New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Zelle's parent company, Early Warning Services, alleging it knowingly enabled over $1 billion in fraud from 2017 to 2023 by failing to implement basic safeguards. CNBC reports: "EWS knew from the beginning that key features of the Zelle network made it uniquely susceptible to fraud, and yet it failed to adopt basic safeguards to address these glaring flaws or enforce any meaningful anti-fraud rules on its partner banks," James' office said in the release. The lawsuit alleges that Zelle became a "hub for fraudulent activity" because the registration process lacked verification steps and that EWS and its partner banks knew "for years" that fraud was spreading and did not take actionable steps to resolve it, according to the press release.

James is seeking restitution and damages, in addition to a court order mandating that Zelle puts anti-fraud measures in place. "No one should be left to fend for themselves after falling victim to a scam," James said in the release. "I look forward to getting justice for the New Yorkers who suffered because of Zelle's security failures." A Zelle spokesperson called the lawsuit a "political stunt to generate press" and a "copycat" of the CFPB lawsuit, which was dropped in March.

"Despite the Attorney General's assertions, they did not conduct an investigation of Zelle," the spokesperson said. "Had they conducted an investigation, they would have learned that more than 99.95 percent of all Zelle transactions are completed without any report of scam or fraud -- which leads the industry."

China has established a lead in the field of open-source AI, a development that is reportedly sending jolts through both Washington and Silicon Valley. The nation's progress has become a significant event for American policymakers in the U.S. capital. The advancement has registered as a shock within Silicon Valley, the hub of the American technology industry. From the report: The overall performance of China's best open-weight model has surpassed the American open-source champion since November, according to research firm Artificial Analysis. The firm, which rates the ability of models in math, coding and other areas, found a version of Alibaba's Qwen3 beat OpenAI's gpt-oss.

However, the Chinese model is almost twice as big as OpenAI's, suggesting that for simpler tasks, Qwen might consume more computing power to do the same job. OpenAI said its open-source model outperformed rivals of similar size on reasoning tasks and delivered strong performance at low cost.

Extreme heat is breaking temperature records across Europe, early measurements suggest, and driving bigger and stronger wildfires. From a report: In south-west France, records were broken on Monday in Angouleme, Bergerac, Bordeaux, Saint-Emilion and Saint-Girons. Meteo France said the "often remarkable, even unprecedented, maximum temperatures" in the region were 12C above the norm for the last few decades.

In Croatia, air temperature records were set in Sibenik, at 39.5C, and Dubrovnik, at 38.9C, while large forest fires raged along its coasts and ripped through neighbouring countries in the Balkans. The day before, Hungary broke its daily maximum temperature record when a weather station in Korosladany hit 39.9C. The capital, Budapest, also broke its daily maximum record as it sweltered through 38.7C heat.

Beyond Europe, dozens of temperature records were broken across Canada, and record-breaking heat above 50C in Iraq was blamed for a nationwide blackout. The heatwave in southern Europe comes as Nordic countries recover from unprecedentedtemperatures above 30C in the Arctic Circle this month.

An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. authorities have secretly placed location tracking devices in targeted shipments of advanced chips they see as being at high risk of illegal diversion to China, according to two people with direct knowledge of the previously unreported law enforcement tactic. The measures aim to detect AI chips being diverted to destinations which are under U.S. export restrictions, and apply only to select shipments under investigation, the people said.

They show the lengths to which the U.S. has gone to enforce its chip export restrictions on China, even as the Trump administration has sought to relax some curbs on Chinese access to advanced American semiconductors. The trackers can help build cases against people and companies who profit from violating U.S. export controls, said the people who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Boston Public Library, one of the oldest and largest public library systems in the country, is launching a project this summer with OpenAI and Harvard Law School to make its trove of historically significant government documents more accessible to the public. The documents date back to the early 1800s and include oral histories, congressional reports and surveys of different industries and communities. "It really is an incredible repository of primary source materials covering the whole history of the United States as it has been expressed through government publications," said Jessica Chapel, the Boston Public Library's chief of digital and online services. Currently, members of the public who want to access these documents must show up in person. The project will enhance the metadata of each document and will enable users to search and cross-reference entire texts from anywhere in the world. Chapel said Boston Public Library plans to digitize 5,000 documents by the end of the year, and if all goes well, grow the project from there. Because of this historic collection's massive size and fragility, getting to this goal is a daunting process. Every item has to be run through a scanner by hand. It takes about an hour to do 300-400 pages.

