserves safe harbor from Minnesota’s ban.
One missing underscore in a Skyrim-themed username put an innocent Nova Scotia man in prison for 18 months.
A 2018 child-luring investigation, which began in Madison, Wisconsin, and eventually extended to Halifax, Canada, was based on a false premise.
Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name "fus__ro_dah" (two underscores after "fus"), but they accidentally requested records for the username "fus_ro_dah" (one underscore after "fus"). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme.
The rumors haven't left much to the imagination, but Samsung has unfurled its 2026 foldable lineup today. There are three models for the first time in Samsung's eight-gen foldable family, including the top-of-the-line Z Fold 8 Ultra. That phone is the successor to last year's Galaxy Z Fold 7, but the Z Fold 8 is new—the company's first wide-body foldable designed for media over multitasking. And then there's a new, thinner flip phone, plus a pair of smartwatches.
You can preorder Samsung's new hardware today, but the component shortage has made these already spendy product lines more expensive this year. Even the Z Flip 8 is now well over a grand, and the Ultra costs almost twice as much.
| Specs at a glance: Galaxy Z8 series | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Galaxy Z Flip 8 ($1,200) | Galaxy Z Fold 8 ($1,900) | Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra ($2,100) | |
| SoC | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy |
| Memory | 12GB | 12GB, 16GB | 12GB, 16GB |
| Storage | 256GB, 512GB | 256GB, 512GB, 1TB | 256GB, 512GB, 1TB |
| Display | Main: 6.9" Dynamic AMOLED 2X (1080 x 2520) 400ppi, 120Hz; Cover: 4.1" AMOLED (948 x 1048) 342 ppi, 60/120Hz | Main: 7.6" Dynamic AMOLED 2X (1848 x 2448) 403ppi, 120Hz; Cover: 5.5" Dynamic AMOLED 2X (1248 x 1972) 428ppi, 120Hz | Main: 8.0" QXGA+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X (2504 x 2256) 422ppi, 120Hz; Cover: 6.5" FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X (1080 x 2520) 422ppi, 120Hz |
| Cameras | Rear: 50MP Wide (F1.8, OIS), 12MP Ultra Wide (F2.2); Selfie: 10MP (F2.2) | Rear: 50MP Wide (F1.8, OIS), 50MP Ultra Wide (F1.9); Main/Cover Selfie: 10MP (F2.2) | Rear: 200MP Wide (F1.7, OIS), 50MP Ultra Wide (F1.9), 10MP Tele (3x Optical, F2.4, OIS); Main/Cover Selfie: 10MP (F2.2) |
| Software | Android 17 / One UI 9 | Android 17 / One UI 9 | Android 17 / One UI 9 |
| Battery | 4,300 mAh, up to 55% charge in ~30 min with 25W Adapter, 15W Wireless Charging | 4,800 mAh, up to 67% charge in ~30 min with 45W Adapter, 20W Wireless Charging | 5,000 mAh, up to 63% charge in ~30 min with 45W Adapter, 20W Wireless Charging |
| Connectivity | 5G, LTE, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth v5.4, SIM+eSIM | 5G, LTE, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth v6.0, SIM+eSIM | 5G, LTE, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth v6.0, SIM+eSIM |
| Measurements | Unfolded: 166.9 × 75.4 × 6.1 mm Folded: 85.7 × 75.4 × 13.1 mm, 180g |
Unfolded: 123.9 × 161.4 × 4.5 mm Folded: 123.9 × 81.9 × 9.7 mm, 201g |
Unfolded: 158.4 × 143.2 × 4.1 mm Folded: 158.4 × 72.8 × 8.9 mm, 215g |
| Colors | Pink, Graphite, Cream, Mint (online) | Lavender, Graphite, Cream, Pistachio (online) | Violet Shadow, Graphite, Cream, Green Shadow (online) |
The Z Fold 8 Ultra has the same basic form factor as the last few Samsung tablet-style foldables. A 6.5-inch OLED on the outside is about the same ratio as a standard smartphone screen. Open it up, and you get an 8-inch display that's roughly twice as wide. That makes the main display close to square.
This week, San Francisco’s attorney general, David Chiu, sent cease-and-desist letters, demanding that Apple and Google remove 13 so-called nudification apps from their app stores, Wired reported.
Nudification apps can make it trivially easy to transform ordinary photos of real people into explicit images. The harmful AI tools allow bad actors to remove clothing, change a person’s features, place them in sexualized positions, and swap victims’ faces onto other people’s naked bodies.
Chiu's letter warned that app stores were violating "California’s laws that prohibit supporting services that create deepfake pornography," Wired reported.
Facing mounting pressure to acknowledge that Grok can still be used to generate non-consensual sexualized images of adults and minors, xAI filed a lawsuit Tuesday, suing the first user that Elon Musk’s firm has accused of using its chatbot to create illegal content.
The complaint targets Terry Wayne Harwood, who was arrested earlier this year for possession and distribution of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), the South Carolina attorney’s office announced.
As xAI alleged, the company assisted in that arrest after discovering that Harwood had been using two xAI accounts for months to undress or “nudify” non-sexual images of multiple victims, including a young girl who appeared to be as young as 10.
New Zealand actor Sam Neill, who starred as Dr. Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park and its 2022 sequel, Jurassic World Dominion, died on Monday in Sydney, Australia. He was 78.
While American audiences likely know Neill best for Jurassic Park, he had a long and varied career in film and television. His sheer versatility won him fans around the world. He played the grown Damien in Omen III: The Final Conflict; a Russian officer in The Hunt for Red October; and even made brief cameos (as an actor playing Odin in a theatrical troupe) in Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder. (The less said about 1997's space horror travesty, Event Horizon, the better, although it has its fans, and Neill made the most of his role.) Yet some of his best performances were in smaller, critically acclaimed independent films such as 1993's Oscar-winning The Piano.
On television, Neill earned his first Golden Globe nomination for the lead role in Reilly, Ace of Spies in the 1980s. He was nominated for both an Emmy and a second Golden Globe for playing the titular Arthurian wizard in the 1998 miniseries Merlin. He played Cardinal Wolsley in The Tudors, and was part of the ensemble cast in the (excellent) 2015 adaptation of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Neill was magnetic as the ruthless CI Major Chester Campbell in Peaky Blinders—an antagonist and romantic rival of Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby.
Smartphone shipments started to plateau a few years back, ending the days of guaranteed double-digit growth for any company that wanted to make phones. Fewer smartphone manufacturers exist today, and they're facing new pressure in the age of AI. A new report claims that smartphone shipments cratered 11 percent in the last quarter. Some are weathering the storm better than others, though.
According to Counterpoint, this substantial drop brings smartphone shipments to their lowest second-quarter level since 2013. Analysts place the blame for this drop squarely on the increasing price of DRAM and NAND chips. Manufacturers have largely shifted to supporting the AI computing boom, which leaves fewer components for consumer devices like smartphones and PCs. As prices climb higher, fewer people are interested in buying new phones.
This problem has been particularly vexing for people who are happy to purchase budget devices. A recent report from market research firm Omdia noted that higher memory costs are particularly bad for phones priced at $500 or less. In these segments, memory can now easily account for half of the total manufacturing cost. These devices have seen quicker and larger price increases compared to flagship devices, for which memory is now more than a quarter of the cost. That's a significant increase in the past year, but there's still more profit to be had at the high end.
Last week, thousands of SamKnows routers were bricked after a government program ran its course.
In 2020, as part of a program conducted by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Australian government's chief competition regulator, thousands of volunteers received routers to help test and report on the typical speed and performance of broadband plans in Australia. (More specifically, the Measuring Broadband Australia (MBA) program targeted fixed-line broadband services provided over the NBN, Australia's government-owned wholesale open-access broadband network, as well as services delivered over other access networks.)
According to the final report that the ACCC distributed, the routers are whiteboxes that were “supplied by SamKnows” and that “perform tests to measure internet performance using test servers maintained by SamKnows and hosted in Australia.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is reportedly in active talks with the Trump administration about the US potentially acquiring a 5 percent stake in the leading AI firm.
Insider sources told the Financial Times that these talks are in “early stages,” but Altman “has argued that giving the public a financial stake in the company is the best way to share the upside of AI.”
Donald Trump favors the idea, and his administration has reportedly been talking to several AI firms about the possibility. According to FT’s sources, other companies approached to share similar stakes include Google and Meta.
Michael Collins looked down at his watch.