Harvard University said it could help. Researchers at the Harvard Law School Library's Institutional Data Initiative are working with libraries, museums and archives on a number of fronts, including training new AI models to help libraries enhance the searchability of their collections. AI companies help fund these efforts, and in return get to train their large language models on high-quality materials that are out of copyright and therefore less likely to lead to lawsuits. "Having information institutions like libraries involved in building a sustainable data ecosystem for AI is critical, because it not just improves the amount of data we have available, it improves the quality of the data and our understanding of what's in it," said Burton Davis, vice president of Microsoft's intellectual property group. [...] OpenAI is helping Boston Public Library cover such costs as scanning and project management. The tech company does not have exclusive rights to the digitized data.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Can deleting old emails and photos help the UK tackle ongoing drought this year? That's the hope, according to recommendations for the public included in a press release today from the National Drought Group.

There are far bigger steps companies and policymakers can take to conserve water of course, but drought has gotten bad enough for officials to urge the average person to consider how their habits might help or hurt the situation. And the proliferation of data centers is raising concerns about how much water it takes to power servers and keep them cool.

"Simple, everyday choices -- such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails -- also really helps the collective effort to reduce demand and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife," Helen Wakeham, Environment Agency Director of Water, said in the press release.

darwinmac writes: Firefox 141 rolled out a shiny new AI-powered smart tab grouping feature (it tries to auto-organize your tabs using a local model), but it turns out the local "Inference" process that powers it is acting like an energy-sucking monster. Users are reporting massive CPU spikes and battery drain and calling the feature "garbage" that's ruining their browsing experience.

In an unusual arrangement to secure export licenses, Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the U.S. government 15% of revenue from certain chip sales to China. The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration halted the sale of advanced computer chips to China in April over national security concerns, but Nvidia and AMD revealed in July that Washington would allow them to resume sales of the H20 and MI308 chips, which are used in artificial intelligence development. President Trump confirmed the terms of the unusual arrangement in a Monday press conference while noting that he originally wanted 20% of the sales revenue when Nvidia asked to sell the "obsolete" H20 chip to China. The president credited Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for negotiating him down to 15%. "So we negotiated a little deal. So he's selling a essentially old chip," Trump said.

Nvidia did not comment about the specific details of the agreement or its quid pro quo nature, but said they would adhere to the export rules laid out by the administration. "We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets. While we haven't shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide," Nvidia wrote in a statement to the AP. "America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America's AI tech stack can be the world's standard if we race."

Biochar produced from solid human excrement could supply up to 7% of global phosphorus fertilizer needs annually, according to a Cornell University study published in PNAS. When combined with nutrients extracted from urine, the process could provide 15% of phosphorus, 17% of nitrogen, and 25% of potassium used in agriculture worldwide.

The biochar production process reduces solid waste volume and weight by up to 90%, while allowing nutrient proportions to be adjusted for specific crop requirements.

Companies are canceling clean hydrogen projects across the United States after Congress shortened the qualification window for a Biden-era tax credit by five years, requiring projects to be under construction by the end of 2027.

Energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie estimates three-quarters of proposals will not meet this deadline. Woodside Energy and Fortescue have scrapped projects in Oklahoma and Arizona respectively, citing cost increases and policy uncertainty. According to McKinsey, fewer than 15% of low-emission hydrogen projects announced in the United States since 2015 have reached final investment decision stage.

Former NSA and Cyber Command chief Paul Nakasone told the Defcon security conference this month that technology companies will find it "very, very difficult" to remain neutral through 2025 and 2026.

Speaking with Defcon founder Jeff Moss in Las Vegas, Nakasone, now an OpenAI board member, addressed the intersection of technology and politics following the Trump administration's removal of cybersecurity officials deemed disloyal and revocation of security clearances for former CISA directors Chris Krebs and Jen Easterly. Nakasone also called ransomware "among the great scourges that we have in our country," stating the U.S. is "not making progress against ransomware."

theodp writes: The New York Times reports from the CS grad job-seeking trenches: Growing up near Silicon Valley, Manasi Mishra remembers seeing tech executives on social media urging students to study computer programming. "The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary," Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.

Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer. "I just graduated with a computer science degree, and the only company that has called me for an interview is Chipotle," Ms. Mishra said in a get-ready-with-me TikTok video this summer that has since racked up more than 147,000 views.

Some graduates described feeling caught in an A.I. "doom loop." Many job seekers now use specialized A.I. tools like Simplify to tailor their resumes to specific jobs and autofill application forms, enabling them to quickly apply to many jobs. At the same time, companies inundated with applicants are using A.I. systems to automatically scan resumes and reject candidates.

The operator of Wikipedia on Monday lost a legal challenge to parts of Britain's Online Safety Act, which sets tough new requirements for online platforms and has been criticized for potentially curtailing free speech. From a report: The Wikimedia Foundation took legal action at London's High Court over regulations made under the law, which it said could impose the most stringent category of duties on Wikipedia.

The foundation said if it was subject to so-called Category 1 duties -- which would require Wikipedia's users and contributors' identities to be verified -- it would need to drastically reduce the number of British users who can access the site. Judge Jeremy Johnson dismissed its case on Monday, but said the Wikimedia Foundation could bring a further challenge if regulator Ofcom "(impermissibly) concludes that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service".

In 2020 a YouTube video used video footage of Steve Wozniak in a scam to steal bitcoin. "Some people said they lost their life savings," Wozniak tells CBS News, explaining why he sued YouTube in 2020 — and where his case stands now: Wozniak's lawsuit against YouTube has been tied up in court now for five years, stalled by federal legislation known as Section 230. Attorney Brian Danitz said, "Section 230 is a very broad statute that limits, if not totally, the ability to bring any kind of case against these social media platforms."

"It says that anything gets posted, they have no liability at all," said Wozniak. "It's totally absolute."

Google responded to our inquiry about Wozniak's lawsuit with a statement from José Castañeda, of Google Policy Communications: "We take abuse of our platform seriously and take action quickly when we detect violations ... we have tools for users to report channels that are impersonating their likeness or business." [Steve's wife] Janet Wozniak, however, says YouTube did nothing, even though she reported the scam video multiple times: "You know, 'Please take this down. This is an obvious mistake. This is fraud. You're YouTube, you're helping dupe people out of their money,'" she said.

"They wouldn't," said Steve...
Today is Steve Wozniak's 75th birthday. (You can watch the interview here.) And the article includes this interesting detail about Woz's life today: Wozniak sold most of his Apple stock in the mid-1980s when he left the company. Today, though, he still gets a small paycheck from Apple for making speeches and representing the company. He says he's proud to see Apple become a trillion-dollar company. "Apple is still the best," he said. "And when Apple does things I don't like, and some of the closeness I wish it were more open, I'll speak out about it. Nobody buys my voice!"

I asked, "Apple listen to you when you speak out?"

"No," Wozniak smiled. "Oh, no. Oh, no."

Last week saw the 80th anniversary of a turning point in World War II: the day America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

"Twelve men were on that flight..." remembers the online magazine Mental Floss, adding "Almost all had something to say after the war." The group was segregated from the rest of the military and trained in secret. Even those in the group only knew as much as they needed to know in order to perform their duties. The group deployed to Tinian in 1945 with 15 B-29 bombers, flight crews, ground crews, and other personnel, a total of about 1770 men. The mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (special mission 13) involved seven planes, but the one we remember was the Enola Gay.

Air Force captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk did not know the destructive force of the nuclear bomb before Hiroshima. He was 24 years old at that time, a veteran of 58 missions in North Africa. Paul Tibbets told him this mission would shorten or end the war, but Van Kirk had heard that line before. Hiroshima made him a believer. Van Kirk felt the bombing of Hiroshima was worth the price in that it ended the war before the invasion of Japan, which promised to be devastating to both sides. " I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. There were a lot of lives saved. Most of the lives saved were Japanese."

In 2005, Van Kirk came as close as he ever got to regret. "I pray no man will have to witness that sight again. Such a terrible waste, such a loss of life..."
Many of the other crewmembers also felt the bomb ultimately saved lives.

The Washington Post has also published a new oral history of the flight after it took off from Tinian Island. The oral history was assembled for a new book published this week titled The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb.. Col. Paul W. Tibbets, lead pilot of the Enola Gay: We were only eight minutes off the ground when Capt. William S. "Deak" Parsons and Lt. Morris R. Jeppson lowered themselves into the bomb bay to insert a slug of uranium and the conventional explosive charge into the core of the strange-looking weapon. I wondered why we were calling it ''Little Boy." Little Boy was 28 inches in diameter and 12 feet long. Its weight was a little more than 9,000 pounds. With its coat of dull gunmetal paint, it was an ugly monster...

Lt. Morris R. Jeppson, crew member of the Enola Gay: Parsons was second-in-command of the military in the Manhattan Project. The Little Boy weapon was Parsons's design. He was greatly concerned that B-29s loaded with conventional bombs were crashing at the ends of runways on Tinian during takeoff and that such an event could cause the U-235 projectile in the gun of Little Boy to fly down the barrel and into the U-235 target. This could have caused a low-level nuclear explosion on Tinian...

Jeppson: On his own, Parsons decided that he would go on the Hiroshima mission and that he would load the gun after the Enola Gay was well away from Tinian.

Tibbets: That way, if we crashed, we would lose only the airplane and crew, himself included... Jeppson held the flashlight while Parsons struggled with the mechanism of the bomb, inserting the explosive charge that would send one block of uranium flying into the other to set off the instant chain reaction that would create the atomic explosion.
The navigator on one of the other six planes on the mission remember that watching the mushroom cloud, "There was almost complete silence on the flight deck. It was evident the city of Hiroshima was destroyed."

And the Enola Gay's copilot later remembered thinking: "My God, what have we done?"