The Apollo 11 astronaut had already beaten the original schedule for the opening of the National Air and Space Museum by three days, but no one would remember that if these final 36 minutes didn't go perfectly.
President Gerald Ford and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller took 35 seconds to find their seats on the red, white, and blue bunting-lined outdoor stage. The flyover by the Thunderbirds was quick enough. At any other event, it would have been the only time-dependent concern of the day.
South Korea’s government and top tech companies are committing $1 trillion to several flagship megaprojects that could bolster global memory chip supply, build new AI data centers, and spur commercial deployment of humanoid robots by 2028.
The announcement comes as South Korean companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix have enjoyed record profits and stock valuations due to the AI industry’s demand for memory chips—with the subsequent supply strain leading to memory chip shortages and higher prices for consumer electronics. Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor Company is racing to mass-manufacture humanoid robots developed by its subsidiary, Boston Dynamics, so that the robotic workers can start taking over certain laborious tasks in automotive factories and other workplaces.
“We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country,” said South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in a televised speech on June 29, as reported by BBC News and other media outlets. “Semiconductors, physical AI, and AI data centers are the triple axis for a great leap forward."
There are some sights in this world that no photograph can truly capture.
Think of the rolling ribbons of the aurora in the northern and southern skies, the depth and breadth of the Grand Canyon, or the sense of immersion when diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Astronauts will tell you that not even large-format cameras can truly capture the blackness of outer space or the majesty that is our planet as seen from orbit or beyond.
It's not every day that a new one of those sights debuts. But such will be the case on Friday, November 13, when the California Science Center in Los Angeles finally reveals the launch-pad-like display of the space shuttle Endeavor inside the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.
Bernie Sanders has unveiled an aggressive plan to transfer trillions from leading AI firms to the public, and, to the likely horror of AI firms, it goes even further than expected to give Americans more control over the AI industry.
Sanders shared a summary of his legislation with AP News. If passed, the law would create a sovereign wealth fund “financed through a one-time 50 percent tax on the stock of the largest AI companies,” AP News reported. Any AI firm that does $200 million in annual AI sales would be subject to the tax, as would any new firm once it reaches that revenue level.
In total, Sanders estimated the fund could be worth $7 trillion, generating “hundreds of billions of dollars annually in direct payments to Americans and programs such as health care, education and housing,” AP News reported. Each American would likely receive more than $1,000 annually in 5 percent annual dividends, Sanders estimated.
Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Samokutyaev, who served twice as a crew member aboard the International Space Station (ISS), including during the final US space shuttle mission in 2011, has died at the age of 56.
With Samokutyaev's death on Wednesday, he becomes the first former ISS long-duration resident to die in the 26 years that the space station has been a home to 155 other cosmonauts and astronauts as expedition crew members. The cause of his death is unknown.
Portrait of cosmonaut Aleksandr Samokutyaev.
Credit:
Roscosmos
"The leadership and staff of the Roscosmos State Corporation extend their sincere condolences to the family and loved ones of Aleksandr Mikhailovich," officials with Russia's space agency said in a statement.
Almost exactly two years ago, we were gawking at prototypes of 1,000 Hz monitors and wondering who really needed a display that could support such ludicrously smooth frame rates. Now that those prototypes are starting to develop into retail products, we're still wondering how much of a market there is for gaming displays that can update with a new frame every single millisecond.
The latest entry in the ultra-fast refresh race is LG's 24.5" UltraGear 25G590B, which the company announced this week as "the world’s first Full HD gaming monitor with a native 1000Hz refresh rate" ahead of a planned launch in "select markets" in the second half of the year. That "Full HD" promise means LG's 1,000 Hz display hits the 1080p threshold that is by far the most common resolution reported by gamers in Steam's regular hardware surveys.
That would represent a decent step up from the likes of Acer's Predator XB273U F6, Samsung's Odyssey G6, or Phillips' EVNIA 27M2N5500XD, all of which have to shift down to a relatively blurry 720p resolution to run at a full 1,000 Hz (but which support 1440p resolutions at a still-quite-fast 500 Hz). LG also notes that its high-end monitor can hit its resolution and refresh rate specs natively, without the need for any "dual mode" rebooting shenanigans to get the fastest performance.
Elon Musk took too long to file his lawsuit that accused OpenAI of stealing a charity, a nine-person jury unanimously decided Monday.
Musk sued OpenAI in 2024 for making a "fool" out of him after Musk donated $38 million to kick-start OpenAI as a nonprofit, only to later be blindsided when OpenAI created a for-profit arm that he felt gutted funding for the charity while enriching executives like Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
But the jury found that Musk was aware of OpenAI's restructuring plans as early as 2021 and therefore missed the statute of limitations requiring him to bring the lawsuit within three years, The New York Times reported. Because Musk took too long to file the litigation, the jury deemed Altman and Brockman not liable for any of the claims that Musk brought against OpenAI, the NYT reported. The jury also let Microsoft off the hook, finding no liability for the OpenAI investor after Musk alleged they aided OpenAI's get-rich scheme.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman had very different experiences while testifying at a trial that will determine OpenAI's future, including who runs it, where its research funding comes from, and who can profit from its boldest new technologies.
Musk—who filed the lawsuit alleging that OpenAI under its current leadership has abandoned its nonprofit mission to build AI that benefits humanity and instead serves to enrich people like Altman—spent three grueling days on the stand. At times, he lost his temper, as OpenAI's lawyer, William Savitt, tried to poke holes in Musk's claims that OpenAI executives teamed up with Microsoft to "steal a charity" after duping Musk into donating $38 million in early funding.
On Tuesday, Altman did not face such a grilling from Musk's lawyer, Steven Molo. Instead, Altman appeared jittery at first but steeled his nerves rather quickly. He hopped off the stand after about four hours of rather calmly discussing evidence that he's hoping shows that Musk's claims about OpenAI's for-profit restructuring are disingenuous. Since Musk filed the lawsuit, Altman has insisted that Musk is only after revenge, supposedly stemming from his jealousy that he was not picked as OpenAI's CEO and that his rival company, xAI, now lags behind.
About a year ago, I was in my parents’ living room, where a new TV sat in its box, waiting to be set up. My sister-in-law pointed to a woman on the packaging and said, “Oh, that’s Dua Lipa!” I barely know who she is, so I didn’t think it was unusual for the singer to be featured on the box. But at least one person thinks it's a big deal: Lipa herself.
On Friday, Lipa filed a lawsuit against Samsung for using her image on some of its TV boxes, alleging that its use constitutes copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and a violation of her right of publicity. The complaint (PDF), filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, says that Lipa owns all “rights, title, and interest in the image titled ‘Dua Lipa - Backstage at Austin City Limits, 2024.’”
“Samsung mass-manufactured, distributed (or caused to be distributed) marketed, and sold in interstate commerce across the United States a vast number of its televisions in various sizes in these cardboard boxes containing the [image],” the lawsuit says.
Four protesters are suing to stop the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from seizing DNA samples from Americans arrested while peacefully protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity.
In a complaint filed in an Illinois district court on Wednesday, protesters arrested at the Broadview ICE facility during "Operation Midway Blitz"—when thousands of federal agents flooded Chicago—demanded an injunction to stop alleged violations of the First and Fourth Amendments, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.
They have accused the federal government of "wrongfully arresting peaceful protesters, collecting their DNA, uploading their genetic profiles to government databases, and storing their DNA samples in federal labs—permanently."
Elon Musk tried to hire OpenAI’s founding team, including Sam Altman, to lead a new AI lab within Tesla in 2018, as the AI start-up’s leaders grappled over who should control the company and its direction.
Musk, a co-founder of the AI group, proposed bringing Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever to his carmaker, appointing Altman to the board or making OpenAI a Tesla subsidiary, according to evidence in a high-stakes trial between the billionaire and the ChatGPT maker on Wednesday.
The disclosures shed light on a crucial issue in the case, in which Musk has claimed that Altman “stole a charity” by converting the company into a for-profit. OpenAI’s lawyers have argued the Tesla chief executive was happy to commercialize the lab, provided that he remained in charge.
Just days before the trial started, Elon Musk tried to settle his lawsuit, which alleges that under Sam Altman's direction, OpenAI abandoned its mission to serve as a nonprofit making AI to benefit humanity.
According to a Sunday court filing from OpenAI, Musk messaged OpenAI President Greg Brockman two days ahead of the trial to "gauge interest" in a possible settlement. Brockman promptly responded, suggesting that "both sides" drop their claims. But Musk refused, then appeared to grow threatening enough that the court may allow Brockman to testify on the message as evidence supposedly revealing Musk's true motives for pursuing the litigation.
"By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America," Musk responded to Brockman's suggestion that all claims be dropped. "If you insist, so it will be."
This week, Minnesota became the first state to pass a law banning nudification apps that make it easy to "undress" or sexualize images of real people.
Under the law, developers of websites, apps, software, or other services designed to "nudify" images risk extensive damages, including punitive damages, if a victim decides to sue. Their offending products could also be blocked in the state. Additionally, Minnesota's attorney general could impose fines up to $500,000 per fake AI nude flagged. Any fines collected would be used to fund services for victims of "sexual assault, general crime, domestic violence, and child abuse," the law stipulates.
On Wednesday, the Minnesota Senate unanimously voted 65–0 to pass the law. That vote came after the bill just as quickly passed in the House last week, the 19th News reported. Gov. Tim Walz is expected to sign the law when it reaches his desk, and if that happens, the state will start enforcing the ban this August.
Elon Musk seems tired and cranky. On Thursday, he took the stand for the third day in a four-week trial stemming from his lawsuit alleging that OpenAI abandoned its mission and should be blocked from taking the company public later this year. If Musk plays his cards right, Sam Altman could be ousted and OpenAI would remain a nonprofit forever.
But Musk stumbled at least seven times in ways that possibly put his chances at winning in jeopardy. Most notable, 1) OpenAI's lawyer managed to get him to make several concessions over his own lawyer's objections. 2) He also lost a fight to keep xAI's safety record off the table, calling his reputation as a supposed AI savior defending OpenAI's mission into question. 3) He repeatedly appeared dishonest, as OpenAI's lawyer showed documents contradicting his testimony. And he twice appeared disingenuous, 4) first when confronted with calling OpenAI's safety team "jackasses," 5) and then again when admitting that he didn't know what "safety cards" are, even though his own AI firm issues them. Perhaps most embarrassing, 6) he testified that he never loses his temper before raising his voice at OpenAI's lawyer. And finally, 7) his lawyers failed to keep his ties to Donald Trump off the record, with the judge agreeing to hear discussions that might further discredit Musk's testimony.
Since he was called as the trial's first witness, Musk has spent more than seven hours over the past two days testifying that OpenAI made a "fool" out of him. He repeatedly claimed that OpenAI executives "stole a charity" after accepting $38 million in donations. Musk insists he was conned into giving "free funding" to start a nonprofit that Altman supposedly always intended to turn into an $800 billion company—not for the benefit of humanity, but to enrich Altman and his co-conspirators.
In an order denying Sam Bankman-Fried's request for a new trial, a judge accused the disgraced FTX founder of wasting precious court resources on wild conspiracies. To the judge, the motion seemed like a last-ditch attempt to give himself a MAGA makeover that the Trump administration absolutely wasn't buying.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 for "masterminding one of the largest financial frauds in American history," US District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his order. He was convicted on all charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering.
There is already an appeal pending in another court, the judge noted. But Bankman-Fried filed a separate motion for a new trial, claiming that there were "newly discovered" witnesses and evidence that might have helped his defense, if Joe Biden's Department of Justice hadn't intimidated them into refusing to testify or, in one case, lying on the stand. He also asked for a new judge, wanting Kaplan to recuse himself.
A hotly anticipated trial starts this week, where Elon Musk will attempt to prove that OpenAI, under Sam Altman, has abandoned its mission to remain a nonprofit in order to ensure that artificial intelligence serves humanity, and not just billionaires.
Many view the lawsuit as a grudge match between Musk—who left OpenAI after serving as an early major donor and advisor—and Altman—who currently runs OpenAI, despite insiders' allegedly growing distrust in his commitment to the dominant AI firm's mission. But the lawsuit is about much more than a couple billionaires' big egos. The outcome could radically change the AI landscape, impacting how OpenAI runs and what resources the firm will have to uphold its mission.
If Musk wins, OpenAI's hopes of growing a for-profit arm that can fund the nonprofit could be dashed. Additionally, Brockman and Altman could be dropped as officers, and Altman risks losing his seat on OpenAI's board.
Lateo.net - Flux RSS en pagaille (pour en ajouter : @ moi) 
